Leadership renewal and succession planning...

Leadership renewal and succession planning are critical to the continued and breakthrough success of any organisation. However, in real life, there are many leaders in various organisations, who continue to cling on to their position for years. When such leaders have been in power for too long, and especially if they are more senior in age, they are usually less prepared to try new ideas and implement new initiatives. That is where the entire organisation would set into a stagnant state and stifling of creativity would be the culture and order of the day.

The reason is simple, the leader has built up his success and perhaps, an empire over the years and in his best personal interest, he would not want to venture into anything new or thread into new grounds that might jeopardise his sweet success and good name, just in case those new ventures and initiatives did not meet with expected success or might even meet with unexpected failure. Should that happen, all the success he has built up over the years would be wiped out in no time and instead, he would most likely be remembered for the most recent failure he has brought to the organisation. To be safe, he would rather remain status quo. Hence, the organisation would not experience any new and creative growth.

Therefore, for the benefit and continued growth of the organisation, it is of utmost importance for the leaders to plan their succession early and implement leadership renewal on a regularly basis.

As a matter of fact, nobody is indispensable in any organisation, the only scenario commonly seen is that people try to act and behave as if they are indispensable. Retrenchment, though unpleasant, is one form of wake up call for people with such mentality.