But also from a leadership perspective, what it would mean is a leadership for a business
versus a market versus a function will have something in common but will also have their
own nuances right? So then the leadership will also change and the requirement
of a leader will change in the business reality.
So it always have to be in the context of the business of what you expect from leaders.
So when we talk succession, we bring that into mind.
*MUSIC*
Thank you very much for for being here.
We're gonna talk about succession planning.
Yeah.
And that's a project that you've been working on for the past three or four years, I think.
Can you tell us a bit more about that project?
Succession planning is one of the key areas that me and my team focus on.
And I think you can have different approaches on how companies look at succession. For our
organization, it was very, very important to make sure we have the right leadership
bench when we talk about succession planning, because there were two reasons: 1. We split
from Royal Philips and became a standalone organization - Signify.
So making sure we have the right leaders with the right capabilities, driving our business
agenda was important.
And 2. The industry was transforming and is still transforming in a fast way.
So we are moving from products to solution systems, connected lighting, and that requires
a very different kind of leadership capability as well. In 2015, it was all about making
sure we have the right leadership in place.
And then over the years, we look at our journey.
So 2016, you start going deeper into succession.
And you start saying: "OK, you look at the top 500 positions in the organization and
endorse top 500 positions.
Do we have the right leaders?"
And then go a level below and say; "Do we have the right successors?
Do we have a ready now successors?"
And after that, you start looking at going deeper into diversity of succession, right?
Can we leverage the diversity of our workforce to talk succession?
So how are we leveraging the full workforce to talk about succession planning? And succession
planning, not just limited to only the top, but we focus on the top three layers in the
organization to all the way from CEO to the top three layers, which are, let's say close
to around 500/600 positions in the organization, where we actively manage succession.
And interesting is that with technology, you can now basically
automate a lot of it and get the data out of the system.
So if all data is in the system, then a lot of analytics to say, "Where are we weak?"
"Where are the weak spots?", "Where are improvements happening, where it's not happening?"
"Leveraging diversity of plans"... A lot of those Reports and Analytics
you can get from the system.
What there's a leader look like? Because if you're emulating the pipeline, then you need
to have a conceptualization of the competencies that you know, those future leaders need to have.
How do you how do you come to an understanding of that future leadership profile?
So a lot of it happens by talking to our business leaders. To really understand what does it take
to be a leader at Signify. So one key component for leadership is about their ability to lead transformation.
Another one, which is gaining a lot of attention, is their ability to inspire teams, generate
commitment from people below, their ability to build teams below.
Build high performing teams.
So there's a lot of focus around leadership. Recently, within Signify we looked at,
for example, what are people managers are supposed to do, and we came up with a framework
which talks about that they have to lead, they have to develop, and they have to inspire teams.
And there's a lot of other components below it.
But if you think about those three things, so you have to lead, you have to develop, and
you have to inspire and then there are different things that go within it.
But also from a leadership perspective, what it would mean is a leadership for a business
versus a market versus a function will have something in common but will also have their
own nuances on what stage is the business in for that one specific business area?
Is it a high growth business, they were in a very different kind of leadership style?
Is it a declining business?
Is it a turnaround business, right?
So then the leadership will also change and the requirement
of a leader will change in the business reality.
So it always have to be in the context of the business of what you expect from leaders.
So when we talk succession, we bring that into mind.