Buffett + Drucker = Continuity

Link: Buffett's Plan for Successful Succession.

Faithful readers, you know I'm a big fan of Warren Buffet. And I'm also, generally speaking, a big fan of Peter Drucker. In this article, writer Rick Wartzman talks about how Buffet's recent focus on succession planning fulfills Drucker's core premises about how such things should happen.

I've been thinking about this lately because I've run into a couple of long-time CEOs who are around Buffet's age, and who - I was shocked to learn - don't have any kind of a viable succession plan in place. In both cases, it's going to be a huge shock to the organization when the top guy leaves, and - from my observation - there's no really appropriate candidate currently in a senior position in either company.

Both these CEOs are the founder of their company. Do they actually not care if the organization continues past their tenure? That seems unlikely. Or perhaps focusing on succession planning seems too much like admitting their own mortality. Or maybe they just can't imagine someone else doing what they do, as well as they do it.

What do you think: why do CEOs or companies not do succession planning, or why do they do it badly?

Comments

[Brian Oates]

I can add a reference to when Jack talked about succession planning at http://www.businessweek.com/mediacenter/podcasts/welchway/welchway_11_16_07.htm

[Michael Lee Stallard]

Erika,

Do your clients have children so that dealing with succession would involve painful choices that would be received by the children as favoritism?

FYI, reading Peter Drucker's bigography, Adventures of a Bystander, had a big impact on me. Here's a link to an essay i wrote about it.

http://www.epluribuspartners.com/pages/articles.php