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How to Groom a Successor

By John W. Von Stein

October 15, 2005 — CIO —

Several years ago I was a vice president of IT for the world’s largest privately held commodities and foods company. At that time I was responsible for the agriculture-oriented business units globally. The overall CIO at the time, Lloyd, called to say that our Latin American regional CIO had suddenly retired and that the regional business leaders could not agree on an internal successor. Lloyd wanted me to take over as interim CIO and try to make peace with the business leaders in the region. He also tasked me to hire a regional CIO from the local market.

Lloyd said he expected it to take about three months to hire the new manager and another three months or so for me to properly bring the new hire onboard. Little did I know what I was really in for. In the end, my “temporary” assignment took about two and a half years. And during my stint, I learned many lessons about how to get warring staff to settle their differences and work together and how to groom internal leaders—all while settling into a new country and culture.

The Warring Camps

The Latin American region consists of about 25 business units spread across 16 countries. At the time the business units employed about 17,000 people and generated about $8 billion in revenue. At its peak there were about 600 IT staff in the region, largely concentrated in Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and Venezuela. The Argentine operation was one of the first and, in the beginning, was the largest base of business for the company in Latin America. Over time, due mostly to the vast size and large population, Brazil overtook Argentina in both the number of business units and the total amount of business generated from the region. In spite of this, much of the company’s internal political power in Latin America either resided in Argentina or with Argentine expatriates working elsewhere in the region. There was tension between the Argentine and Brazilian seats of power, which was like gasoline on the fire of the historical rivalry that has existed between these two countries for centuries.

At my first meeting in October 2001 with business managers from the region at a senior officers’ meeting in Minneapolis, many issues surfaced, including the lack of overall cost-effectiveness of IT, what to do about a very large-scale ERP implementation project that was struggling for survival and the inability of local business leaders to agree on an internal successor. However, they did agree that they were all generally unhappy with the fact that an American (me) was being forced upon them in this situation. I tried to alleviate the tension by stating that I was just trying to help and was indifferent to the outcome—so long as we achieved our goals. This helped focus everyone on the task rather than competing for my support of one political camp or another. By the end of the meeting we all agreed to work together, and the tension in the air started to dissipate. Phew!

 

 

 

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