Ownership Transition

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“If you don’t know where you are going any road will take you there.” -The Cheshire Cat

As the wily feline wisely suggested to Alice, knowing where you are going is the key to knowing how to get there. At no time is this more true than when a business owner is working on their succession plan. In our previous posts on succession planning, we stressed the importance of creating two different succession plans – an emergency plan and a long-term plan, and how to implement the management changes necessary for both of these plans to succeed. In this post, we will focus on transition planning to prepare for a change in the ownership of the business.
Continue Reading Succession Planning Part 3: Ownership Transition – Passing on the Keys to the Kingdom

The successful business owner needs to be able to multitask, including in the area of succession planning. As noted in the previous post, business owners need to develop and then implement two different succession plans, one for crisis management that applies in the event of an emergency, and a second one that transitions the company’s management and its ownership to new hands. This second post focuses on management succession planning, and the final post in this series will review the steps involved in transitioning to new ownership.
Continue Reading Business Succession Planning Part 2 – Putting Your All-Stars in Play

The health-minded business owner who diets, exercises and receives good medical care, may receive a robust physical report suggesting he or she will live forever.  Counting on immortality as a succession plan, however, is a bad bet.  The business owner concerned about the future will want to prepare both a long-range plan and an emergency plan. The long-range plan will lay the foundation for the owner’s future retirement, while the emergency plan will detail the steps that the business must take to survive if the owner is suddenly absent from the business due to illness or accident.  The emergency succession plan does not magically become reality, however, and it takes careful thought and skillful management to do succession planning the right way.
Continue Reading Business Succession Planning Part 1: Don’t Wait for An Emergency to Put a Plan in Place