How do you know when it’s time to start transitioning your operation to the next generation? Rena Striegel, president of Transition Point Business Partners, says to aim for a decade.
“If we’re lucky, we’ve got that long. Sometimes we don’t, though,” Striegel explains. “Sometimes things happen and we have to move much quicker than that. An illness can escalate transition quickly. A disagreement can go from ‘We’re all good’ to ‘We’ve got to fix this right now.’ And sometimes lack of planning can cause an extremely difficult situation – particularly if someone wants to exit quickly.”
She says the fastest succession plan she has ever seen executed from start to finish was six months.
“That was so painful, I cannot even begin to describe how difficult that was to get four brothers to agree on a plan and ready to execute in six months when the first one wanted to be out,” Striegel says. “We did it, but only because that farm family really sat and hung in there. If one of them had lost his patience or his temper, that whole thing could have blown sky high.”
Striegel compares the timeline of your succession plan to landing a plane.
“Think about those flights where the runway is really long. The plane comes in, it touches down nicely, and it just comes to a stop, right? It’s nice and gentle. No problems,” she says. “If you think about those landings where it’s stormy, or the runway is short, they’re a little scary, they’re really abrupt, they’re very stressful, and they can kind of hurt. So, we want to give as long of a runway as possible to give everybody a chance to ease in.”
The 10 years you ideally have are broken down into this timeline:
- Years 1-2: Assemble your professional team and make some of the biggest decisions. Understand your entities and reorganize assets if necessary. Update your documents.
- Years 3-4: Work with the next generation to get them ready for the roles they will have. Practice good communication and iron out dysfunction.
- Years 5-10: Begin actual transition of ownership.
What comes first during that ownership transition process will vary.
“Sometimes it’s operational first. You’re allowing successors to make some of the operating decisions. Then maybe it’s some of the financial decisions, maybe it’s marketing decisions, maybe it’s buying inputs, maybe it is selecting vendors. Maybe you’re letting them negotiate for equipment,” Striegel says. “Whatever it is, you’ve got to figure out what the timeline is to take things off of your plate and put it on to them, and to be really clear about that, so that we can develop successors in the right way.”
Transitioning relationships is also an important piece of the puzzle.
“When do you turn over the relationship with your banker? What about your lawyer or your CPA? When and how do we get that next generation involved in those conversations?” Striegel asks. “If we don’t transition relationships, what happens is the next generation has no relationships with the people that have been serving your family for however many years and when you’re done, so are they.”
She says there won’t always be a finite end date on the transition, but it’s important you feel confident about the progress.
“The main thing is to say, ‘Over this period of time, I’m going to start working with you to take this over’, make sure you spend time doing that, and then let it go with oversight,” Striegel says. “I always like to say, ‘You watch me do it, I’ll watch you do it and then you do it on your own.”
