To begin with, the irony is that the majority of the Family Business Enterprise founders have over the years implemented numerous strategic and effective business plans. This is how they have progressively grown their business. Yet, many of them do not have a well-structured business succession or business continuity plan to ensure that they can “retire” from the business gracefully and hand it over to their intended successors successfully.
In most cases, the ultimate dream of many family business enterprise founders is to be able to perpetuate their business achievements and to eventually transform the business into a multi-generational legacy that will last for many years to come. Yes! To be a solid and proud family business enterprise that is built to last. If this is indeed the intention, it is therefore very crucial that the business founder must put in place a documented and well-structured business succession or business continuity plan to facilitate the process of “letting go”. This is relevant to family business enterprise of all sizes, – from small to medium family businesses to large family business organizations.
To kick start the process, the top priority of the business founder is to make sure that the family business enterprise has crystal clear vision and mission driven by strong positive culture or values. To put it plainly, how can the business founder think about building a legacy if the family business enterprise does not even have clear vision and mission.
Moving forward, the next critical success factor is to ensure that the intended business successor is willing, fully prepared and motivated to shoulder the responsibility to be the next emerging leader of the family business enterprise when the time is right. To prepare the successor, a customized and comprehensive nurturing plan must be formulated. The key focus is to equip the business successor with the required level of leadership mindset, knowledge, skills, attitudes and habits to drive the family business enterprise when the time come. Real efforts must also be put in to significantly enhance the conceptual, behaviour and technical abilities of the successor.
In furtherance, key business and management performance measurement indicators must also be incorporated to periodically evaluate the progress of the structured business succession planning process. A lot of consultation and two-way communication will need to take place in order that the expectations of both parties are synchronized. The critical roles of the founders and the successors during this business transition journey must also be clearly established. This will provide an environment that is conducive for the “baton” to be handed over by the business founder to the business successors successfully
Finally, it is worthwhile to mention that to achieve the desired outcome, the entire business succession planning process will normally take up to three years to complete and in some cases, much longer. As such, any last minute or rush effort to formulate and implement a business succession or business continuity plan is definitely doom to fail
