In a succession plan, the most challenging issue to overcome for an entrepreneur is letting go.  The typical entrepreneur has been everything to the business and often has been called upon to actually do everything, at some point in time.  With the energy, passion and time put into a business, simply to hand it over to another person, whether or not the person is a family member is difficult.

How can you achieve a smooth transition away from the business?

Try some of these age old remedies:

1. schedule time away from the officee – when you are not there, you allow others to make decisions

2. put into your daytimer or scheduling software some time in each week (regularity is important) to plan the succession – if you do not set this time aside, then it will never happen.  Also, this time away from your busy day, will help you become more accepting of the inevitable succession.

3. delegate more – let other’s do what you do.  You may soon realize that you are not always indispensable.

4. let other’s show their initiative and even (gasp!) allow them to fail –  Remember if you taught your children to ride a bike.  Did you let them wobble or did you hold a steady hand on them throughout the learning process.  The best memory that I have of this is when I took my son to bike riding school and the first thing they did was look at his training wheels and say, “We won’t be needing these anymore.”  By the end of that day, he was riding with confidence, without training wheels.

Try any or all of these strategies.

Learn, consider, apply.