Last Sunday I took my 8 year old daughter to the cinema, to watch the latest Disney animation film, called Elemental. I thought I was up for a couple of hours of mindless fun. Little did I know, that the main story was about a family business and the succession planning issues that one finds in family businesses. It was all so familiar.

Could be that the story line at Disney’s end was written or influenced by a family business consultant like myself as it had all of the usual ingredients, we find in family business succession planning, which are:-

1. Dealing with Succession Planning as an event, instead of a journey, whilst assuming that the successor identified by the present leadership will just want to take over the family business on a certain date in the future. This likely means that succession planning issues are always left on the back burner, until it is many times too late.
2. Difficulty of the present, incumbent family business leadership to ever really let go. This leads to a stuck family business, when owners disagree and therefore can’t prepare for a generational transition. A stuck family business becomes like a perpetual tug-of-war with equal strength on both sides of the rope.
3. Deficiency with how any successor is chosen. Such deficiencies result in not making the successor really earn his or her path to leadership, not having a clear and transparent process of how a successor is to be selected, not considering any external business leadership if no family member is qualified, skilled or committed enough.
4. Many times issues with succession planning, find their root cause with the lack of a proper family employment policy.

By the end of the film, I felt that many issues brought up in the Session 6 and Session 7 of the family business training done last year, where more relevant than ever. I think it would be good if all of you involved in family businesses brush them up (just click on the above links)…. you may also wish to watch the disney animation film itself 🙂