From my experience the real family business succession planning
issues are not financial, not taxes, they are not business related at
all in fact.
They are based on your ability or inability to talk with your family members honestly.
If you can talk out the issues, concerns, dreams, and assumptions with each and every person affected by the decisions you will ultimately make, you will have the basis for your family business succession plan.
Once everybody's on board with the future direction, seventy-five percent of the equation has been solved.
This is not the time to worry whether one desire or another is possible or not. Believe me, once you've decided what you want the future of the company to look like, there are plenty of attorneys, tax planning experts, accountants, succession planning experts, and financial professionals who are ready willing and able to do the technical part.
The family business succession process can be broken down into seven critical steps.
First of all, you can't do this alone, so you must be willing to ask for help and then accept it, which for many of us this is the hard part. I always hesitate to ask for help (advice) unless I am committed in advance to go along with it. It would embarrass me and the person I asked if I just blew off their advice, the advice I had asked for.
What works is when a group of peers, outsiders with no axe to grind are part of a continuing dialogue - a series of family business succession conversations. Then it's not about a single person's insights but a collective back and forth around what has worked and what hasn't for them.
You should appoint someone to help steer you through the process. Let's face it. if family business succession planning was easy you would already be on top of it and not wasting your time with this article.
What makes it so universally difficult is that generally no one is empowered to keep the process moving. From my experience the best person is someone directly involved in the business, a family member who has the best interest of the organization at heart, and willing to push
Setting the critically important goals is the simple bit, when you know what's important to each and every one of you?
Take into consideration what your spouse wants, what your heirs feel is important and what sort of opportunity you want to leave behind for the next generation successors so they can keep growing the business. Then consider what the situation is right now. From that point on it is a process of negotiation within the family, with their input of your peers and your advisors - to figure out what's possible to achieve.
You will have to redesign the business to fit your collective picture of the future around the collective goals of the family. This is the role of your professional advisers. This is your company, your family, and your dream for the future.
You know what you want the end result to look like. My bet is it can be done, if you are committed enough to tell your advisors that you want what you want when you want it and if that doesn't work for them, you'll find other better advisors. Remember who is working for whom.
Memories are short, so be sure that someone write down agreements you and your family have made as a result of your discussions as the discussions unfold. Each note will be a brick in the wall. Every decision is remembered and each little bit of progress leads to the next and the next. Don't make the horrible mistake of waiting weeks and months and then trying to remember who said what about what when and under which set of facts.
Establish a timetable for the events to occur because while family business succession planning will go on forever, it should not last forever. This is a continuous process, from generation to generation to generation, with the steps takes today impacting the family and the business decades from now. However, there were many family business succession events and benchmarks along the way. You will be involved in family business succession planning forever - but it is not a full time job.
Schedule regular meetings to review your progress in order to keep the planning coordinator (the name we use for the person you put in charge of the process) moving, keep the advisors on task, and provide a visible opportunity to put check marks in the boxes of the steps that have been completed.
These meetings keep the process on everyone's mind, reassuring them all that this is important and it is being addressed - not just something than gets rolled out one a year to keep them quiet.
Naturally there is another option, one you may choose if you aren't serious about your organization's future. You can do nothing about family business succession, put it off until it is too late, and let others control what ultimately happens to your business and your family.
Without planning and communication, you will end up asking, "what happened, how did we get in this terrible situation?" instead of seeing the future you all secretly want.
There are numerous family business succession strategies, but they are not unlimited.
And there are scores of family business succession planning professionals who can help you complete the process.
Don't let the future be the time when you'll wish you'd done what you're not doing now.
Get on with it!
By WMEssick
More further information b2b mastermind group
They are based on your ability or inability to talk with your family members honestly.
If you can talk out the issues, concerns, dreams, and assumptions with each and every person affected by the decisions you will ultimately make, you will have the basis for your family business succession plan.
Once everybody's on board with the future direction, seventy-five percent of the equation has been solved.
This is not the time to worry whether one desire or another is possible or not. Believe me, once you've decided what you want the future of the company to look like, there are plenty of attorneys, tax planning experts, accountants, succession planning experts, and financial professionals who are ready willing and able to do the technical part.
The family business succession process can be broken down into seven critical steps.
First of all, you can't do this alone, so you must be willing to ask for help and then accept it, which for many of us this is the hard part. I always hesitate to ask for help (advice) unless I am committed in advance to go along with it. It would embarrass me and the person I asked if I just blew off their advice, the advice I had asked for.
What works is when a group of peers, outsiders with no axe to grind are part of a continuing dialogue - a series of family business succession conversations. Then it's not about a single person's insights but a collective back and forth around what has worked and what hasn't for them.
You should appoint someone to help steer you through the process. Let's face it. if family business succession planning was easy you would already be on top of it and not wasting your time with this article.
What makes it so universally difficult is that generally no one is empowered to keep the process moving. From my experience the best person is someone directly involved in the business, a family member who has the best interest of the organization at heart, and willing to push
Setting the critically important goals is the simple bit, when you know what's important to each and every one of you?
Take into consideration what your spouse wants, what your heirs feel is important and what sort of opportunity you want to leave behind for the next generation successors so they can keep growing the business. Then consider what the situation is right now. From that point on it is a process of negotiation within the family, with their input of your peers and your advisors - to figure out what's possible to achieve.
You will have to redesign the business to fit your collective picture of the future around the collective goals of the family. This is the role of your professional advisers. This is your company, your family, and your dream for the future.
You know what you want the end result to look like. My bet is it can be done, if you are committed enough to tell your advisors that you want what you want when you want it and if that doesn't work for them, you'll find other better advisors. Remember who is working for whom.
Memories are short, so be sure that someone write down agreements you and your family have made as a result of your discussions as the discussions unfold. Each note will be a brick in the wall. Every decision is remembered and each little bit of progress leads to the next and the next. Don't make the horrible mistake of waiting weeks and months and then trying to remember who said what about what when and under which set of facts.
Establish a timetable for the events to occur because while family business succession planning will go on forever, it should not last forever. This is a continuous process, from generation to generation to generation, with the steps takes today impacting the family and the business decades from now. However, there were many family business succession events and benchmarks along the way. You will be involved in family business succession planning forever - but it is not a full time job.
Schedule regular meetings to review your progress in order to keep the planning coordinator (the name we use for the person you put in charge of the process) moving, keep the advisors on task, and provide a visible opportunity to put check marks in the boxes of the steps that have been completed.
These meetings keep the process on everyone's mind, reassuring them all that this is important and it is being addressed - not just something than gets rolled out one a year to keep them quiet.
Naturally there is another option, one you may choose if you aren't serious about your organization's future. You can do nothing about family business succession, put it off until it is too late, and let others control what ultimately happens to your business and your family.
Without planning and communication, you will end up asking, "what happened, how did we get in this terrible situation?" instead of seeing the future you all secretly want.
There are numerous family business succession strategies, but they are not unlimited.
And there are scores of family business succession planning professionals who can help you complete the process.
Don't let the future be the time when you'll wish you'd done what you're not doing now.
Get on with it!
By WMEssick
More further information b2b mastermind group
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