Building the future from the inside out.

• Author: Richardson, Mary W.
• Position: Succession Planning - Evaluate needs and direct employee development

Succession planning goes beyond legal structures, practice valuation and the tax code. Succession planning, whether it is for your firm or your client's business, revolves around people--their talents and business maturity--as much as it includes the legal and financial aspects.

Succession planning involves looking at your people as part of the firm's resources (and therefore valuation), and securing a plan to identify and develop those individuals capable of executing the strategy for the future.

How many of us--from sole proprietors to members of corporations--are emotionally ready to find and groom our successor? It's interesting to note that the most difficult transition in a business is from the people who created the business to the people who will run the business. There is a name for this: Founder's Syndrome. So, when we want to begin the conversation on succession planning, we need to talk about Founder's Syndrome as a potential barrier to success. Once we have overcome this barrier, the details of the planning process, including development of your people to successfully succeed your involvement in your firm, are pretty simple and self-evident.

WHY IS IT SO TOUGH TO LET GO?

You are good at what you do. So good, in fact, that you have built a practice from the ground up. You have successfully competed against your peers in your area of specialization--and won. You have brought people in to support your success and--here is the difference--they have been brought in to support you.

Now you need to make a shift and learn how to support them.

If you are going to successfully transition your clients to other individuals who will be running the business, you must be confident that they will be as competent in their practice as you have been in yours. And you need to have them working with those clients while you are still around so you can get feedback on their performance, help them learn how to manage the crises that appear and align their goals and yours to ensure the firm's continuing success.

It's difficult to shift your attention from you and your success to that of your successors. Even some of the smartest people around have trouble with this. I know you can think of at least one example of an organization, firm or partnership where the need for a business leader was painfully evident, yet the practitioner could not trust someone enough to take over the business. Or an entrepreneur who could not let the professionals manage the...