If one where to sit down and think, you would conclude that Jesus Christ was likely to be the best at drawing up a succession plan. He realised that succession planning is not an event but a journey. Thus, he started from Day 1 building his core team – The Apostles. He spent 3 years intensively training these Apostles, giving them clear guidance as to how to behave themselves within the team, what their mission was all about and how to go about their mission. Then once His mission was over, he gave them the Holy Spirit to encourage and strengthen the training they had all been given, so that then they could go about and actually execute their mission. He surely did not start working about succession planning as He was being nailed to the cross on the Golgota.

This week, we concluded the Award in leading a Family Business Course for the first cohort. The very last input lecture was on Succession Planning. It was done so for a clear purpose. Succession Planning cannot happen in a vacuum. It needs solid foundations to be built upon. As shown below, it is useless speaking about building a Succession Plan if the family business does not have strong foundations with regards Governance and Policies.

Many times I find myself in meetings with family business owners in their 60s or 70s, coming to me to help them in building their succession plan. In essence they want to change things from having a system whereby all governance and decisions rest on them to a system which will allow the next generation (in most cases, their children) to run the business. Most of the time they feel at a loss of how to go about this. This is where the importance of the foundations I spoke about becomes evident. If the family business has no Governance Forums (Board of Directors, Management Team, Family rooms) and has no strategic plan, to mention a few, where all these are in the head of the person that is now trying to get out of the door, building a succession plan on such a situation is virtually mission impossible.

This is why a succession plan is a journey and not an event. It is a journey because such journey is needed to build a culture and system of proper corporate governance, with a functioning board of directors and other governance forums, with a well oiled system of timely financial and KPI reports that promotes a system where decisions are taken in the right governance forum and based on data rather than perceptions. This journey should also result in formulating various policies, from family employment policies to dividend distribution policies, so that these policies can guide even future generations.

If the foundations are strong, then succession planning becomes an easier thing to execute. We would need to make sure that:-

• The departing leader or leadership are really willing to let go (once Jesus ascended to heaven He did not come back and made it clear that when He does come back it will be the end for everyone).
• That the chosen new leaders are skilled and committed to shouldering the new responsibilities.
• That a detailed plan is setup with various milestones about how the transfer of responsibilities is going to happen.

However, many times, the main problem is that the foundations are not strong at all. This is where we would need to focus in order to stand a chance of building a succession plan that can be executed successfully.

In conclusion, may I use this opportunity to wish you all a very Happy Easter.