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Understanding the importance of responsibility and planning in organisations and practising these activities in a committed and continuous manner are not enough to ensure success.
Returning to this issue, which was introduced in December, and after writing about the Millennium generation, with whom we walk together in organisations today, I think it is important to talk about the theme of succession – the other very important and significant part of the journey. After all, if the successors and those who came before do not know how to walk together, leadership may be jeopardised. Without leadership, there is no path, and without a path, there is no course and without a set course, it is impossible to implement the necessary strategies which enable the company to move forward in security and in the direction of its final objective, the leader’s or leaders’* vision being the finishing line.
According to information recently published by a renowned Portuguese university, in Portugal, family businesses represent approximately 80% of enterprises and contribute to 60% of employability. Half of family businesses do not continue into the second generation and only 20% continue to the third.
Succession in companies, regardless of their size or corporate purpose is, I believe, one of the most important subjects for the sustainability of SMEs and, therefore, for the country’s economy.
Succession is a delicate matter because it involves people (emotion), the management and guidance of companies (elevated rationality) and family (emotions running high, property rights and sense of possession). In my opinion, it is worth discussing the subject at length and in a direct and open manner, demystifying, clarifying, reflecting on and suggesting paths.
Whoever owns companies knows that economic and financial management is not only a technical process. Both for SMEs and micro enterprises, the ERPs offered by the market are priced accessibly, thereby providing, from a technical perspective, reliability which transforms management into a simple process.
Business management, in this vast sea of knowledge (global, dynamic, surprising and unpredictable) is, fundamentally, a method of managing people and procedures. To have good procedures, even those involving systems with an elevated level of automation or robotisation, it is necessary to have good people. “The right people in the right places!”- is something which must occur starting at the top, being that there is where the example should be set for the rest of the company to follow.
Success in people management depends on the exponentiation of the results achieved through teamwork. It, in its turn, depends on the mechanisms of personal responsibility and well planned systems, which reward both individual performance, as well as team performance.
* This situation is possible as long as they agree with the vision.