Succession planning at corporate entities ensures seamless hand-over and transition of administrative control within the organization. The process is focused on spotting and grooming emerging talent/s in the organization to take on the top leadership role when the time is ripe. The right candidates should have crucial job skills, critical decision-making, employee behavior analysis, organizational practices, and work towards taking the company to the next level.
Mukesh Agarwal, Chairman and Managing Director, Surbhi Electronet, says it is crucial for every company to have a succession plan in place. More importantly, the incumbent leader should have a clear plan about one’s career progression, as this would help build a succession plan. “The ideal time for succession does not depend on whether your successor is ready or not. It totally depends on whether they have the ability to continue running the business with the same efficiency. I have the vision to work till the age of 55, after which I will be retiring. Accordingly, I have planned my business succession,” says Mukesh, 52.
Surbhi’s Origins
Surbhi, a leading IT solutions provider, offers a smorgasbord of products for IT and ITeS companies. Its diverse portfolio includes networking solutions, security systems, communication gateways, a cloud computing software, and storage systems as well as all types of computer hardware. They offer the services like Student Web Portal for Education Institute, Data Centre Services, Server Management, Asset Management, and Computer Suppliers all over Rajasthan.
Surbhi Electronet was set up by Mukesh Agarwal in 2004. His keenness to learn more about technology and his open-minded nature made him start his own business. Mukesh’s father was a bank manager, because of which he had the opportunity to live across the country and keep abreast with emerging technologies.
“I kickstarted my career as an IT head in Rajasthan Transformers and Switchgears, before launching my own small business of computer hardware and peripherals. Our team and effort kept growing every day, which helped us discover new areas of businesses. Today, we are into every aspect of technology and operating across India,” reminisces Mukesh.
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Enter Next-Gen
A leader’s work and qualities should reflect on the company statement. This gives a clean template to the upcoming leaders. One should be transparent, have the ability to complete the majority of tasks proactively, with a good understanding of the future, a rigid contingency plan, and should be creative in implementing organizational policies.
“Nobody is a born entrepreneur and there is no set of instructions for becoming one, but there should be a mindset that failure is likely, and success is not a given. Be honest to yourself – entrepreneurship isn’t easy. At the end of the day, you can only blame yourself. So, find the right mentor to guide you, and once you are ready, you are good to go,” observes Mukesh on the leadership transition.
As for Surbhi’s leadership succession, Mukesh’s son Siddharth, 24, joined the company last September. A commerce student in school, Siddharth graduated with accounting, finance, and marketing specialization from the University of Manchester.
The Learning Curve
“I started off slow and still I am in my learning phase. The opportunity to work with different people across several departments is one of the best experiences in our organization. One should always experience this during their succession period. Furthermore, the diversified experience that I gained abroad helped me a lot to think creatively and be innovative,” beams Siddharth, who handles the projects division in the company.
He has been a part of every department in the company to understand the organizational structure. He started his journey in the pre-sales team where he created presentations for a couple of months. Subsequently, he moved to the sales department, and then, to project finance. Currently, Siddharth’s task is to work on exploring new areas for Surbhi to diversify into. Meanwhile, he has been preparing a plan that would improve the functioning of these departments.
“Siddharth’s role and progress are no different from mine. He had to prove his capability to take over and grow our business to greater heights. He is still undergoing the process to spot the areas he would want to explore in the future. I have given him a free hand to work with his own team and come up with the best results. He has been working on some ideas, but they haven’t been presented to me yet,” reveals Mukesh.
Old and Young
“I don’t want Siddharth to be involved in a team management role currently, as it is important for young entrepreneurs to analyze employee behavior. It helps them understand the struggle of each and every employee.”
Siddharth has a separate team that works with him on some specific ideas and industry solutions. These ideas revolve around future strategies to make changes in the current workflow. “It is necessary for any organization to strike a balance between old and young employees to move forward. For instance, the plans that I am working on will be discussed with our senior leaders, especially implementing changes in specific departments, whereas my team works on new-age ideas,” shares Siddharth.
Challenges & Limitations
“There was no challenge when Siddharth joined the business. But it is difficult to be on the same page when it comes to some arguments. This will be sorted when he understands experience plays a bigger role than knowledge or fresh ideas when making critical judgments,” avers Mukesh.
Successors, typically, miss out on the initial struggles to build a business from scratch. That one should be capable enough to efficiently manage a big business empire as and when they take over, might be a limitation. “I don’t think there were any disadvantages when I came in, but the list of advantages is quite big. First of all, it is ready-made success, whereas initial struggles often take years to sort out. Inheriting a family business is like climbing Mount Everest halfway up after all the groundwork has been laid out for you. This actually gives you more time to focus on exploring new directions the company could move under our leadership,” opines Siddharth.
When he joined the company, his primary focus was not limited to gaining new customers but retaining existing customers. He worked on educating existing customers with tech-friendly gadgets, helping them explore technology and graduate to the next level. This, he added, was a successful strategy in setting customer expectations beyond their imagination.
When it came to dealing with upcoming generations, though, it was easier, as they were well aware of how technology works. Moreover, the current generation explores the market for the scope of technological upgradation. “Education helps you to a certain extent, but beyond that, it depends on your willingness to learn more through experience. I was not very studious in my education but had always understood the importance of studies. But I have learned a lot from my mistakes, and I am glad that I committed them, otherwise, I would not have seen the effort it takes to correct mistakes,” admits Siddharth.
Words of Wisdom
“Young entrepreneurs are more oriented towards quick results and hence, their choices might affect the business. This attitude pushes new leaders into the dilemma of either spending too much money or not spending enough money, taking competitors lightly and not analyzing them, putting products first and employees last, thinking much about margins and not about capturing market share or vice versa,” points out Siddharth.
It is important for young people waiting in the wings to admire and analyze the decisions taken by senior leaders in any organization. The old guard’s perceptions are backed by their experience and that has yielded good results in the long run.
Any company’s future depends on a new leader’s style of working. A new generation would, in all probability, bring in more innovative ideas and solutions. This paves the way for more digitalization and innovation within the setup. The future of any organization is in the hands of new-generation employees with a healthy strategic reverse mentoring – where mature employees get mentored by younger staff on technology, social media, and ongoing trends.
It is also a little difficult for new employees to adapt to changes. Some feel that policies are being implemented to monitor them, but in reality, they are formulated to make their work faster and in a systematic way. The older generation should, in fact, have good reasons to let the younger lot understand and adapt to the changes.
“The upcoming leaders should explore the market as much as one can and try to bring new integrations and innovations of similar business models of your current business model. The future will be more extensive and competitive, but that doesn’t mean that it will become more difficult to do business. Your ideas need to solve the problems of the masses. People are not very fond of understanding technology until it becomes very necessary, so they push themselves to understand it. Technology will be playing a massive role in the future and every industry’s growth will be dependent on the technology advancement pertaining to that domain,” signs off Mukesh.