Who Will Run Your Company In 20 Years?

When you spend your days putting out fires, responding to customer needs and trying to get your inventory under control, it's difficult to look down the road and think about how to organize the business for the future and decide who will run it. When you think about succession planning, however, it's probable that you ask a trusted colleagues, a business peer, for their opinion and advice.

[USPRwire, Tue Oct 16 2007] When you spend your days putting out fires, responding to customer needs and trying to get your inventory under control, it’s difficult to look down the road and think about how to organize the business for the future and decide who will run it. When you do think about succession planning, however, it’s probable that you ask a trusted colleague, a business peer, for their opinion and advice.

"A business to business peer group work is the perfect venue to conduct succession planning," explains Wayne Messick, lifelong consultant to management of privately held businesses and author of Realize Your Personal and Business Potential: The 21st Century Peer Group Process. "Business to business peer groups provide circular mentoring or reciprocal coaching opportunities (to use the trendy terms), allow you to brainstorm regarding issues, ideas and solutions with people you grow to trust who have dealt with similar problems and situations."

"A business to business peer group meets regularly through the telephone and can help you sort out how to protect your business financially in the future when it’s time to transfer ownership to the next generation in the family, decide which offspring or in-laws should be given executive control and determine how the management changes should be incorporated, as well as a variety of other concerns," says Messick.

A peer group can function efficiently and effectively via regular telephone conference sessions, creating an advisory council of peers that will become a trusted source of advice, add a measure of accountability to your initiatives and provide a sounding board for the ideas of others and yourself.

When succession planning becomes the focus for your peer group, planning becomes an accountable activity with periodic goals set to complete tasks and report back to the entire group. Guest speakers that are experts in the legal and financial fields can be brought in to share advice on a one-time basis. The members of the group hold each other accountable, breaking the succession planning process into manageable tasks with timeframes set in order to achieve them.

Read this entertaining and informative article about succession planning in privately owned businesses, http://www.ibizresources.com/peer21/succession-planning-business-organization.html"Succession Planning and Business Organization." The article contains a link to a story recently published by the National Hardwood Lumber Association, where Mr. Messick's insights were quoted extensively.

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