Microsoft did its succession planning right
Yesterday, we reported that Satya Nadella has been named as Microsoft’s next CEO and that he has earned the title of being only the third chief executive the technology giant has had in its 39-year history. I think that the company did its succession planning right because they chose a stellar candidate from within, who they could nurture, rather than choosing to cast their recruitment nets further afield. Why do I say this? Read on to find out…
Venturebeat reports that Nadella joined Microsoft in 1992 – and so entered their talent pipeline - shooting up the ranks to management and driving the company towards adopting cloud-based systems – where the technology world is going at the moment.
“It was clear, even from the very early stage, that he is a very quick study and he understands rapidly what you can change, what you can’t change and has an opinion on how to make that change happen,” said Kevin Spain, a former Microsoft executive who worked with Nadella and now serves as a general partner at Emergence Capital Partners. “He also understands how to work within the Microsoft culture — and this is not a trivial thing.”
At some of the most successful corporates out there, the board knows that to ensure the sustainability of the company, they need to get succession planning right. This is why they build a talent pipeline so that they have a long list of candidates to choose from to fill the CEO’s shoes when he or she says that they want to step down.
So long before the news is broadcast in the media, the successor will then spend an amount of time job shadowing the current incumbent to learn from the horse’s mouth, so to say.
But why the emphasis on recruiting from within?
There are a number of reasons but the most important one is that if you choose a successor from within your company he or she will be intimately familiar with the company’s culture and ethos and will be able to carry that sense further. This is something that will guarantee your company’s success long into the future.
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Lia Marus is the editor of HR Pulse. She has a BA in French, Italian and Linguistics from UCT, an MA in translation from Wits and a Postgraduate Diploma in Management from the Wits Business School. She is currently studying towards her LLB through Unisa. Lia started her career off in corporate communications, where she worked as a sub-editor, researcher and marketing coordinator. She then heeded the call of the publishing world and went into the business-to-business publishing field. She worked as a sub-editor as well as a chief sub-editor. Before joining ITWeb, she managed an HR guidebook at a leading international publishing company. |
