Manchester United - Ferguson and beyond. The consequences of neglecting the Succession Planning Process.

Manchester United - Ferguson and beyond. The consequences of neglecting the Succession Planning Process.

For those of you who don’t know me before you read the rest of this blog post, you must appreciate that, as a Leeds United fan, I’m no lover of Manchester United. So, it pains me to say this, but Sir Alex Ferguson is one of the greatest football managers in the history of English football (although he is no Don Revie). When he left Manchester United after 26 Years, he left a huge hole behind him that has still not been adequately filled, nearly 10 years on.

Anyway, this isn’t going to be a Ferguson love in. I’m more interested in talking about the consequences to a neglective approach to the succession planning process. I advise clients daily about the succession planning process and how to ensure they have a smooth transition from one business leader to the next – a point the United board neglected to adopt in the run up to May 2013 when Ferguson (and David Gill, the then Chief Executive) were both allowed to leave at the same time!

Before continuing I should define what I mean by the succession planning process. In its simplest form, succession planning is the process of identifying individuals with the potential to fill key leadership positions in your organisation.

Those individuals can come from within the business or from an external source. The purpose of the succession planning process is to ensure that when the time comes you have the right talent available to fill key leadership positions.

We have devised four key steps to the succession planning process. These steps form the framework for any succession plan. To function efficiently, this should be treated as a constant, ever moving process, with regular reviews to ensure the goals remain on target.

The four steps are:

Planning –Make sure you start early and write it down, then communicate it internally.

Building. Set your goals, devise core company competencies, and ensure Diversity and Inclusion is at the forefront of your mind.

Delivering. Make sure you understand your existing workforce as well as the candidate market,

Monitoring. Never stop monitoring, make sure you implement ongoing progress reviews, with metrics that are easily observed.

It is vital that you regularly review and keep your information up to date. Internally, top performing individuals need to be looked after, given interesting and important challenges that make them feel they have a future in the business as well as exposure to senior staff, as part of assessing good talent fits the company and culture.

Externally, if you have a partner executive search firm, you can collaborate with them to ensure that you remain knowledgeable about key players in competitor firms with suitable skills and attributes, as well as an understanding of the talent market and salary benchmarking.

Manchester United knew that their next manager was unlikely to come internally, and they managed the process of understanding what they wanted in a new manager and getting to know the key individuals who may be a potential successor to Sir Alex. However, huge mistakes were made, not least that Gill, who should have led the search for Ferguson’s successor, was himself departing at the same time.

The departures of the two key people at the same time left a large whole in the club, and the business. The mistakes made in 2013 were compounded over the succeeding nine years by their reactionary hiring and firing of managers and coaching staff. This has regularly brought upheaval and change creating a losing mentality on the pitch.?Manchester United FC have shown the pitfalls of an approach devoid of any real, focused, and coherent Succession Planning.

This year, Hoffmann Reed have created a guide for Boards who may (or might be about to) go through transition or simply want to improve their efficiencies when it comes to their Board Succession and address their needs and weaknesses moving forward.

If you would like to view the free guide, click the link below.