Successor Readiness Always Takes Two People

She walks through the reframe she uses with every transitioner and successor pair The Transition Strategists works with, starting from a composite picture she has seen many times. Six months into a handoff, the founder feels the successor is making risky calls and the successor feels the founder won’t let go of anything. Both of them are right, and both of them are stuck because each one is asking about the other person.

From there, Elizabeth unpacks two ideas that tend to shift the whole conversation. The first is synchronization. When the transitioner lets go faster than the successor can carry, confidence erodes on both sides, and when the successor is ready before the transitioner moves, trust quietly wears down. The second is crystallized knowledge, the pattern recognition a transitioner builds over decades that has never been written down anywhere. Using a simple supplier example, she shows how a successor’s decision can look like a productive risk or a blind spot from the outside, and why a conversation between the two of them is the only way to tell which one it is.

In this episode:

• Why “is the successor ready?” puts one person in the seat of the judge and the other in the seat of being judged

• What each person is being asked to change, with the successor moving toward ownership and the transitioner moving from directing to guiding

• The two ways a transition falls out of sync and what each one costs

• How crystallized knowledge differs from functional knowledge, and why time is the main way to earn it

• How to tell a productive risk from a blind spot risk

• Why a transitioner’s protection is often an act of care for the successor, and why that needs to be said out loud

• Questions each side can ask the next time an instinct to override or a feeling of being controlled shows up

Elizabeth closes with a simple exercise for either seat. Picture two lines on the same timeline, one for you and one for the person you are transitioning with, and look for the spot where they sit farthest apart. That gap is where conflict starts and trust erodes, and it is the place to begin the conversation.

Chapters

00:00 – Welcome and the question everyone asks
01:30 – Transition is a team sport
02:15 – A composite picture, six months in
03:30 – The wrong question
04:45 – Both people are changing
07:00 – When the transitioner lets go too fast
08:00 – When the successor is ready first
09:00 – The reframe, synchronization over readiness
10:15 – Crystallized knowledge
12:15 – You can’t be told your way into it
13:00 – Productive risk and blind spot risk
14:15 – The supplier example
16:00 – Care or control
17:30 – What to say from each seat
18:45 – Two curves on one timeline
21:00 – Building a playbook together
22:15 – The one-sentence takeaway
23:00 – Closing

Connect with Elizabeth Ledoux and the Transition Strategists:
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Transition Strategists on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/transitionstrategists/
Transition Strategists on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@transitionstrategists

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Successor Readiness Always Takes Two People Transcript

Elizabeth Ledoux:
Hi everyone and welcome back to the Business Transition Roadmap. I’m Elizabeth Ledoux and today we’re going to do a solo episode on successor development. The title is Are We Ready?

So here’s a question that I hear all the time, all the time, from both sides of business transition. The transitioners asking it about the successor, is he or she ready? And the successor is asking a version of it about themselves. Am I ready for this? It’s a very natural question to ask in the world of transition, both of those. And I want to spend the next

20 minutes, convincing you that that may not be the right question to be asking. And it’s not because readiness doesn’t matter, because of course readiness matters, but it’s because the question as most people ask it only has room for one person in it, likely the successor. And a business transition has never been a one-person event.

It always has two people or more moving, or maybe even not moving, at the same time. The question is: are they moving together? So transition is a team sport. You have to have a transitioner and a successor. You may have more than one transitioner, you may have more than one successor. However, you have at least two people to make a transition happen.

So today I just want to walk through the reframe that I use with every transitioner successor pair that we work with and the two ideas underneath it that tend to change this whole conversation once people actually hear and understand it. So let’s go ahead and get into it. All right, so composite picture.

Because I’ve seen this exact shape more times than I can count. just you know, the names change, there are different names on it. So it goes like this: a founder builds a business over 20-some years, and their child or their longtime operator steps in as what would be the successor.

About six months in, typically everyone’s frustrated. The founder says the successor keeps making maybe unnecessary risky calls on some things, and the successor could be saying that the founder won’t let go of anything and is still running the place from you know the hallway. they might even be just running it from their office and not bringing that successor in. Both of them in their own way are completely right.

And both of them are technically asking potentially the wrong question about the other person, which is exactly why they’re stuck and they’re frustrated. By the time we’re done working together, when they work with us, they’re usually not asking the question: is he ready or she ready or am I ready as a successor anymore?

