The challenge of choosing your child as your successor, is that not only is there the knowledge about the technicalities of your business to pass on. There is also the need to overcome the family communication dynamics. Be patient; be communicative and spend time with your child.
It’s essential that you have ways of assessing and monitoring your successor’s (read child’s) progress that amount to more than “just a feeling that things won’t work out”, particularly if your child successor disagrees with your assessment. Some ideas to help to achieve success of the succession include:
– Spend some time talking about exactly what each of you wants out of the business relationship.
– Make sure you are both clear on how long his or her training period will last.
– Set out goals and time lines and milestones.
– Agree on how progress is to be measured.
– Agree on how your successor will get feedback and from whom the feedback will be obtained (for example, are you the only person assessing your successor’s progress or will there be someone else involved as well, such as a senior manager or ?)
The idea is to make sure that both of you know exactly what is expected to happen and when it is supposed to happen.
Also agree on how long your successor will have to try out working for you before he or she decides that running your business is not what he or she wants to do. That way, neither of you is stringing the other along unnecessarily when things aren’t going to work out as hoped.
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