Build a Strong Foundation

Building a strong transition foundation is crucial because it lays the groundwork for your transition plan and execution. The transition foundation consists of three levels that educate your stakeholders, share and support your goals, and create a business culture that is ready for the change.

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Level 1:  Why is planning for your transition so important?

Transition foundation level one builds on five key areas to help you understand why you need to plan carefully for your transition.

  1. Create, Protect, and Preserve Wealth to keep what you’ve worked so hard to accumulate.
  2. Maintain Family Harmony and Unity to encourage family peace and support.
  3. Ensure Employee Security and Engagement to keep your valuable employees productive.
  4. Provide Strong Leadership for the Future to lead the business through the transition and beyond.
  5. Formalize a Workable Business Plan for Success to outline the path towards a sustainable future.

 

Level 2:  What needs to be done to transition the business successfully?

The second level of the transition foundation includes five important components that define the work that you need to do to transition to a passive role.

  1. Integrate Business, Estate, and Financial Planning to ensure your financial security and the continuation of the business.
  2. Align Owner Objectives, Manager Strategy, and Leader Development to enable your successor(s), and management team to understand the transition objectives.
  3. Create a Clear Vision and Values to identify the transition goals and core values supporting the transition process.  
  4. Change Leadership Style and Become a Follower to allow stakeholders to embrace their new roles and responsibilities.
  5. Create Sound Planning and a Decision-Making Process to enable the new leaders/managers to run the business without you.

 

Level 3:  How do guiding principles help create alignment and momentum?

Building the third foundation level entails subscribing to the guiding principles you will need to make good decisions throughout the transition process.  

  1. Elevate Learning to enable a new way of thinking about the business, understand new concepts, and develop the new skills necessary to meet the challenge of transitioning your business.  
  2. Develop People through an interdependent mindset based on shared vision, resources, meaning, understanding, and collaborative action.
  3. Document Processes to guide daily decisions and tasks, anticipate circumstances, and prevent short-sighted decisions.
  4. Build Governance Structures to establish clear roles and decision-making boundaries for effective leadership.
  5. Create High Trust environments by modeling vulnerability, empathy, respect, and looking out for the best interests of others.

 

Next Step: Executing your transition plan.