They’re asking a different question entirely. And that’s what we’re gonna talk about today. All right, let’s dive into the wrong question. If you’ve been anywhere near a succession conversation,

You’ve heard some version of is the successor ready? And when we do our talks, when I go and speak to different groups of business owners, I’ll put up on the screen a survey, and you know, maybe a hundred or two hundred people in the room, and I’ll say, you know, what’s your number one fear of transition? And almost always the fear, the biggest fear is the successor not being ready.

So, you know, it sounds like due diligence, it sounds like are they responsible? And it puts the transitioner in the seat of being the judge. And it puts the successor in the seat of being judged. So is the successor ready? Who’s judging that and who’s being judged? Here’s what that frame misses.

The transitioner, by definition, is changing also, just as much as the successor is, likely, because there is behavioral and life change going on for each of them. So if you think about what’s actually being asked of each person in the transition, the successor is being asked to move from maybe observing and

Doing what the six transitioner asks to owning, moving in that into that ownership, and it could be equity ownership, but it also could be owning a role or owning a decision. So they move from giving input to actually making the call and including

the calls that don’t work. So they’ll be making the call and then, you know, gosh, but if they don’t work out. And that’s a real shift. And it does take time because if you shift too quickly, when they make the call, they may not have the knowledge, the background, the experience from the transitioner to actually understand the implications of the call that they’re making, whatever they’re deciding.

But the transitioner is being asked to shift too. They’re being asked to shift from actually directing and making the call themselves to guiding that successor. So they’re going from being the person who holds the answer and the decision to being the person who watches someone else find a different answer, potentially.

And their train, the transitioner can’t grab the wheel. They can’t do it. They have to watch. And that is a genuinely hard thing to do. I’ve watched owners go through it for years. I’ve also gone through it myself. And I could argue that it’s even harder in a lot of ways because it sort of runs against every instinct that that owner has had for a long, long time, the transitioner.

It runs against the instinct that made him or her successful enough to build the business that’s worth handing off in the first place. So when I say are we ready instead of is the successor ready?

I’m not trying to soften the question. I’m actually trying to shift it and maybe even correct it. Because there are two people changing here in a transition. A successful one. There’s not just one person. And that changes everything about what quote unquote stuck looks like. So here’s a pattern that I can see often.

When the transitioner lets go faster than the successor is actually ready for, the successor gets handed weight without the support to carry it, if you can imagine that. They stumble not because they’re not capable, but because nobody built the scaffolding under them or helped them to build the scaffolding under them.

And that stumble, what happens when that successor stumbles is it erodes confidence actually on both sides. The transitioner sees it and thinks, wow, they’re not ready. And the successor internalizes it and thinks, maybe I’m not ready. And even to the point of maybe I’m not the right one.

And then there’s the other direction, which people talk about a little bit less. When the successor is ready, and they’re actually ready to move faster, and the transition, the transitioner doesn’t move with them. So what happens there is not peace. That does not happen. It’s this quiet erosion.

Lots of times the successor will stall out. They sometimes decide that they’re gonna stop asking and they’re gonna start working around the transitioner instead of with them. And I see this a lot in families and

What that does is it kills trust in transitions that, you know, on paper would be just fine, but it’s that lack of the transitioner moving when the successor wants to move at a high rate and potentially they’re ready. So here’s the reframe. if you can sit with this for a minute, being stuck in a transition is almost never

A true readiness problem that belongs to one person. It’s usually a synchronization problem that belongs to both people. And you can’t fix a synchronization problem by focusing or looking at only one side of it. So one thing that I’d like for you to take from this episode.

Is this question and ask it of yourself, no matter which seat you’re in? Right now, who’s moving faster? You or the other person? And what’s the gap actually costing the one who’s behind or the one who’s ahead? Because it’s that gap, it’s that lack of synchronization, it’s the lack of alignment.

That’s where the conflict is, and that’s where the trust is eroded, both internally by the potential person who’s trying to figure it out, but also by the person who’s trying to be the transitioner of that item. All right, so now let’s talk about the second idea, because this is the one that tends to land the hardest, especially for successors. and

There’s a term out there called crystallized knowledge, and the concept is that as a person grows older, when they’re younger, they have functional knowledge, and then and I’m simplifying this, but as they get older, they’ll have crystallized knowledge, which is part of the wisdom that sits there.

