One of the reasons that business succession planning is often ignored or overlooked is that it involves so many different steps to ensure your company is set up for success after you leave.
From deciding your vision and goals to verifying the right people are in place to providing training to those people, there’s a lot to think about. Even a well-meaning business owner might explore the option of succession planning and then realize all that’s involved, taking a step back and never implementing those key aspects.
Have you thought about taking some of the pressure off of you and letting your current company leaders select their own replacements? There are a few reasons this might not be the best approach for your business.
The biggest issue with allowing leaders to select those who will succeed them is that people tend to choose others like them. Your current company leaders might play a very important role in supporting the version of the company that exists today, but this doesn’t mean their strategies and personality will reflect the business of the future.
Depending on your company’s plans and goals for growth, you’ve got to think about the people who must be in place to hit and surpass those goals. Sadly, this might not be your current lineup of leaders or who they might choose on their own if they don’t have buy-in to the big vision.
It’s a risk to outsource succession planning in this way. It’s better to pull together a pool of candidates who exhibit numerous leadership responsibility types to evaluate those candidates against one another. A broad range of experience sets your company up for leadership that continues well into future generations.
In general, executives tend to struggle with selecting their own replacements anyways, and it’s not a good use of their time, either. By creating a big-picture vision that includes more candidates who could drive the company into the future, you accomplish succession planning that best expresses your company’s needs.
Talk with our Pasadena business succession planning lawyers for a plan that works for your company.
