Succession Planning for Your Software Business

Why does succession planning matter? It's a big question. Well, first of all, we want to grow our businesses, we want our businesses to get bigger, stronger, better, to improve as time goes on and you do that by not having one great leader but having a leader surround himself with other leaders and develop those leaders.

The succession planning process allows us to identify who those people are. It's important to realize that in vertical market software, there's a lot of knowledge. It takes time to transfer that knowledge to the next layer down and sometimes technology can keep things departmentalized – you know professional services, or sales and marketing, or R&D; but not all together. It's important that as you're developing leaders, you teach them about other aspects of the business. We try to do that through some of our training programs internally here at Volaris.

Now if you're a leader of a business that is acquired, you come on board and become part of Volaris. We think it's something that you would enjoy being part of our organization because the focus on succession allows you to develop as a leader, acquire businesses and move into other areas and geographies through building up people below you or your leaders so that they can take on what you did previously.

I think that's exciting and I think that most people get engaged when they see that you can do this. It isn't something that happens overnight and you need a plan - it takes some time, sometimes years, to build it out. The wonderful thing about Volaris is that we don't sell our businesses so we've got the time and the patience to work with you to build a great leadership team around you and therefore build an even better business for all of your customers and employees.

To summarize, our businesses are all about our people. Our businesses will get better based on how our people improve and learn as we develop our team, as we develop our leaders, and develop every person inside the organization. Succession planning is a critical part of any business. If a business wants to grow, it needs to invest in succession planning - you'll be a better business for it.