‘The US Democrat leadership change and England football manager search show importance of succession planning’

As a professional recruiter, it won’t surprise you to learn that I take the business of succession planning pretty seriously. And so it is with a sense of bemusement that I survey events unfolding across the Atlantic at the moment.

The passing of the baton between president Joe Biden and vice-president Kamala Harris as the Democratic candidate for November’s US election is an object lesson in how not to plan for succession.

There are several golden rules to follow in ensuring a smooth transition of power but ‘wait until the entire country is screaming at you to step aside’ is not one of them.

Recent years have given us a rich set of examples for how not to plan for regime change. The Conservatives lost the trust of the nation – and consequently the election – in part by foisting four prime ministers upon the UK in the space of less than four years, including those unelected by voters and unsuited to holding the highest office (I’m looking at you, Liz Truss).

Sometimes you stumble upon the right person through chance rather than design. It’s easy to forget that Gareth Southgate’s tenure as England men’s football manager started in a caretaker role following the sudden departure of Sam Allardyce in 2016.

“Succession planning should be a strategic process – the clue is in the ‘planning’ – undertaken by organisations to identify and develop future leaders within their ranks”

Having remained unbeaten in his first four games in charge, Southgate was offered the job permanently and the rest is history. England now finds itself searching for Southgate’s successor with no obvious favourite for the position and the FA hoping once again to stumble upon the right candidate.

We should be careful in drawing too many direct comparisons between the worlds of politics and sport and that of business, but there are some basic principles for good succession planning that can help retailers ease the transition from one leader to the next.

Succession planning should be a strategic process – the clue is in the ‘planning’ – undertaken by organisations to identify and develop future leaders within their ranks.

You start by assessing the roles and competencies that are key to delivering business growth over the next five years and then move on to identifying employees with the corresponding skill set and level of professional ambition.

Once earmarked, future leaders should undergo a comprehensive development programme including mentoring, coaching and training to plug any gaps in skills.

This should be an ongoing process that can easily be recalibrated when someone leaves the organisation unexpectedly, giving the business multiple pathways to achieve its goal. That includes benchmarking internal candidates against the market and, where necessary, recruiting high-potential individuals from outside the organisation.

“It can give you a bird’s eye view of talent at every level of the business and secure a smooth progression either by promoting from within or pinpointing the most suitable external candidate”

As the time to succession draws nearer, retailers should seek to to increase the responsibilities and visibility of new leaders to help build their public profile and associate them with business achievements, thereby easing any concerns among investors and colleagues over their suitability for the role.

Done well, succession planning can give you a bird’s eye view of talent at every level of the business and secure a smooth progression either by promoting from within or, based on a thorough assessment of competencies, pinpointing the most suitable external candidate.

Marks & Spencer is one example of a retailer that has consistently sought to create a clear succession pathway and promote from within where possible, notably in the succession of Steve Rowe by Stuart Machin and Katie Bickerstaffe in 2022.

Asda, by contrast, now finds itself with a number of gaps in its senior leadership team amid a scattergun approach to succession planning. The respective performance of these businesses tells its own story.

Back across the pond, Harris has long been an obvious candidate to succeed Biden whenever the electorate or his party decided his time was up, but the total absence of a succession strategy has seen her candidacy start amid a relatively low public profile, few policy successes over which she can claim ownership and less than four months to shape a clear narrative around her suitability for president.

As for the England men’s football team, it pains me to admit that not even a gold standard succession plan would give me confidence that our decades-long wait for a major trophy is nearing its end – but we can dream.