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Succession part II
People management, upon which succession depends, requires foresight, maturity, knowledge and leadership skills. It requires an elevated capacity for correction during the analysis of results, as well as intent focus on people and their interpersonal dynamic. In addition, there must be decentralisation of power, accountability and decision making involving and taking into consideration the opinions of each team member.
This requires counselling skills, much learning, modesty and faith, as well as negotiation skills and moderation. It cumulatively requires an honest behaviour, transparent and coherent, so that people cannot raise questions relative to the strength of the leadership’s direction whilst following the charted course. Such doubts generate insecurity and demoralisation.
Therefore, it is clear that families, especially those with companies and who intend to maintain them, need to diligently, even to the point of exhaustion if necessary, work the critical factors for success involved in the management of the previously mentioned people and teams, starting with those who are a part of the family.
Not only is it sad, it is highly devastating relative to values, to see siblings and cousins or joint heirs of companies by shares destroy their relationship due to a simple lack of guidance in the family conflict.
Therefore, it is important to discuss this subject arduously, publicly debating it, spreading the information and making it an integral part of the national agenda.
It is a difficult subject with great emotional complexity, which requires highly experienced moderators in family conflict. It is worth giving it the importance it deserves, namely in the support framework of the 2020 agenda.
Strong and well structured families have a greater probability of finding strong and well structured successors from among their heirs. Successors, who are technically prepared to be the “right person in the right place”, to take responsibility for transforming the corporate legacy into something consolidated and resilient.
A good succession is best obtained if the company handles the process with a high degree of professionalism, which today must be based on processes which originate from a culture of growth, based on the continued acquisition of knowledge.
Being that the heirs to the companies are normally not professionals, nor do they intend to be so, it frequently occurs that successors and those who came before impede knowledge from entering the organisation, and therefore, pose a threat. That is also one of the reasons for the elevated rate of unemployment of individuals with degrees.
People tend to reject that which they do not know because it is impossible for them to control the unknown. Sadly, the result is not the most desired one: many Portuguese companies live their day-to-day based on archaic and outdated management processes, without strategy, framework, objectives and dreams, without even the capacity to continue that which they had dreamt and constructed.
To be continued…