So over the years, and sometimes it’s you know decades in a business, a transitioner will build up this enormous amount of experience. And they have the ability to create decisions because they use that experience that’s never been written down anywhere. And it actually is literally like pattern recognition. So

The near misses that they remember are valuable to them, but nobody else was in the room for that near miss. the owner transitioner learned it and incorporated that into their now behavior. So things that that owner might see, the transitioner or maybe a vendor who seems reliable, but in the back of their mind they’re like, hey, there’s one thing that really

makes them think that they may not be. It could be a client who looks like they’re a good fit but they actually aren’t. And it’s just those instincts that fire before the transitioner even knows why they do.

That’s what crystallized knowledge is. And here’s the thing about that. A successor typically doesn’t have that yet.

They haven’t been around long enough to gain that crystallized knowledge, but what they do have, they have that functional knowledge. And that’s why a transitioner and successor can work really well together because the transitioner transfers that crystallized knowledge so that the successor’s functional knowledge, the decision making and the building and the growth that they’re really interested in happens easier, happens faster, happens with

less mistakes. And the successor, it isn’t that they don’t have the crystallized knowledge because they’re not smart enough. It’s just because they haven’t been around long enough. And the time is what gives you that time and age.

I haven’t found any big shortcuts. It can happen a little bit earlier in life, of course. And I think if you have a successor where you’re transferring that crystallized knowledge faster to them, I think that does give them a little bit of a shortcut and an advantage, which helps the business to go on well in the future. So

You can’t be told your way fast enough into substitute for having lived it. So you can’t be told your way into it fast enough to substitute having lived it.

I said that twice because I think that’s a very big point for you to really embrace. The gap is the source of almost every why don’t you just let me do it my way conversation that I’ve ever sat in on. So let’s slow down and let’s look at what’s happening in some of those movements because they’re two different things that are going on.

Most people don’t identify them well in real time. So when a successor does something differently than the transitioner would have, there are a couple possibilities. One, it’s a productive risk, right? The successor sees that. The old way was habit, maybe, and not a necessity for that being done that way.

Nobody’d question it in a lot of years because nobody had any reason to. The successor comes in and without that habit and that background and experience, may do something that’s actually genuinely better for the business. And this happens more than transitioners really want to admit, but sometimes the transitioners don’t see it because they’re embedded in doing it the old way.

Alright, second option is a blind spot risk. That the successor doesn’t see a failure mode that the transitioners already live through, and it may have been a very painful lesson that that transitioner had. The successor, they’re not being reckless, they just don’t know what they don’t know yet, and that’s exactly what you might expect from someone who hasn’t had.

years yet underneath their belt.

So let’s walk through a small, kind of boring example because sometimes that’s the best ones to you know really understand. So a successor decides to switch suppliers because the new ones cheaper and the numbers look better on paper. They make a difference in the financials. That could be a great call, but

The old supplier relationship might be genuinely something that’s important to the company. In the past, that old supplier might have been one who helped the transitioner in a challenging time many years ago, and when they helped the business owner, the transitioner many years ago.

That vendor actually helped to save a client. And it could be a major client that made a big difference for the business and its surviving through that bad time. From the outside, you could see both sides.

Where both things might be valuable, a lower price with new fresh supplier, or a little bit higher price, but the relationship and that strength that sits there. Which way is the right way to go? The only way to tell them apart to understand which one might be the right way to go is a conversation between the successor and the transitioner.

And that’s a part that sometimes just gets skipped because the transitioner will not like the decision, the successor just goes about it and believes that they’re doing the right thing, and everybody assumes the other person is being reckless potentially, or maybe even controlling. And you can see, I bet which side is which. So the hard part is in the moment.

And sometimes you can’t tell what you’re really looking at. So the instinct is to guard against change potentially. and every time you guard against change as a transitioner, the successor reads that potentially as one more thing to control. And it also can be read as obviously you don’t trust me.

It also could read as, I don’t believe you’re ever gonna let me run this thing. Right? You’re never gonna trust me.

So I want to talk about something pretty directly here because I think it matters more than almost anything else in this whole episode. The transitioner isn’t necessarily protecting the business for themselves, that might be a part of it, but likely they’re also protecting it so there still is a strong business left for the successor to inherit and to continue forward.

In the legacy that the business provides. That protection can be very future-oriented. And whether it’s said this way or not, an act of care for the person taking over isn’t necessarily an act of control over them.

