Exit Right
Succession Planning…Yikes!
Succession planning in a family business can be an overwhelming prospect. Personal issues…family issues…business management issues…legal, financial and taxation issues…How to proceed? Where to start?
Right Here!
Exit Right is a little book designed to get your succession planning started on the right foot by introducing you to the key questions you’ll need to answer and the issues that lurk beneath the surface. It will help you keep the big picture in sight — and make you a more sophisticated consumer of the professional services you’ll require as you proceed.
Effective planning is the key to maintaining control of your destiny — and to ensuring family harmony — in your “golden” years. This is the place to start your planning process.
A Quick Read…A 20,000 Foot View
Family business succession planning can involve highly technical input from accountants, lawyers, bankers, financial planners and insurance professionals. With all that technical detail, it’s easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees — and overlook the personal and family issues that an effective succession plan must address.
Exit Right leaves the technical detail to the technical experts. Its focus is on the “big picture” providing business owners and advisors with a simple step-by-step process which ensures that all of the key issues are addressed and all of the parts come together in a harmonious whole. The result? A succession plan that effectively serves the owner, and the family and the business. Exit Right was written for business people, not academics. It’s a quick and easy read- perfect for a long flight or a leisurely weekend. It may be the most valuable time you’ll spend on your succession planning process!
Small Investment, Big Return
You’ll spend thousands of dollars in legal and accounting bills in the course of your succession planning — $15 US / CDN (plus shipping & handling where applicable) protects that investment by ensuring that you have considered the “people” needs that your legal, accounting and investment strategies must satisfy.
The Issues...
Exit Right contains seven chapters, each devoted to one of the key issues that you’ll have to address in your succession planning.
- In Chapter One, Your Second Dream, you will explore your vision for your future and what financially it will take to realize your dream. Your answers to these questions could have a major impact on all the other decisions you will make.
- In Chapter Two, All in the Family?, you will explore your family members’ personal visions and visions for themselves in the business. These explorations will suggest who wants to work in the business, own the business and how family/emotional issues might be handled.
- In Chapter Three, Aligning the Business, you will explore your company’s strategic plan and the steps the business must take to support your personal dreams and those of your family.
- In Chapter Four, Preparing Your Successors, you will consider how you might go about preparing your successors for their future roles in the family business — as executives or as owners.
- In Chapter Five, The New Leader, you will explore the issues related to choosing who will succeed you in the leadership position.
- In Chapter Six, The New Owners, you will consider the business and emotional issues surrounding the transfer of the company’s ownership.
- And finally, in Chapter Seven, Building Your Legacy, you will explore how estate planning issues can impact the entire succession planning process.
Each chapter identifies several key questions you’ll need to answer and underlying issues you’ll need to address as you proceed. Each topic concludes with a series of questions to guide your exploration of the issue and some suggested action steps you can take to move your process along.
Reviews and Commentary
- Canadian Association of Family Enterprise (CAFE). (2001, Fall). Review: Exit Right. Family Enterpriser.
- Family Firm Institute. (2002, June). Review: Exit Right. Family Business Review.
- Schachter, H. (2001, March 2). When It's All in the Family. The Globe & Mail.
- Voeller, M., Fairburn, L., & Thompson, W. (2002). Forward to Exit Right: A guided tour of succession planning for families-in-business-together. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Summit Run Inc.
- Watson, T. (2001, December 31). Family Circus. Canadian Business.