I recently announced to the stock market that I will be retiring as Managing Director of Silver Chef Ltd July 1, 2010.
As the founder of Silver Chef some 24 years ago this transition is a fairly significant time for me personally. The succession plan has been a work in progress for the past two and half years. I have always had the view point that entrepreneurs have a use by date. When the business gets to a certain size a different style of leadership is required to ensure the fullest potential of the business and its people.. I guess the secret is to maintain enough self awareness to know when the stepping point is.
I have been fortunate to attract a lot of really talented people around the company that started out 24 years ago with the rental of 1 pizza oven to recently achieving the milestone of having 100 million dollars of rental equipment in the business.
The existing leadership team at Silver Chef is truly first class and I am stepping away from the business in an operational sense knowing the continued growth is in good hands.
I will be maintaining my shareholding in the company and will take up the role as Chairman.
As you can imagine the most important hiring decision I have ever done has been to find my replacement.I chose the apprenticeship model that is sometimes used in succession planning. That is to hire the individual with an understanding that the process will take 18 months to 2 years. During this time a sharing of knowledge and experience will take place and conditional upon performance, the apprentice gets the nod for the top job.
I researched the best process for selection of “A” grade players. The method I used is called Topgrading, which is now the recruitment process we use for all staff at Silver Chef.
From a candidate list that had 98 names to a final 5 that went through a thorough 8 hour interview process, we finally selected Charles Gregory to take up the position of Chief Operating Officer.
It was very important to me that the successful candidate had strong operational experience in a high growth public company. There had to be knowledge of some of the issues and challenges it takes to get to be a $250 million company or a $500 million company. He had to have breathed that air and have the confidence that he could provide the roadmap of how to get this little microcap company, Silver Chef, there.
Charles had 12 years experience with Flight Centre Ltd. Starting out as a Chief Financial Officer (CFO) in South Africa and moving to Australia as CFO for the corporate division of Flight Centre which was a billion dollar enterprise in its own right. Charles then moved into general management and was responsible for rolling out the international expansion for Flight Centre from a presence in 11 countries to 60 countries over the next 3 years.
Over the past 2 years Charles has done an outstanding job, implementing important projects such as incentive based pay for all staff and getting great alignment for our big picture of what the business is going to look like by the year 2020. Charles well deserves the opportunity to take over as Chief Executive Officer on July 1, 2010 and I am very confident of the future of the company is in good hands.