Management Succession Planning for Family Businesses

When it comes to family business management succession planning, and farm succession planning for that matter, there are lots of “keys” – virtually all of then claim to be the most important one. The truth is that there really is only one most important key to succession planning and it is not what you are probably thinking.

Some may say it is getting good advice, or taking advantage of planning strategies, or figuring out what others are doing successfully, or slipping through some clever business management succession loophole. Or maybe it’s having a conflict free atmosphere at the plant or developing better relationships at work.

Well, you’d be wrong.

The key to success during the family business management succession process is enlightened self-interest. In other words being able to set aside whatever petty feelings you have about the incompetence of your brother, dad, or uncle because you are savvy enough to realize that they aren’t going anyplace, they are not going to change, and if you want to succeed you will need their help to do so.

Not only that, they need your help and all of you must share one thing and one thing only, a commitment to right action. A commitment to investing the time to uncover what’s important to each of you, to the business, and to any other stakeholders – then making a commitment to work toward the goals you share.

It does not mean you will ever be buddies, coach one another’s kids, or go on vacations together – you can if you want but it is not required to be successful today or tomorrow.

Everything that happens in your business takes you closer to or farther away from your goals.

Internal problems, often personality problems or feelings of entitlement, can reduce the effectiveness of decisions you or one of the others make until you are all willing to set aside what’s wrong with the ideas of ‘others’ and look at what’s right with them.

You and I know that most of the conflict that undermines well considered decisions is not based on facts – it is the result of people wanting their way because they want their own way.

Lots of experts talk about how to build better relationships at work, saying that it’s important to success. There are books on the subject as if that makes it true.

But if your brother is a jerk and your sister is a spoiled brat (in your opinion) there is very little likelihood that any of the lessons in getting along are going to have any long term effect – for any of you.

Let’s take a look at the situation from a different perspective.

What if you and your siblings could work together effectively, make more money (so you could all take longer vacations away from each other) without sitting around the campfire singing “We are the world” and holding hands?

Your family business doesn’t have to look like a Norman Rockwell painting to be successful. It has to identify what’s important, create strategies that will move you toward that end and execute those strategies relentlessly.

There are lots of people out there who would tell you, in confidence of course, that making more money, being an industry leader, and having the respect of your peers outside the business goes a long way to make up for the fact that their brother and sister and them do not like each other very much.

Let’s say that each one of you aligns yourself with a group of successful peers, people you know, like, trust, and respect – where your ideas will be heard by others with an open mind. The members of your group will offer you continual, unbiased knowledge and feedback because they have no axe to grind, no advice to protect ,and they are not likely to feel diminished by your success – rather that’s what they are there for.

They are not your employees, your managers, your board or your family – so they will consider your ideas and offer insights that will help you test your assumptions in private, with additional decades of experience to validate them.

The result ¬ fully developed, well considered, actionable ideas and tactics that you can take to your family members and company managers as clearly though out solutions to pressing problems and exciting opportunities.

Instead of spending your time sniping at one another you and your family members can create a management succession plan that combines the best thoughts from many experts in your industry. Each of you will have peers and mentors rooting for the success of these combined strategies.

Instead of being one of the vast majority of successful companies that fail to successfully emerge from the business management succession process, yours will be one that is a model for the industry.

The only thing you’ll have to agree on, if the stage is small, is which one of you will accept your industry’s company of the year award!

Technorati Tags: family business management succession planning, farm succession planning, management succession planning

Decades of statistics illustrate that most successful businesses ultimately fail.

In fact only 35% of successful family businesses (and virtually all small businesses are family owned) survive through the second generation, and of those only 20% survive through the third.

The reasons are typically straightforward and the excuses have been the same, from my personal experience, for over a quarter of a century.

How do I define failure when taking about these successful businesses? Why do I say these business fail?

What are the options available to a successful family business owner when the founder or senior generation of owners come to the end of their careers?

The business can be sold, or can it, as a going concern – but that rarely works out since the owners have to trust in the buyer’s ability to run the place successfully enough to pay their own salaries and still have enough left over to pay the note. Ask your accountant to illustrate this for you.

Or the company can be broken up and sold for the value of its assets – as in an auction. That’s unlikely to be satisfactory, certainly not to the employees who lose their jobs – and the depreciated value of the businesses assets are unlikely be to large enough to provide the stream of income required for the retiring generation let alone having anything left for their heirs. That’s pretty pitiful results for a lifetime of work, huh?

That leaves the only real possibility – the continuous operation of the company in the hands of the next generation through a process of succession that does not require a sale or other taxable event that diminishes the assets and the resulting income stream from the business.

