Corporate Treasure Hunt

National Treasure a Hollywood movie which revolves around the story of young Ben Gates who takes up the job of his family to find the hidden treasure and various clues linked in series…to get the treasure, Ben Gates has to overcome the difficulty in getting the clues right.

This reminds me of today’s corporate treasure, if there is a treasure in corporate world then what it would be, why the founders are more worried about it and what the Treasure I am talking about, its nothing but "We"  – Human Capital.

Every Entrepreneur starts up the company as a mother bringing up her child. But there is a problem when the company has grown beyond once expectation.... usually to start up the company it takes sleepless night, family being at stake, reputation is been pledged, fear of storm named recession blowing it far-away from the  wink of eyes of shareholders.... so with all this difficulty one would have brought up the company to be known as the Branded Companies in the Corporate World.

The reputation of the company is gained through its Founder (Janmadata) : Apple –Steve Jobs, Virgin Group – Richard Branson, Dell Computers – Michael Dell, Microsoft - Bill Gates, Reliance Corp – Dhirubhai Ambani, and Infosys – Narayan Murty.

So if this Janmadatas step back, then who would be their successor??? It is where the Treasure Hunt starts…..

Why I call it has Treasure Hunt but not “Succession Planning” is because it’s more complex task than we think it is to be like -identifying the competencies, training in the key areas and assigning the role of a successor.

It’s not about identifying the expertise or skills but it has to be more connected to the DNA of a company, one has to know about the in which situation the company has been established, what were the situations of its founder, what all problems he had faced at the time of its inception and on-going journey, who were its clients who backed them at the time of financial crisis. It’s more of being connected. It’s Internal Self Realization (ISR) it has to be measured through emotions but not to decide the successor on votes from BOD’s.

Some vote based successor do well but inheritance of a family member does take a company to next generation level.

Even the founders fear to give their Brain Child to someone who has climbed the ladders without knowing the strength of the ladder and in-depth foundation base. He would fear about the consequences of his employee reaction, about the company’s growth, his founder members that are not capable enough to take over but they wish to do so, exit of non-founders on a new face.

The entire frame has to be reworked & redesigned; we have seen NR Murthy returning back to the Infosys after his retirement until he found his Treasure Hunt – Vishal Sikka…what he had to compromise, exit of all executive council members — BG Srinivas, Subhash Dhar, Ashok Vemuri and Kakal who all were probable’s for CEO post…??? No, Murty never compromised on his Brain Child Infosys instead he said those were people who were not adding value to the company so they had to leave…

You may find the treasure within your organization or it might come from other source but we have to know one thing: “Great Leaders create Great Organization which in turn creates an eco-system to produce more leaders”