The ABC’s of Family Business Succession Planning

Succession Planning ABC

For a small business owner, succession planning is anything but simple or easy. Perhaps that’s why business owners so often avoid it. It’s another case of the longest journey beginning with a single step. In that spirit, these three steps can start you thinking about succession planning – clarifying the “why”, the “who”, and what to do:

A. Why?
A succession plan enhances the value of your business, whether you plan to sell, retire fully, or just step back. Your investment and years of hard work are better protected and realized with one or more strong successors. Your family and/or valued employees are protected, especially in case of disabling illness or accident, or your sudden death.

A succession plan helps provide continuity and confidence for clients, suppliers, and investors. It can also act as an employee retention and development strategy, and allows you to step back from day-to-day operations without selling or winding the business down.

B. Who?
A strong succession plan involves a team effort. Clearly, you need to take time to find and evaluate strong successors. Family, business partners, key employees and managers need to understand what is happening and why.

Next, get professional advisors involved. Lawyers and accountants, insurance and financial advisors, and business valuators bring specialized knowledge, options and practical strategies to the task.

According to experts in the field, emotional issues are among the top pitfalls encountered by business owners planning for succession or sale. Owners often avoid or delay planning due to anxiety about change, “letting go” and embracing a new role and identity. Having a business advisor on your succession team can help you sort out these personal issues, facilitate stakeholder discussions, maintain your “big picture” focus, and keep your plan on track.

C. What?

Knowing what your business has to offer is a key first step. Investors generally look for strategic assets, turn-key systems, strong management, good market positioning, and the promise of a profitable future.

For many businesses, a succession plan is a key driver of your business valuation. The process includes selecting and training successors, but also having a contingency plan if the original one doesn’t work out.

Thanks to the baby boomers, we can expect a flood of small businesses to change hands in the next decade. How many? According to CIBC, as much as $1.2 trillion in assets attached to some 500,000 Canadian businesses by 2010. The resulting over-supply of sellers and scarce number of buyers will surely affect many business valuations.

A succession plan can help your business stand out from the crowd. It can also mitigate the risks of a forced sale due to ill health, family disputes, industry shifts or market changes.

Preparing early simply increases your options.

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) has established that only 10% of business owners planning to sell have a formal succession plan in place. Thirty-eight per cent have only an “informal” plan, but 52% have no plan at all. That’s a recipe for some interesting times ahead!

To further help owners of small businesses clarify what they might need from a succession plan, the CFIB has prepared a list of questions for your consideration: http://www.cfib.ca/pdfs/succession_qa_e.pdf

Solid succession planning is not a quick-fix project. Depending on the size and complexity of your business, it can take several years to fully implement. Taking even one step today to start the process can make all the difference.

© Mara Osis, 2009

Mara Osis is the Principal of Amati Business Group, a collection of professional advisors dedicated to helping owner-managed small businesses “make their ideal real”. To subscribe to our free e-newsletter for business owners, or to get more information on how we work, who we work with, and the results our clients have achieved with us, please visit http://www.amatibusinessgroup.com

 

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what is talent management?

How does a talent manager carry out the following: planning and implementing workforce budget, recruitment strategies, career path planning and succession planning? Thanks.

Talent management is a modern terminology used to describe the linkage between what you are doing practically and with the knowledge or inner art one has to carry out his or her work. For example the words planning, implementing, workforce budget, recruitment strategies and so on all sound too basic but the important part you have to know is linking these words to the output of your workplace ie to say that those are the tools for any Business but you have to "right fit" these jargons to work output. Another example is I am an Administrative Officer, but I have worked in accounts as well some paralegal duties. My family background is that of construction. Now you will realise that I am multiskilled and this will lead me to talent management as my work at the moment involves administration,accounting, paralegal as well as HR Management.

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Is this food poisoning or a stomach virus or what?

