Recently I came across an article online talking about the Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. Ellison is almost 60, a time when most founders kick themselves upstairs and leave the operations to "younger" people. But apparently Oracle has not seen this happen, in fact they dont even have a clear line of succession charted out.

So what's all the hue and cry about, one may ask. Larry Ellison founded the company with two others after the success of a project they did for the CIA, taking the same name as the project code name. Over time Oracle grew into the company we know it as today, a huge tech company (ok, that's oversimplifying things!) With the growth of the company, Larry also grew, but without relinquishing his iron fisted control over the way things were run. This has continued to date. The problem is that with the founder aging, a question mark hangs over the future leadership of the organisation. In most companies, the founders, or the chief executives make way for the future, usually by moving upstairs giving up hands on control, thereby grooming younger talent to take over the reins. Most established companies like GE have a well established long term succession plan in place. Jack Wech was groomed over a period of 6-7 years to take over from his boss. Likewise he followed a similar method to determine his successor from the huge talent base available.

Closer home, a change in the leadership was seen at Infosys, with Narayan Murty stepping out of the company. It was a slow process with the chief moving further and further away from the day to day activities leaving those tasks to those being groomed in the heirarchy.

Succession is a major concern, especially in entreprenueial companies. Most often the founder(s) take turns running the baby they created. This is the case of Infy. In Indian family businesses, usually the chair passes to the eldest son, or legal heir, as the case may be. Another route followed in India is at the Bombay House. The Tatas dont always hand over control to the son (unlike the Nehru-Gandhi family where the country passes to the son/daughter or daughter-in-law :p) Instead, they groom the best available person in the Board room, if he happens to have the surname of Tata, well its a bonus that adds weight. In fact JRD actually seriously considered Russi Modi as his successor, but chose Ratan Tata instead later.

Coming back to Larry Ellison, its a wonder what will happen to Oracle after Ellison. It should be a matter of concern to the Board also but presently they seem to be unaware of such a responsibilty. Or maybe they're just shying away from the reality that Ellison would need to be replaced someday. In the event of a day without Larry Ellison, what will happen tp Oracle? There is no clear heir apparent and without the protection of the founder, well there just may be no Oracle. In all probablity the company would be swallowed up by one of the more powerful competitors.

For now, Larry's around, and from the looks of things, he might be around for some time, he's certainly not announcing any retirement plans as yet.