Blog

I’ve always resisted the term ‘consultant.’ Maybe it’s because the old joke pops into my mind that a consultant is the person who removes the watch from your wrist and tells you the time. When I had to pick a title for myself 30 years ago, I gravitated away from consultant and chose Strategist & Transition Guide. Now that The Transition Strategists has expanded, and we focus on cross-generational business transitions, I share that title with all our business succession consultants. You Drive. We support. One of the principles we

One of the tools we use to help business owners organize their transitions out of their companies and onto their Next Adventures™ is The Big 6™. An owner’s answers to these six questions create a compass that guides them as they progress in their transition journeys. We’ve written about these questions and how they relate to owners. Today we turn the tables and share our answers to The Big 6 succession planning questions. The Big 6™ As a quick reminder, here are the six questions every owner must answer as

Several years ago, I witnessed the catastrophic results of a business transition gone terribly wrong. A once thriving company liquidated only two years after the celebratory toasts to new ownership, and a father, son, and entire community found themselves living under the cloud of transition failure. These sad and entirely avoidable outcomes were the products of unspoken expectations, a lack of planning, and a reluctance to ask for help. Joe Watson (not his real name) was a brilliant aeronautical engineer. He held multiple degrees, including an MBA, and scores of

Business owners often tell us that every time they think about transitioning out of their companies, they get stuck. To evaluate the severity of their “transition paralysis,” we ask: Does your business transition keep you up at night? The typical answer is something like “It’s hard to sleep when I don’t know which step to take first. There are so many moving parts, so many people involved, and so much at stake.” And our typical answer is, “You’re right.” It’s not easy to leave your company in the hands of

In The Dance of Business Successor Development, we described the three phases of teaching and mentoring successors. In Phase 1, owners lead, and successors follow. In Phase 2, owners and successors alternate the lead, and in Phase 3, successors lead, and owners follow. The trickiest part of the dance is Phase 2 because when successors begin to assume greater levels of responsibility, they make mistakes and owners must let them. It’s awkward, and miscommunication and misunderstandings are almost inevitable. That’s why we developed three rules of engagement for successor development