This morning I was in my neighbor Kyle’s apartment when I found a can of spray whip cream he apparently was hiding under his bed so I took the whipped cream home with me and had planned to return it before Kyle came home and caught me in his apartment again. But instead – here’s what happened. I go back to my apartment and cut a wedge of pumkin pie and decided to eat the whip cream sooner rather than later. So I sprayed some but it didn’t spray it just dripped out all liquidy so I decided to call it "drip cream" and as it dripped I caught a whiff and it was like curdled milk and catfish bait – and I noticed that the expiration date had actually passed last march but I figured if Kyle was eating it in bed last night it was safe. So I made a smiley face on the pie in drip cream and I sat down to eat and watch ‘Murder, She Wrote’. I drew my fork closer to my mouth, slowly…deliberately. And at the very precise instant when the first molecules of whip cream touched my tongue, I violently crapped my pants and I flipped backwards over the back of the chair and smashed my neck into the wall.. The wet, horrible explosion was so intense that the blast wave shattered my jaw and tore off my left pant leg. The last few gallons of the drippy brown gut-gravy rushed down my thighs and into the carpet and apparently down into the peoples’ apartment below mine because a few seconds later I heard nine gunshots in rapid succession then I remembered they were a family of nine down there – so it made sense. The police detective told me their suicide note included phrase "Midget Diarrhea" over 30 times – a new record – so I am reasonably sure Kyle will be arrested for 9 counts of 1st degree murder when he gets home from work. Serves him right.

It dripped out because he had used it as whippets (all the air was out due to him getting high). The cream was spoiled and as you know spoiled dairy products can make you sick.

Need help with math please due in 2 days?

6. A spinner that has 3 sections of equal area, numbered from 1 to 3, is spun two times in succession. Which is NOT part of the sample space?
(1, 3)
(3, 3)
(3, 2)
(3, 4)
Does the problem involve permutations or combination? Explain.
10. In how many different ways could a committee of 5 students be chosen from a class of 25 students?
Permutations; the order matters.
Permutations; the order does not matter.
Combinations; the order does not matter.
Combinations; the order matters.
11. You work at a T-shirt printing business. Of the 2,800 T-shirts shipped, 396 have a defect. What is the experimental probability that a T-shirt has a defect? Write your answer as a percent, to the nearest tenth of a percent.
15.3%
14.1%
11.7%
19.4%
Is the sample described a good sample? Explain.
12. To find the average income of an adult in the United States, 250 workers in Tennessee are questioned
No; the sample is not random.
Yes; the sample is selected at random from the population to be studied.
No; the sample is not selected from the population to be studied.
13. A worker takes a random sample of 200 bolts and finds that 30 of them are either too long or too short, thus making them unusable. Estimate the number of unusable bolts in a production of 17,000 bolts.
1,610 bolts
2,550 bolts
2, 140 bolts
2,260 bolts
14. Out of a random sample of 330 apples, 25 are rated "AAA." Estimate the number of apples that would be rated "AAA" in a crop of 57,000 apples. (2 points)
about 432 apples
about 4,318 apples
about 43,180 apples
about 8,636 apples
Short Answer
Solve by simulating the problem.
15. What is the experimental probability that exactly 3 children in a family of 4 children will be boys? Assume that P(boy) = P(girl).

(Hint: Describe your simulation and show or explain your work.) (4 points)

16. The graph shows the population of four towns.

a. Which town appears to have about twice the population of Town C?
b. Which town actually has twice the population of Town C?
c. Explain why the graph is misleading.
(4 points)

17. The results of a coin toss are shown. What is P(heads)?

HTHHHTHTTHHTHTT
THHTHTTHHHHTHTT (4 points)

Simplify the expression.
18. 5C3 (4 points)

19. Find the range of the data.
Scores: 90, 89, 87, 79, 89, 84, 80, 85, 85, 79 (4 points)

20. A drawer contains 4 red socks, 3 white socks, and 3 blue socks. Without looking, you select a sock at random, replace it, and select a second sock at random. What is the probability that the first sock is blue and the second sock is red? (4 points)

21. A lunch menu consists of 5 different sandwiches, 2 different soups, and 5 different drinks. How many choices are there for ordering a sandwich, a bowl of soup, and a drink? (4 points)

22. The Burger Diner offers burgers with or without any or all of the following: catsup, lettuce, and mayonnaise. How many different burgers can you order? (4 points)

{1}
OK

{1}

##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
Yes No

Can’t you much with tese, but if you send me your English spelling and literacy homework I may be able to help. How’s school?

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