So I’ll say that one more time. The act of care for the person taking over isn’t necessarily an act of control over them. And the conversation actually helps you to understand which one is it. Which one is it? So this part gets missed all the time. And I think it needs to be, you know, really said out loud.

Because from where the successor’s standing on the outside of that crystallized knowledge, it does not look like care by default. It looks like someone’s holding on too tight. And really, you can’t expect a successor to intuit this protection is for you if nobody has ever said that plainly.

And they may not believe that the protection is for them unless you have a nice, vulnerable, transparent, connected relationship so that you can talk about that.

All right. So if you’re a transitioner who’s listening to this, the next time you feel the instinct to step in or override or to say something like that’s not the way we do it, maybe try to reflect and see what you’re actually protecting.

Why you’re protecting it, and understand that for yourself so that you can explain it. Something like, here’s what I’ve seen go wrong before, and here’s why I’m cautious about this specific thing. That builds trust. And if you’re a successor listening, next time it feels like control, instead of assuming that, maybe you ask something like, What are you worried will go wrong?

You know what should I be seeing that I’m not? Because you might be surprised how often the answer is a story and it’s not a rule. So yeah, both sides consider those two things. Alright, so let’s talk about two curves moving together.

I want to give you a picture of how to maybe see this because you know I’m an engineer. So I think you should have both of you are moving, both of you are making shifts, both of you are making changes, and so if you picture two lines maybe on the same timeline, right? Because that your time should be coordinated, how fast are each one of you running or moving on this timeline?

And is one falling a little bit behind? Is one getting a little bit ahead? In a healthy transition, ideally, you’re moving at the same rate. Right? You’re moving together forward. And in order to do that, you kind of have to be synchronized. You have to have an idea of what you’re trying to achieve and have communication on that.

If the transitioner’s curve is way out ahead, letting go faster than the successor’s curve is ready, not transferring that crystallized knowledge, the successor typically is going to get overwhelmed, they’re going to potentially make mistakes and try to avoid making mistakes. They may not embrace quick enough and the transitioner may lose confidence in them being the right one.

And if the successor’s curve is out way ahead, ha further than that transitioner’s curve is moving, you can end up with a successor who gets super frustrated. They may disengage, and in both cases they could be disengaged, and they may already be looking for someplace else to go because they don’t believe that you’re gonna let go ever.

So a thought for you is maybe to try to consider whichever side you’re on, take a minute to reflect and maybe sketch out how fast are you moving and how fast is your successor or transitioner, your coordinating person moving. And are those where are those two lines farthest apart? Because sometimes you might be moving in one area but not at all in another.

And that’s the gap where conflict happens, that’s the gap where trust gets eroded, and that’s the gap where you start to feel like you’re spinning and you’re stuck.

So what do you do with all of this? I think there’s reflection. I think that there is conversation, and many times we get so busy running the business that we forget that we’re a team and that we have a job to do together and we are gonna hand this business off well and

You know, that this takes coordination. It actually takes kind of a playbook to be able to do it right. I don’t know very many people who team well together who haven’t thought about how they’re going to team and have some kind of a plan or strategy to do it. So

This isn’t a one-time conversation. It’s a, hey, let’s figure this out. We can see the near term and make a commitment to each other. And then as we move forward, we gain more clarity to what’s next and how we are going to continue to stay aligned and pace with each other so that we can move together and the business will move with us, with the transitioner and the successor.

So I’d like to leave you with one thing because I think it summarizes this whole episode in one sentence. That this transitions are never really actually about deciding who’s ready and who’s not, because if you’re in that conversation, there’s potential conflict there. It’s about whether the transitioner and the successor, the transitioners and the successors.

willing to move at a pace that the others can keep up with and they don’t move too fast, they don’t move too slow, they move together.

That’s it for today. If this episode helped you to name something that you’re living right now on either side of the table, the transitioner or the successor, I would love to hear about it. And if you know a transitioner or a successor who needs to hear, are we ready instead of are you ready, please share this episode with them.

So until next time, I’m Elizabeth Ledoux and I’ll look forward to seeing you again on another episode.

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The Business Transition Roadmap with Elizabeth Ledoux

How do communities thrive? When businesses experience healthy growth and transition. Join CEO of The Transition Strategists, Elizabeth Ledoux as she and her guests identify what makes a successful business transition roadmap. If you know you want to transition or exit your business “one day”, today is the right day to start planning. This show will give you the roadmap.

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