Jardine Matheson embraces a broad portfolio of companies ranging from the Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group and Dairy Farm to property giant Hongkong Land, Pizza Hut, Gammon and Jardine Motors, along with airport and shipping interests.
About 16 top managers of each entity are colour-coded, providing chairman Henry Keswick, director Simon Keswick and group managing director Anthony Nightingale an instant indication of talent availability for the future.
The evaluation clearly indicates which key players are more critical to the organisation than others - from high-fliers destined for the top, to laggards in danger of the chop. About three-quarters of them are somewhere in between. The group judges managers according to two benchmarks - performance and potential.
People are complex and changeable; some blooming early, some late. The fact that some are earmarked as special can also breed resentment, with successions degenerating into backstabbing bloodbaths. But this is the tool Jardine has adopted to cope with the modern process of developing businesses through succession planning.
Recognising that people are ultimately key to business success, and some jobs are the lifeblood of an enterprise, succession planning is all about thinking ahead with a 'Plan B' to replace key players. It starts with identifying those most suited for grooming, and continues by preparing them for future roles, through such mechanisms as mentoring, training and job rotation.
Ritchie Bent, group head of human resources for the conglomerate that has a workforce of 245,000 in 46 countries, said that succession planning was not foolproof.