Business owners who have put in twenty or more years building their companies know that succession is their only hope. They have all seen folks try the clever strategies to do otherwise and then ended up with very little to show for their life’s work.

Why do these otherwise successful business owners fail to take the steps necessary to insure that succession happens?

Business advisors know that a seamless succession process is the only way their client can exit the company satisfactorily but can’t seem to get their message across to them.

Everybody knows that business succession planning is the systematic process of ownership transition, and it is no simple task. Maybe that’s the problem, it’s too complicated for business owners to understand?

Iif you have been around a while, you know that business succession planning is not a one-shot event, but requires everyone’s commitment to review and revise. What, did you get bored thinking you could sign a paper and keep on with business as usual?

Needless to say, business succession planning can bring about peace of mind and it also protects unprepared family members from decisions connected with owning, selling and managing the family business – so what’s the problem, why don’t you do anything about it before the good options are taken away from you?

I have learned over the last thirty years helping successful family owned companies re-design themselves for the future beyond the current generation, that business owners already know 80-90% of what they need to know in order to have a successful transition to the next generation.

Advisors often fail to serve them either because they refuse to acknowledge the most productive role they can play, providing the tools and tactics available to help make the business owner’s dreams come true, or they assume the “not invented here” position and refuse to listen to the other members of their client’s advisory team.

Too often, estate and business succession planning is done with an eye toward the tax and financial aspects only, ignoring the very important impact of family dynamics – maybe because nobody asked the business owner specifically what he or she wanted to happen.

This invariably leads to plans that collapse since the unspoken desires of family members will serve to undermine not only the tax and financial objectives but also may destroy the family harmony.

Why don’t advisors address the emotional issues that are keys to moving forward with transition planning instead of simply concentrating on the legal issues, tax issues, insurance issues, and management issues.

What’s holding these business owners back? Isn’t it because nobody has asked them to describe what they want the business to look like? They have not asked them who is going to run the place and what plans they would like to see in force for their spouses and those offspring who are not involved in the business – where their entire net worth is tied up?

Does anyone ask the business owner their opinion, what’s possible given the abilities of the members of the next generation? Maybe if their advisors would ask and then listen to the dreams and goals of the business owners and their families they could create plans that everyone will buy into?

If the business owner knows 80% of what he or she needs to know in order to create a successful succession strategy – who are they gonna call to help them uncover them? Who’s going to ask them “what’s important” over and over again across a range of issues to help them surface for themselves their desired results?

As a business owner don’t you think that if someone could help you articulate your desires – that you could take them to your advisors so they can set it up?

If you are a lawyer, accountant, or life insurance professional doing business with business owners wouldn’t you welcome the insights of a professional business coach who has helped your client convert their deeply held feelings into words on paper you can use to create the documents?

Or are you afraid that the coach is going to encroach on your propriety turf? What’s more important to you – being in charge of the process and keeping all others at bay, or taking all the help you can get to insure that the resulting business succession plan achieves the desires of the business owner?

And finally, if you are a business owner you are the one with the power, the authority, and the responsibility to yourself, your employees, and your family for the ultimate success or failure of your succession plan and the financial future of your family. If your advisors won’t actively seek help of others, if they are determined to do “it” their way and you don’t fire them, the possible tragedies to follow are your responsibility.

You can blame whoever you want but that won’t change the fact that it is your responsibility.

Will the future be the time you’ll be happy with the decisions you make today, or not?

Who’s in charge of your business succession process?

Who is going to have to live with the outcome?

You know the answer, now it’s time for you to do something about it.

Technorati Tags: effective succession planning, family business succession planning, management succession planning

Doubtless, there is a universal justice emanating from reason alone; but this justice, to be admitted among us, must be mutual. Humanly speaking, in default of natural sanctions, the laws of justice are ineffective among men: they merely make for the good of the wicked and the undoing of the just, when the just man observes them towards everybody and nobody observes them towards him. Conventions and laws are therefore needed to join rights to duties and refer justice to its object. In the state of nature, where everything is common, I owe nothing to him whom I have promised nothing; I recognise as belonging to others only what is of no use to me. In the state of society all rights are fixed by law, and the case becomes different.

But what, after all, is a law? As long as we remain satisfied with attaching purely metaphysical ideas to the word, we shall go on arguing without arriving at an understanding; and when we have defined a law of nature, we shall be no nearer the definition of a law of the State.

I have already said that there can be no general will directed to a particular object. Such an object must be either within or outside the State. If outside, a will which is alien to it cannot be, in relation to it, general; if within, it is part of the State, and in that case there arises a relation between whole and part which makes them two separate beings, of which the part is one, and the whole minus the part the other. But the whole minus a part cannot be the whole; and while this relation persists, there can be no whole, but only two unequal parts; and it follows that the will of one is no longer in any respect general in relation to the other.

