The Working Week 36: Marshall Goldsmith on succession planning
To kick of 2008, Wayne talks to Marshall Goldsmith, renowned executive coach and best-selling author whose most recent book, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, was ranked as America’s #1 best-selling business book in both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
Marshall’s next book, Passing the Baton, will examine the problem of succession planning and the challenges of letting go and hading over the reins to new people.
As a recent article on Management-Issues highlighted, this is an issue that is rapidly becoming critical, with fully three-quarters of C-Suite executives in the U.S. - regardless of the size of their organization, location or industry - now viewing succession planning as their most significant challenge for the future.
But as Marshall explains, it isn’t just a problem for the U.S. Europe and Japan, with a more rapidly ageing force and fewer young people to replace them, face an even greater challenge.
And while demographics are less of an issue for developing economies such as India and China, the problem here is that there are more opportunities than qualified people to meet them.
Meanwhile, at the human level, Marshall and Wayne discuss the host of emotional and personal issues surrounding succession planning which makes so many incumbents disinclined to let go.
