When talking of family business succession planning nothing good occurs accidentally. And this obviously includes the chance of having succession planning head in the right direction. Having a team of professional counsellors in place to help you is great and I am hoping you could have the best counsels and accountants money can buy, but that won't be sufficient.

It is these advisers, if they are well chosen, who can answer the question what is succession planning – not only from a technical point of view but from a human viewpoint also. And acting like you are prepared to cooperate with the rest of the family when seeking creative solutions for your family business succession to the next generation may not essentially fool any person either, they've seen this tactic before.

Truly, are they that naive? Is this the 1st time you have all started down this road before only to lose steam quickly? If this is your first attempt at family business succession planning great, you can get it right the 1st time. And if business succession planning, up to a point, has become just about a full time job with no success so far, maybe there is a reason.

It's like when you turn off the fire under a pan of boiling water. It will immediately start cooling off and in a while the steady boil will be just one or two bubbles then nothing. However the water is still hot and prepared to boil quickly when you light the fire next time. Every successful family business succession plan we've seen, ones that have moved from the tenet stage to ideas, to systems, to the making of the varied legal paperwork – all the way to implementation there's 1 unalterable.

Someone had been put in charge of seeing to it that things get done. Someone that will keep the heat on all of the time. This isn't the job of the consultants. They may each sit back till the cows call it a night, waiting on the other consultants to do something.

These professionals aren't ever going to take the bull by the horns and call you up either – asking you what you think, what you need them to do next, and reminding you the ball is still in your court. And pros who do take action are commonly mistrusted by their peers. They are looked upon by their fellow professionals as in your face or worse, aggressive even. Never mind that being pushy is often necessary to get folks off the mark and moving forward. If you're the senior generation this role, the one we call “planning coordinator” is not for you.

If you were truly pushing the family business succession planning forward, calling your counsel and accountant every alternative day asking them what’s taking so long, dragging your spouse into the bank to discuss the trust, and setting coaching goals for your successors, there would be no need to read this tract – you’d already have your succession plan in place. Therefore if somebody must be put in control to keep ma and pa in the loop, keep the counsellors moving forward, and keep an eye peeled for successful succession strategies being employed by their peers for ideas that work – who should it be?

The planning coordinator’s job is to raise questions, assemble information, talk with everyone involved, etc. Decades ago that is what we did. That's what helped our clients actually move easily through the family business succession planning. Later we helped entrepreneurs designate somebody who was involved in the business, a family member who had a vested interest in getting and holding on to the family business succession planning moving.

Who has more interest in family business succession planning than the elected leader of the subsequent generation? I have personally seen how well this has worked for many lots of organizations. This was and is the method of choice for thousands of you today. There's another option, hire a family business coach. They are going to do all the things a relation would do and they will not be thought to be allies of one side of the family or the other.

The bottom line, whoever is selected to be the planning coordinator – they have to be decisively asking the questions, pushing till the answers are given, and coordinating the activities of everyone involved, and everyone will be involved if you need your family business succession planning process to achieve success.

Most successful companies put off management succession planning until it's too late. They fail to grasp the way in which the process focuses their energies and those of everybody around you in a common focused direction. When they are targeting the goal they are more likely to take the actions critical to take them where they actually need to be. The best succession planning process answers the age old question regarding what is succession planning more obviously than any paid pro confidant.

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