Who Will Be Your Heir Apparent?

These succession tips from experts and a CEO who has lived through it will help minimise disruption during a time that is fraught with sensitivities.

- Jessica Mudditt

Taryn Williams had spent eight years living and breathing her company when she decided it was time to hand over the reins to someone else.

Williams had launched a start-up called the right.fit and knew it was essential to relinquish the day-to-day management of WINK Models, which she’d founded in 2007 and run as its CEO. By the time the succession took place in 2015, WINK had more than 650 models on its books and a turnover in the millions.

Her successor was her second-in-command, Sage Greenwood, who had joined the company in a junior capacity and worked her way up through the ranks.

Williams, who remains the company owner, spent several months transitioning Greenwood into the role of managing director and shares with The CEO Magazine a number of insights she learned from the process.

CONSIDER CORE VALUES

Williams explains that Greenwood was the obvious candidate for the role because she shared the same value set.

“I was really lucky that Sage had been with the company for three years and she’d modelled with me for four years before that. I knew that we shared a common vision about what we wanted for the company’s future; that it wasn’t all about making money at the expense of everything else. We both lived by our core values, which made things a lot easier.”