One of the most difficult tasks you face as a business owner is identifying, training, and selecting your successor. As the founder of the business, everything matters to you because there was a time when everything had to matter.

You built the business from the ground up from nothing but sheer determination and sweat. When you started the business you had to do everything and notably there was no one else to come behind you to address oversight or correct mistakes. You had to stay on top of receivables and track down contracts in transit, sometimes just to make payroll and keep the doors open. You had to be there any time the doors were unlocked and worked a lot of Saturdays and Sundays because no one else was available. Everything mattered.

Change is inevitable, Just look around you at what has occurred over the last twelve months. The only question is how are you and your employees going to deal with those on coming lights. In large part the future success of your organization is going to be determined by how well you and your team anticipate and deal with changes that are being imposed on your family, business, market and even this country.

Consider the following survival tips that I have found universally effective for communicating and facilitating the change process:

What's in Succession Planning for Me?

Some things are more obvious than others. However, occasionally I am asked “why should I do succession planning?” Once in a while this question comes from a self absorbed, myopic business owner who views the world from “WIIFM” throne that always states, What’s In It For Me? My response is that succession is not a natural progression of an enterprise. You have a right not to care but if you don’t care, your employees, bank, strategic partners, and communinty who love you are going to resent you.

In my experience as a succession planner I have encountered several business owners who have expressed a desire to transition their business to either family members or entrepreneurial key managers. Many of them believe they are ready to turn over the reins but all too often they have not considered all of the implications and the vast majority have done very little to facilitate an exit strategy for various reasons.