Sticky Succession Stat

“It takes six months for a great manager to fix a poor team, and the same time for a poor manager to ruin a good one.”

This quote is attributed to uber football coach Johan Cruyff. Which according to lore, 'although possibly apocryphal, stands up to scrutiny when judging the impact of those who succeed managerial titans'.

I've blogged before on succession planning [such as another sport-sparked post a couple years back]. I'm not a fan. At least, not in the way the exec management consensus continues to parrot how such mere theatre ought run.

Namely that it is an essential part of corporate guardrailing. Bound in reports reduced to another KPI dashboard that gathers dust.. Yet in practice the approach is pitiful and, certainly where I've encountered it, seldom succeeds.

This is because of many potential pratfalls.

Like a medieval princeling, the anointed expend more energy on early ousting of their boss than ensuring long-term results are sustained, let alone achieved in the short-term.

There's little accounting for the inevitable changes that arrive after those honeymoon 'First 100 Days'. "Events, dear boy, events", as the glorious wisdom runs. Competitors act, personnel switches and leftfield regs or tech or structural upheaval come a biting. Consequent seat-of-the-pants swerves become a coin toss at best.

Once ascent to the throne gets secured, the new broom can also sweep more than required away. Almost as if 'change' in its turnaround style brutality must be the norm. Yet existing success by definition is never built upon, hastening downfall.

Still, I maintain the path to avoid the lip-service trap is simple.

If your salesteam - or as my blog strapline has long held, your whole business - is in trouble, then 'sharpbending' is the radical surgery route. In practice this is needed more often than most admit, and when it is, planned succession almost always collapses in favour of parachuted-in ‘star’ arrivals.

As per the opening citation. But then consider closer its second clause.

How to be the 'good' not 'bad' manager is where career greatness can hinge.

Underlying dynamics are key.

Do the team know why they succeed?

Is it repeatable?

Are you focused on constantly refining this?

These for me must be addressed before any finessing and gap filling can work. Or else such additional niceties won't have a platform on which to embed and grow.

To mine Cruyff's story, that's true 'total succession'. Make sure you're on that path, far away from ruin. Stray, and you won’t see out those first two Quarters.