Succession Planning​

For nearly 30 years, we’ve worked with owners of family and private companies to create plans that transition their businesses to successors and them into the next phase of their lives. Some owners have successors in mind, many do not. Some owners anticipate a transition within a year or two, while others are looking far into the future.

If you have no plans to leave your business any time soon, succession planning may seem irrelevant to you. From long experience, however, we know that owners who decide to take charge of business succession planning well in advance of their business exits, exponentially increase the odds of successfully executing their plans. We work with owners every day to build foundations for their companies to thrive for generations to come, even though they are years away from handing over the reins of their companies to successors.

 No matter the type of successor, industry sector, or length of a “runway,” the owners we work with want more than just a payday. They are looking for a succession planning process that yields positive returns on both the financial investments they’ve made in their companies and the emotional investments they’ve made in their communities and the people they care for.

It’s for these owners that we created The Transition Roadmap Developer™ (TRD)—a process that has produced successful outcomes for 100% of the owners who have used it. The TRD generates a custom roadmap, a set of strategies to guide owners, successor(s), and advisors through the business transition. 

While each business transition is unique and marked by its own challenges and solutions, The Transition Roadmap Developer™ offers logical tools that make the process more clear and more positive.

In our practice, a business transition is only successful if it:

1. Achieves an owner’s personal and financial objectives.
2. Positions successors and businesses for ongoing success.
3. Maintains all of an owner’s important relationships.

If you haven’t yet started to plan for your future and the future of your business without you, now is the perfect moment. The more time you give yourself to create a succession plan, the more options you have, and the greater the likelihood of success.

Our succession planning strategy involves evaluating next-generation talent. We join you on your journey to assess their skills, values, and interests while empowering them with the skills they need and the tracking and accountability you need.

We also help you identify possibilities for you and your business at every point on your business succession journey:

• Outline vision and growth plans
• Plan for next-generation leadership and facilitate leadership development
• Evaluate next-generation talent
• Tracking and accountability
• Assess skills, values, and interests
• Identify possibilities

   

The steps in business succession planning can be summarized in four words: direction, timeline, vision, and action. During succession planning, we dive into the nitty gritty aspects of business succession planning to help owners outline their vision and growth plans. Keeping in mind our 7 Principles of Successful Business Succession Planning, we help business owners create plans for next-generation leadership and facilitate leadership development.

As transition strategists, we deeply value the gift of time that comes with purposeful planning. The more time owners give themselves to plan their business transitions, the more options they have and the greater the odds of completing a transition successfully. Putting off transition planning has the opposite effect: fewer options and therefore a greater likelihood of a transition that fails to meet an owner’s financial and personal goals.

So how can you improve the odds of a successful transition? That answer involves multiple elements, including your ability to transition from leader to teacher, your successor’s willingness and ability to lead, and your company’s financial capacity to support a transition. 

You can’t possibly anticipate every twist and turn on the road to the next exciting phase of your life, but when you operate according to a set of proven principles and use a Transition Roadmap™, you greatly improve your odds of a successful transition.

There are several actions you can take to minimize the stress of transition and extract yourself from “transition paralysis.”

1. Create a strategy, then put in the work to make your plan a reality.
2. Use available transition resources, such as books, online courses, mentors, and professional advisors. Knowledge is a powerful sleep aid!
3. Ask for help. Other entrepreneurs and former owners are usually more than happy to share their experiences and advice.
4. Stay positive and focused on your goal when things get tough, because it’s worth it! It took time, effort, and a few stumbles to build your successful business. Your business positively affected your family, employees, their families, and your community. The same can be true of your transition.

    

It’s normal to feel overwhelmed when you think about transitioning out of your company. The Transition Strategists specialize in eliminating anxiety by crafting succession plans that: launch you to your next adventure; prepare successors to lead; and lay the foundation for ongoing company success. Let’s start a conversation: schedule a discovery call.