But when the whole people decrees for the whole people, it is considering only itself; and if a relation is then formed, it is between two aspects of the entire object, without there being any division of the whole. In that case the matter about which the decree is made is, like the decreeing will, general. This act is what I call a law.

When I say that the object of laws is always general, I mean that law considers subjects en masse and actions in the abstract, and never a particular person or action. Thus the law may indeed decree that there shall be privileges, but cannot confer them on anybody by name. It may set up several classes of citizens, and even lay down the qualifications for membership of these classes, but it cannot nominate such and such persons as belonging to them; it may establish a monarchical government and hereditary succession, but it cannot choose a king, or nominate a royal family. In a word, no function which has a particular object belongs to the legislative power.

On this view, we at once see that it can no longer be asked whose business it is to make laws, since they are acts of the general will; nor whether the prince is above the law, since he is a member of the State; nor whether the law can be unjust, since no one is unjust to himself; nor how we can be both free and subject to the laws, since they are but registers of our wills.

We see further that, as the law unites universality of will with universality of object, what a man, whoever he be, commands of his own motion cannot be a law; and even what the Sovereign commands with regard to a particular matter is no nearer being a law, but is a decree, an act, not of sovereignty, but of magistracy.

I therefore give the name "Republic" to every State that is governed by laws, no matter what the form of its administration may be: for only in such a case does the public interest govern, and the res publica rank as a reality. Every legitimate government is republican;10 what government is I will explain later on.

Laws are, properly speaking, only the conditions of civil association. The people, being subject to the laws, ought to be their author: the conditions of the society ought to be regulated solely by those who come together to form it. But how are they to regulate them? Is it to be by common agreement, by a sudden inspiration? Has the body politic an organ to declare its will? Who can give it the foresight to formulate and announce its acts in advance? Or how is it to announce them in the hour of need? How can a blind multitude, which often does not know what it wills, because it rarely knows what is good for it, carry out for itself so great and difficult an enterprise as a system of legislation? Of itself the people wills always the good, but of itself it by no means always sees it. The general will is always in the right, but the judgment which guides it is not always enlightened. It must be got to see objects as they are, and sometimes as they ought to appear to it; it must be shown the good road it is in search of, secured from the seductive influences of individual wills, taught to see times and spaces as a series, and made to weigh the attractions of present and sensible advantages against the danger of distant and hidden evils. The individ

Too long. TRY to identify pieces that are more crucial and ask only those.

Or people will get too bored reading this.

What was one of the consequences of the attack on Pearl Harbor?
a) It weakened U.S. naval strength.
b) It discouraged Americans from fighting in World War II.
c) It destroyed the Japanese air force.
d) It made America adopt a Japan-first strategy of war.

Which was not part of the process of mobilization for war?
a) The Germany-first strategy
b) Ending the Selective Service Act
c) Production of vehicles and weapons
d) Converting industries to war production

Which was a characteristic of the war in the Pacific?
a) Fighting on a succession of small, heavily fortified islands
b) Using airpower to avoid long land battles
c) Trench warfare
d) Lightning war

Which best describes the Japanese Americans interned during the war?
a) They were loyal to Japan.
b) They were no threat to the United States.
c) They were allowed to live in converted hotels.
d) They were planning to leave for Japan.

Any answers to any of them are greatly appreciated.

Hmm, i have no knowledge of WWII except playing Call of Duty World at War lol.

What was one of the consequences of the attack on Pearl Harbor?
a) It weakened U.S. naval strength.
b) It discouraged Americans from fighting in World War II.
c) It destroyed the Japanese air force.
d) It made America adopt a Japan-first strategy of war.

Hmmm I think A and B

Which was not part of the process of mobilization for war?
a) The Germany-first strategy
b) Ending the Selective Service Act
c) Production of vehicles and weapons
d) Converting industries to war production

C?

Which was a characteristic of the war in the Pacific?
a) Fighting on a succession of small, heavily fortified islands
b) Using airpower to avoid long land battles
c) Trench warfare
d) Lightning war

B

Which best describes the Japanese Americans interned during the war?
a) They were loyal to Japan.
b) They were no threat to the United States.
c) They were allowed to live in converted hotels.
d) They were planning to leave for Japan.

a

Who’s that Pokemon? It’s Mr. Mime! (Final Fantasy Tactics)
—
A little in-joke about Final Fantasy Tactics, and the “Who’s that Pokemon? It’s…” segments from the old Pokemon anime show. Also note this is the shortest video I’ve made.

