Succession Planning
- Legal and Financial
- by Desmarais Financial Services
- rachel@dfsfinancial.ca
The Covid-19 pandemic was and remains a major disruption that couldn’t have been foreseen by most business owners at the start of 2020.
The confusion of the early days, however, is beginning to clear. For owners who were planning for a transition, there is a path forward – be it bringing the business to a changed market, delaying the decision, or staying put for a time.
No matter the decision, proper preparation, and organization will make it easier.
Succession planning may be the single most neglected aspect of business ownership. Don’t make the same mistake that so many others do. Instead, get started with your plans today.
After all, you can’t anticipate when a serious illness, accident, disaster, or as we’ve seen, a pandemic will strike, but you can prepare for what will need to be addressed should one happen.
You buy insurance to protect the company from hurricanes, floods, and fires. You install security systems to defend the company from theft. And you back up data to an off-site location to safeguard your business’s information.
Many business owners get so busy with the day-to-day operations of their company that they fail to make succession planning a priority either for selling the business or ensuring management continuity.
As a business leader whether you’re young or old, you should never think you couldn’t be hit with a serious illness. Or forget that a key employee (or several) could be enticed away by another company that needs their skills and is willing to pay top dollar for them. Any of these scenarios can leave your business uniquely vulnerable.
What steps should you be taking now?
The goals are to ensure preservation of the current business as well as provide for an orderly and stable future transition whether it be by selling externally or internally to an employee/team. As such, the first and most critical step is setting a goal to implement both a business continuity plan and a business succession plan. The sooner, the better.
We have all learned a valuable lesson from the Covid-19 pandemic: A significant business disruption can happen with very little advance notice, and not being prepared can be disastrous.
Once you develop a plan, revisit it regularly and adjust and update it so that it is always ready to go when you need it. The key takeaway is that the plan needs to grow and change with the business in order to work effectively when/if a disruption happens.
Perhaps it’s human nature to think we’ll always have time to deal with it later. The truth is if you don’t get around to it and the unexpected occurs, the impact on your family and employees could be devastating.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
At Desmarais Financial Services we help you successfully manage, navigate and make sound decisions that ensure your life’s work comes to a successful conclusion.
If you have a question or concern or just want to chat, Rachel can be contacted at the phone number or email on this article (see below).
The confusion of the early days, however, is beginning to clear. For owners who were planning for a transition, there is a path forward – be it bringing the business to a changed market, delaying the decision, or staying put for a time.
No matter the decision, proper preparation, and organization will make it easier.
Succession planning may be the single most neglected aspect of business ownership. Don’t make the same mistake that so many others do. Instead, get started with your plans today.
After all, you can’t anticipate when a serious illness, accident, disaster, or as we’ve seen, a pandemic will strike, but you can prepare for what will need to be addressed should one happen.
You buy insurance to protect the company from hurricanes, floods, and fires. You install security systems to defend the company from theft. And you back up data to an off-site location to safeguard your business’s information.
Many business owners get so busy with the day-to-day operations of their company that they fail to make succession planning a priority either for selling the business or ensuring management continuity.
As a business leader whether you’re young or old, you should never think you couldn’t be hit with a serious illness. Or forget that a key employee (or several) could be enticed away by another company that needs their skills and is willing to pay top dollar for them. Any of these scenarios can leave your business uniquely vulnerable.
What steps should you be taking now?
The goals are to ensure preservation of the current business as well as provide for an orderly and stable future transition whether it be by selling externally or internally to an employee/team. As such, the first and most critical step is setting a goal to implement both a business continuity plan and a business succession plan. The sooner, the better.
We have all learned a valuable lesson from the Covid-19 pandemic: A significant business disruption can happen with very little advance notice, and not being prepared can be disastrous.
Once you develop a plan, revisit it regularly and adjust and update it so that it is always ready to go when you need it. The key takeaway is that the plan needs to grow and change with the business in order to work effectively when/if a disruption happens.
Perhaps it’s human nature to think we’ll always have time to deal with it later. The truth is if you don’t get around to it and the unexpected occurs, the impact on your family and employees could be devastating.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
At Desmarais Financial Services we help you successfully manage, navigate and make sound decisions that ensure your life’s work comes to a successful conclusion.
If you have a question or concern or just want to chat, Rachel can be contacted at the phone number or email on this article (see below).