
Why Sir Alex’s news got me thinking
I'm a bit of a football nut, so I've been watching the news of Sir Alex Ferguson retiring as Manchester Utd manager pretty closely.
You should know by now that I'm also a bit of a charity nut (this is a blog about the third sector, after all), and so some
elements of the story got me thinking about recruitment in charities and succession planning.
Yes. I'm aware how sad that makes me sound.
In this blog, as in football, it's "All About the Three Points" - so here they are:

- The dangers of going for a 'mini-me': It was reported that Ferguson had long ago identified Moyes as his successor, and there are clearly similarities between the two, going beyond the Scottish accents. In 20 years working for charities, I've seen recruitment play out this way a few times, and it's often not too successful. Often the best replacement is a very different character indeed.
- A powerful pre