Succession, the mesmeric HBO series featuring Brian Cox (the actor not the scientist) and Matthew Macfadyen among a superb cast, is back on Sky Atlantic for its final series, but what does it tell us about business, and more to the point, HR?
If there was ever a company that needed a firm hand on the HR tiller it would be media and leisure giant Waystar Royco. Logan Roy (Cox) the founder and CEO rules largely through fear and intimidation, encouraging a culture of cronyism and obsequiousness among his senior executives. Meanwhile, Logan’s scheming offspring – Connor, Kendall, Shiv and Roman – constantly plot against their dad and each other as they vie for power and a route to inheriting their elderly father’s throne. Their mother, incidentally, is extremely distant from proceedings and emotionally separated from her children’s lives.
There are so many themes pertinent to businesses: mergers and acquisitions, succession planning, nepotism, due diligence (and its lack), workplace culture, staff wellbeing etc. But the firm is essentially a bloated, rotten ego-vehicle driven ruthlessly for profit at the expense of all else, certainly at the expense of family relationships.
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It sounds tortured, doesn’t it? But it’s actually hilarious thanks to a dazzling rapid-fire script, great acting and production. It also presents business as an essentially selfish affair: those who have the wider interests of the workforce or long-term interests of the company at heart tend not to last very long.
Publishers in real life, such as Forbes and Raconteur have looked at Succession from a business perspective. For Forbes business law professor Nicholas Creel writes: “In watching Succession, it becomes painfully clear how the lack of an articulated succession plan can lead to incessant chaos within an organisation,” adding “This is a lesson transferable to any organization with a hierarchy; you either make clear what is required to get ahead, or you can expect infighting and anarchy to be the norm.”
Writing for Entrepreneur, CEO of the Spotlight Advisory Group, Daniel Scott, points to the dangers of nepotism: “One of the most common mistakes made by entrepreneurs is insisting on choosing family members to succeed them in controlling a business that embodies their legacy. Everyone has a purpose in life that will bring them fulfilment. Rarely is your children’s purpose the same as yours.”
For Raconteur, business writer Sam Forsdick talks to merger and acquisition specialists and finds, unsurprisingly, that the deals depicted by the show lack a certain authenticity in the real business world.
“At the risk of taking out the drama, where are the bankers, the CFO, the accountants, the office manager, or the lawyers?” asks M&A integration expert and BML Digital CTO Jaco Vermeulen, for example.
Indeed, and where is HR? At Personnel Today we feel HR could offer the show even more drama. Surely there would be comic mileage in watching an HR head telling various members of the leadership team “you can’t do that” as they cover up sexual harassment scandals, hurriedly burn incriminating documents, squander company money on unnecessary business jet flights, and sack employees on a whim.
We will watch the remaining episodes of series four hoping for a brave HR intervention to put a spanner in Logan’s dastardly works.
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But then again, given the preponderance of frankly unappealing characters who populate the drama, perhaps HR is best off out of it.
Succession can be seen on Sky Atlantic and Now TV on Mondays from 2am
