Corporate Succession Planning: When the King of the Jungle Vacates and Monkeys Run Amok
I liken the corporate environment for certain organizations to a jungle sometimes in terms of the power plays that come into the picture when the king of the jungle vacates its position for whatever reason.
This happens often in organizations that are undergoing transitions or that lack a good succession plan to prepare for senior movements. This, I have come to observe is regardless of organizational size and years in existence. The situation worsens for sure if both are true for the organization - lack of a good succession plan when you are undergoing a transition.
When it comes to succession planning, just having bums to fill seats is not good enough. It needs to be the right bum for the right seat so you avoid a square peg in a round hole situation. You also need to ensure these transitional leaders are actually capable of leading and not just PowerPoint slide reviewers or campaign and content approvers since both roles can be replaced by Gen AI strictly speaking.
By leading it means, they need to be capable of planning, developing a strategy and capable of engaging their new teams as part of the planning process. In short, treat them like people that matter and not treat them as just arms and legs to do the work that you don’t wish to do or are incapable of doing yourself.
This is also where the power plays start coming into the picture like monkeys having a field day calling the shots and insisting that every animal should only eat fruits and nuts like them and swing around by their tails from tree to tree because that is how they know to eat, live and act. There is a reason why monkeys are not the king of the jungle just as there is a difference between a leader versus a manager by appointment.
Although it’s normal to have layers of reporting lines if you have a huge team of more than 15 people or where you need to split the team into sub functions and appoint team leads or function leads, I personally believe every leader should still remain connected with even the most junior member of their team. This is especially during times of transition and if you are a newly minted lead. Until you are fully confident and sure of your functional leads or team leads’ capabilities as well as alignment on the way forward as a team, you should ensure the rest of the team is not left behind in terms of important communications, planning sessions and not being relinquished to silent executors or you will end up with a bunch of quiet quitters.
The power plays become more evident especially when you have team leads or functional leads who are actually in a square peg, round hole situation and act out their insecurities with a few obvious actions, including:
pushing down work and delegating all the hard to do stuff to their one-downs, who might not even be able to do the work without guidance or clear direction of how this fits into the intended plan or bigger picture. I.e. they are told to just do blindly.
fighting for the limelight by focusing on presenting the nice and showy stuff instead of doing actual work that matters to customers. I.e. power point becomes their best friend and their one-downs spent most of their time doing slide after slide showcasing how well they have done, so they can in turn present that to their bosses.
taking credit for others’ work or worse, not giving credit to their one-downs for fear that they themselves will be made redundant.
thinking and acting selfishly by not working with other colleagues on projects that they know would be relevant to what they are doing currently and by working together, it would enhance the output. Instead, they choose to shut them off having access to the project so they can be seen as the sole owner for that project though it would create win-win outcomes for their customers.
Organizations therefore should always take succession planning and leadership development seriously, regardless of whether they are in transition mode or not. Succession planning should not be a game of thrones, musical chairs or a case of appointing people you are familiar with or like even if they don’t actually have the capability to be that bum on the seat without breaking the chair.
About the Author
Mad About Marketing Consulting
Ally for CMOs, Heads of Marketing and C-Suites to work with you and your marketing teams to maximize your marketing potential with strategic transformation for better business and marketing outcomes.
Why Is It Hard for CMOs to Transform Their Teams
Any sort of transformation is disruptive to business-as-usual (BAU) and any disruption to BAU also means that productivity is hampered. Amidst trying to meet business and marketing goals, targets and objectives, CMOs and their teams often find it hard to simply adhere to BAU and transform concurrently, and you cannot blame them.
CEOs and COOs simply have to first understand that the transformation journey is not a simple one where you can see the end of the tunnel right from the beginning of where you start. It’s more like a long winding road with hoops, turns and circles, depending on the complexity of the problems you are trying to unpack, the processes you need to overhaul to the skillset and mindsets of the people you need to enhance and change.
It throws a spanner into the works and takes time away from the CMOs and their one-downs to even try and formulate a plan swiftly while still carrying the major decisions they need to make to deliver their plans on time. Often times, they simply don’t know where or how to start without putting a halt to certain initiatives, campaigns or programs.
It is also a case of over familiarity and attachment to current processes, tools and scope of work that can build up an inertia for change of any sort that calls for an overhaul of the marketing department. While some companies choose to refresh their CMO leadership team, they find themselves in an even worse-off situation.
Why you may ask. Well, if you look at it objectively, a new CMO as in any new leadership person who just joins an organization will need to learn about the culture, processes, team capabilities from scratch. That is the so-called teething or onboarding period where the old team is likely to view the new leadership with suspicion and is less open to sharing information on how things actually work for fear of judgment.
Worse, you expect the CMO to already have a plan on how to transform while trying to settle into the organization without knowing the ins and outs of how things work. This journey itself will take at least 9 months to a year to complete before transformation can actually take place. It definitely cannot be a cookie-cutter approach that the CMO brings and applies from their previous company as every company is unique. Also, not all CMOs even have that approach they can rely on, which means even more time trying to plan or learn it from scratch.
In my experience working with various leadership and organizational structures, often I find that as marketing leaders, we are not given a lot of leeway and time to transform, resulting in having to look at quick and cheap wins, often at the expanse of people. This is not ideal nor is it sustainable even if you see initial positive results in terms of either business or marketing returns. These results are often not sustainable for longer term growth and retention of their key talents.
This is simply because good people who are working for something beyond just a pay check would not want to be associated with such an organizational culture. And that culture is often changed for the worse or established as a result of the hasty changes to be made.
It might be worth considering having independent third parties partnering with you and your CMO to help alleviate some of the pressure of planning for that change, so they can still focus 100% on the BAU to keep the engine running on full tank. After all, that is what you are paying your CMO for and not simply to do a once-off transformation. In other words, think bigger picture and longer term.
About the Author
Mad About Marketing Consulting
Ally for CMOs, Heads of Marketing and C-Suites to work with you and your marketing teams to maximize your marketing potential with strategic transformation for better business and marketing outcomes.