The Mime (Mimic, Kitsune) job class in FFT is unlocked by… going to Gamefaqs and looking it up yourself!

FFT: War of the Lions (PSP) owners click here: http://www.gamefaqs.com/portable/psp/game/937312.html

FFT on Playstation, click here (better resource): http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/psx/game/197339.html

Mime Wikia page, copy and paste link: www.finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Mime_(Final_Fantasy_Tactics)

Mime: Warrior who can Mimic others. When an ally takes action, he or she mimics it completely. A warrior who has abandoned his or her own identity, instead mimicking the actions of allies in battle.

The Mime is a job class from Final Fantasy Tactics. The reward for training a unit in most job classes, the Mime is unique in that it learns no abilities. Instead, it immediately mimics any action any of the player units do. If a unit uses a Potion, the Mime will also on the very next turn. If a unit attacks one square in front of it, the Mime will do likewise. It is because of this that the Mime needs a lot of careful planning to be effective. As the trade-off to this, they essentially get as many turns as there are allied human units in the battle. They are also competent physical warriors, due to their stats and innate support abilities. Mimes can be used to set up traps, or attack enemies when the person using the skill is not in range. He may attack 2 spaces up, and one to the left, and the Mime will do the exact same, hitting the enemy if it happens to be there. They are also useful with Dancers and Bards, as 1 Mime and one Dancer/Bard will equal double the dancing/singing without any waiting. More Mimes will equate in tripling or further, depending on how many are used.

One note of interest is the Mime’s appearance. Females have a Fox mask, referencing Japanese Mythology, in which many Foxes can transform to look like other beings, and Males have a hat which resembles that of a Parrot (Beak facing back), likely referencing a parrot’s ability to mimic human speech.

Innate Abilities:
+ Brawler (Martial Arts)
+ Beastmaster (Monster Skill)
+ Concentration (Concentrate)

Unlock Mime by having:
Squire & Chemist at Level 8
Geomancer, Lancer (Dragoon), Mediator (Orator), & Summoner at Level 5 (Level 4 in the playstation version.)

“A warrior takes sword in hand, clasping a gem to his heart. Engraving vanishing memories into the sword, He places finely honed skills into the stone. Spoken from the sword, handed down from the stone… Now the story can be told… SQUARE PRESENTS The Zodiac Brave Story” – Final Fantasy Tactics

Final Fantasy Tactics (ファイナルファンタジータクティクス) is a tactical role-playing game developed and published by Square (now Square Enix) for the Sony PlayStation video game console. It was released in Japan in June 1997 and in the United States in January 1998. The game combines thematic elements of the Final Fantasy video game series with a game engine and battle system unlike those previously seen in the franchise. In contrast to other 32-bit era Final Fantasy titles, Final Fantasy Tactics uses a 3D, isometric, rotatable playing field, with bitmap sprite characters. The game is set in a fictional kingdom called Ivalice, which has just ended its war with the neighboring kingdom of Ordalia. The story follows Ramza Beoulve, a young cadet who finds himself thrust into the middle of a conflict, where two noble factions are coveting the throne of the kingdom. While the war was caused by a conflict of succession, Ramza was exposed to a plot that involved the kingdom’s dominant religious organization. A spin-off was created in 2003, called Final Fantasy Tactics Advance for the Nintendo Game Boy Advance (itself having a sequel called Final Fantasy Tactics A2), and in 2006, a stand-alone title called Final Fantasy XII was released for the Sony PlayStation 2. All three games take place in the fictional land of Ivalice. An enhanced remake of Final Fantasy Tactics, Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions, was also released in 2007 as part of Square Enix’s new Ivalice Alliance project. Overall, the game received positive reviews from gaming magazines and websites.
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Pokemon Poke Mon ファイナルファンタジータクティクス Final Fantasy Tactics “Final Fantasy Tactics” War of the Lions Funny in joke FFT WOTL Class Change Job Mr. Mime video game Who is who’s that Whos it’s it its pikachu sound clip audio file PSP playstation portable PSone PS1 play station square enix gameplay random odd weird wierd

Duration : 0:0:10

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What do you do when it feels like no matter what, employees just arent listening? How can you keep employees motivated through periods of change and instability? How do you tailor messages to different employee groups?

On September 17, 2009, Terry McKenzie, Senior Director of Global Employee Communications and Communities at Sun Microsystems, visited with the Graziadio Business Report to answer the questions above and more.

Terry McKenzie with Danielle L. Scott

Duration : 0:46:45

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Technorati Tags: Business, Change, Communication, communications, Danielle, employee, engagement, gbr, Graziadio, Management, McKenzie, Microsystems, Pepperdine, Report, Scott, Sun, Terry