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How to Groom a Successor...and How to Be Groomed

Succession planning requires an eye for talent and the ability to train others in leadership skills

When companies consistently bring people into the top slot from the outside, it has a huge potential for negative impact on the people who are already in the company. You're saying, nobody in this company is good enough to do that job. And that may be currently true. But hiring from without also says a great deal about the ability of your company to search for people, to recruit them, to develop them and give them a legitimate career path.

One level below me are four regional security managers and the global information security manager, who is a PhD. Any of them could be a CSO. Below that level, in middle management, there are certain people whom we've already identified as potential CSOs. We have annual career development meetings, and we don't just look at performance but also at potential. If I were a middle manager who was a potential CSO, I would be told that I was a "lister." A lister is a person who has identified potential to go at least two [salary] grades higher than the one they're in. It's a BAT [British American Tobacco] term that we use to identify people in whom we need to put a special investment.

What I don't want to have in this company is a situation where we've only got one choice. One choice really decides itself, doesn't it? One choice means that within the companybearing in mind that our CSO will always be selected from the companythere is no competition. Human beings work at their best when they're in a competitive environment. I want the potential CSOs to know that they are in healthy competition.

I'm always looking for talent. I have what you might call a little black book, where I have notes on people I have met around the world who look like the sort of material we want to bring into this company. In Nick Proctor's case, I met him around 1996, when he was executive director of the Overseas Security Advisory Council at the U.S. State Department. I got to know him pretty well and very quickly realized that he was a man of significant talent, and the sort of guy we would like in this company. But I didn't have a vacancy.

Then an opportunity came up. In 2001, we made him regional security manager for the America-Pacific, which used to be based in Louisville, Ky. Then we decided we needed to give him broader experience. Since the first of January this year, Nick has been regional security manager for Europe. He's been having to put up with all us strange Europeans. This was just to confirm that in another environment Nick would display those characteristics we know we have to have in the top position. Nick came into Europe and performed exactly as we expected.