The role Transition Guides play in family business transitions is critical because their experience, insight, and use of a proven transition process greatly increases the odds of transition success. And, as the frequently quoted statistics indicate, success in family business transitions is not guaranteed or easy.
- Approximately 75% of all businesses fail to survive past the first generation of owners.
- More than 85% fail by the third generation.
- More than 95% fail beyond that.
Success in family business transitions means different things to different people, so please allow us to share our definition.
For a family business transition to be successful:
- Owners:
- Achieve their most important quantifiable and experiential goals.
- Leave in a way that honors what they have built.
- Maintain relationships with the people who are important to them.
- Are as engaged in moving toward their Next Adventures™ as their successors are in moving their businesses forward.
- Successors are ready and able to assume the responsibilities of ownership, leadership, financial management, and operations.
- Companies/Assets are as successful under new ownership as they were under past ownership
That’s a high bar to clear, but 100% of the owners who have completed our process (The Transition Roadmap Developer Process™) with the help of our Transition Guides have successfully transferred their companies to their successors and gone on to enjoy happy and meaningful lives.
So, what do Transition Guides do? What experience, values and principles do they bring to their work? And how does a person become a Transition Guide? We’re so glad you asked.
Transition Guide, Defined.
From Day 1, the Transition Strategists’ professionals who work with our clients have had the word “Guide” in their titles, rather than “advisor” or “consultant” for the simple reason that they are more than simply advisors or consultants.
In their careers, our Transition Guides have worked as coaches, mentors, advisors, and even consultants. Yet they’ve also been business owners, founders and successors, senior executives, and / or attorneys. They’ve participated in their own and others’ family business transitions or in corporate restructuring and succession planning. While they are absolutely equipped to both advise and consult, their primary role is to draw upon their experience and training as Transition Guides to help owners navigate the many and complex choices owners must make when crafting the transition of their businesses to the next generation of ownership.
- Elizabeth Ledoux is a petroleum engineer, founder of the Transition Strategists, author, speaker and Chair for TIGER 21.
- Debbie Davis spent 17 years in the energy industry and has led teams through corporate restructuring, process improvement and succession planning.
- Marcy McNeal has decades of experience leading and consulting nonprofit organizations and is a certified social and emotional intelligence coach.
- Beth Sneed Sparks is successor of a multi-generational family business, manager of a family charitable foundation, and attorney.
- Kayla (Kernick) Leth is a former business owner and senior-level executive with extensive experience in marketing and brand development.
- Cody Teets is a former Fortune 150 executive and university professor and administrator with deep knowledge of franchise relationships.
Like the owners and successors who have used our Transition Roadmap Developer Process™, our Transition Guides—by helping owners, their families, and communities— are living their own great Next Adventures.
What Do Transition Guides Do?
Ultimately, Guides focus on helping owners and successors (and their families) live their great Next Adventures through the successful transition of a business. Specifically, Guides help owners design dynamic transition paths that achieve a business owner’s most important goals while sustaining healthy relationships and business success.
The Role Transition Guides Play in Business Transitions
Every business, owner, successor, and family are different, so the transition journey every owner takes is different. And yet, Guides take several actions common to the creation of every business transition strategy.
- Guides dive into who owners are and what they want; how families and businesses work; what’s important to owners, successors, and families; and how those involved in transitions are wired (e.g., how they think, communicate, and make decisions).
- Guides help owners and successors (1) define and paint clear pictures of their Next Adventures; and (2) identify their Deal Breakers (i.e., objectives that are so important that they will not pursue any course of action that does not achieve them).
- Guides help owners prepare for and adapt to change. No transition journey is without obstacles — anticipated and unanticipated. People and circumstances inevitably change as transitions progress, so adaptability while maintaining focus on the owner’s goals and relationships is critical to ultimate transition success.
- Guides offer prospective. Having been through business transitions themselves or having helped other owners, Guides recognize that not every decision needs to be made immediately. Optimal decisions are made thoughtfully in light of one’s goals and communicated with intention and clarity.
- Guides help all parties involved in a transition communicate transparently (when appropriate), clearly, and empathetically. Guides help owners recognize that communicating from a position of gratitude and abundance is far more effective than defending oneself or persuading others.
- We all make assumptions, but not all our assumptions are accurate. Guides help owners identify and test their own assumptions and those of others involved in a transition.
A Transition Guide’s Guiding Principles
Over the 20-plus year history of The Transition Strategists, we’ve developed seven guiding principles or core values that inform our Guides’ interactions with each other and with our clients.
- People First: We always assume the best of intent, strive for individual growth, and make a difference in people’s lives.
- Independently Accomplished and Resourceful: We know our stuff so can be proactive, lead, and focus on what’s most important.
- Gracefully Nimble: We pivot, stay the course, clear obstacles, and explore better ways to be our best.
- Positively Playful: We value lightness and use laughter to open new possibilities and solve the most challenging situations.
- Curiously Engaged: We are constant learners and creative teachers and mentors who explore possibilities and challenge the status quo if that’s what it takes to create a better future.
- Quality Achievers: We are accountable to our commitments and take pride in our work, so others can count on us.
- Genuinely Transparent: We choose authenticity and transparency over perfection.
Becoming a Guide
Transition Guides have the unique opportunity to meaningfully improve people’s, families’ and communities’ lives. They are intuitive, team players and strategists at heart, and have experience shifting behaviors and belief systems, a successful record of sourcing their own work and enjoy bringing people together. They have best-of-intent mindsets and appreciate the challenges and opportunities specific to multigenerational relationships. If you, or someone you know, fits this description, share this article. Better yet, suggest that they give us a call.
If our goals line up with theirs, we provide the opportunity for new Guides to engage in ongoing education and coaching in our processes. We offer them to become a part of our community with access to our team members, materials, proprietary systems and, collaboration with business development and client project delivery.
As Guides, we have the privilege of helping owners and successors make the transition of a business the most personally satisfying achievement of their careers. That is truly a Transition Guide’s greatest Next Adventure.
We know every transition journey is unique, and we’ve developed resources to support you wherever you are in the process.
- Join our monthly workshop to learn proven transition strategies
- Explore programs designed for your unique journey
- Access free tools to start mapping your path
- Meet Elizabeth on Collective Conversations for personal insights