Succession Planning: My Reflection

4 years ago, around 2018-2019, one of my dearest mentors, Kang Fajrin (co-founder of Bukalapak -a unicorn e-Commerce startup in Indonesia-, currently sit as Director of Telkom) told me a very memorable insight about succession:

“You have to know WHEN you’re starting to be irrelevant because your business is growing at a faster pace than yourself, and prepare the next leader who’s smarter and better than you, and up for the task. Then, get the transition ready”. 

If I can only take 1 advice from him, this is it. Luckily we manage to be closer a long the time, and since 2022 he formally became one of my investors and advisors in Edelweiss Healthcare Group. Now Edelweiss Hospital is on course to have 4 hospitals in the next 2 years, and targeting (well, it’s more like dreaming) to have 10 hospitals by 2027. NOW is the time for me to prepare succession planning, and here’s my blueprint on the journey I’m about to take.

First Note : Start with understand myself better, and get ready to be vulnerable.

The last 2 years, leading more than 1,000 employees, I spent lots of time to evaluate myself, what are my strength and weakness, how’s my leadership style, what kind of team I need around me to cover my weaknesses and make the company better. 

In a world where many younger generation of entrepreneurships rising high, with lots of exposure highlighted on media, putting more intense competition and pressure to be “an ideal young leader”, being vulnerable is a secret weapon to grow. It keeps ourself stay on the ground, be humble, feeling stupid and grow, and paranoid of being failed. It takes away the pressure of having to be perfect all the time, because in business, more likely you’ll fail than succeed. It makes you willing to listen to anyone regardless their position. It makes you appreciate your team better, when things are good. It puts away your big ego and pride. 

Second Note : Build a winning team that cover you weakness.

Running a company is a team work. It’s not a personal greatness. No sustainable company led by one man show leadership. It wont last at high performance state more than 1 generation. Now you already understand yourself better, It’s time to build a team that can make yourself and company better. 

I’m not a person who’s good at detail. And now I have a team of one. I’m not a person who have much energy in meeting lots of people in long-term period, and now I have one. I’m not good in healthcare industry, I have a team member who excel at it. I’m strongly interested in aesthetic side of visual and brand, and now I have one. I’m quite paranoid of legal compliance, and now I have one. And so on, and so on, and so on. 

Being vulnerable don’t make yourself “bad” in the front of your team. I’m following what in “Big Leap” book by Gay Hendricks says; focus on your zone of genius, delegate the rest to a strong team. (credit to Kak Farina Situmorang who recommended me this book)

Third Note : Build a culture, and let them learn through conflicts to bond stronger.

With lots of smart people work in the same team, you know you can’t avoid conflict. So even before you build a team of great minds, you must know what kind of culture you going to have in the leadership of your company. I learn a lot from biography books, such as Steve Jobs, Snowball (Warren Buffett), What it Takes (Steve Schwarzman), The Ride of a Lifetime (Bob Iger), Elon Musk, The Last Man Standing (Jamie Dimon), and many inspiring leaders. They have many different and unique cultures in their company that suits their values. And it gives me ideas of what kind of organization I want to have. 

Once I set the kind of value and culture I want to be in my company, my team will self-select themselves. If they don’t feel comfortable, they will make their own way out. And next: conflict management. 

Conflict is part of being a human. This is the 3^rd month since I stepped down as a CEO of my company to pursue my master degree in Harvard. Stories of miscommunication, misunderstanding, differences in opinion, power overlapping, are becoming a weekly-report. My responses? Just listen. When you have a strong believe on your team, you’ll let them find their own ways to manage their conflict. It’s not that I let them do whatever they want, but it’s that I have a threshold to what degree of conflict I should intervene. It’s called Team Maturity Level. Just like a school, the higher the level, the greater you are. And at the beginning, the team can be in a very bad conflict just for a very trivial problem. And that’s normal. 

To be continue…