Succession planning rarely tops the list of a business owner’s priorities. After all, managing daily tasks and making it to month’s end doesn’t often leave time for issues that aren’t of immediate concern. Here’s the thing, though: a succession plan is of immediate concern even if you don’t anticipate passing on your business for decades to come.
It is a common misconception to think that a succession plan only serves to ensure the smooth passing of your business from one generation to the next. This is an essential feature, sure, but succession planning accomplishes a whole lot more.
5 Ways a Succession Plan Boosts Your Business Right Now
Implementing a succession plan requires taking a holistic view of your business and upon this basis designing a strategy that ensures future needs are met before they even arise. Essential leadership qualities must be identified, a plan to cultivate them must be drafted, thoughtful consideration must be given to the concerns of current team members, talent must be sought, and a timeline needs to be implemented. Attending to all of this not only benefits your business down the road but sets you up for present success, too. The following five points explain how:
1. A Succession Plan Alleviates Founder’s Syndrome
Founder’s syndrome erupts when an owner retains disproportionate power after successfully initiating a business. The problems that can arise are many and a succession plan helps relieve them by acting as an external articulation of an operation’s aims, priorities, and needs.
2. A Succession Plan Energizes Leadership
By nurturing a high-level strategy, a succession keeps leaders nimble and board members engaged.
3. Succession Planning Provides Risk Management
No one can see the future but a well-laid plan gets you close. When you’re prepared, you’re rarely caught off guard. If a key player suddenly quits, for instance, your succession plan shields you from having no contingency in place.
4. A Succession Plan Streamlines Operations
You can’t have a good succession plan without nuanced knowledge of your business’s needs. Acquiring this knowledge not only allows you to get organized for the future but encourages you to stay organized in the present, too.
5. Succession Planning Refreshes Talent
Talent acquisition is a key component of any succession plan and, by extension, so is sluffing any dead weight holding our enterprise back. By building a succession plan you also build an idea of who you need on your team and who you don’t.
Getting a Succession Plan Off the Ground
Finding a trusted attorney with experience in the field is the first step to implementing a succession plan. Just as you wouldn’t draft a Will or any other estate planning document without legal counsel, you shouldn’t chart your business’s future without assurance no crucial oversights have been made.
A good attorney will guide you through convening a conversation between team members, family, and stakeholders. They will lend insight into drafting a leadership development strategy and ensuring its implementation. They will talk you through how other businesses have brought succession needs in line with current business objectives and will ultimately work with you to determine how ownership will be transferred and assets divided.
To learn more about succession planning or to get started on your succession plan today, do not hesitate to reach out to the Deliberato Law Center today either by calling us at (216) 341-3413 or using the contact form on our website.
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