Succession Management Program

Creating a business that will last beyond your lifetime requires a plan; a detailed and thoughtful plan that looks beyond the founder’s personal endgame strategy. Creating a sustainable business and finding Success in Succession Planning™ means rolling up your sleeves with our team of experts and working on the appropriate structural elements to support the growth and profitability necessary to attract, retain, and reward a multigenerational team of owners. The Succession Management Program (SMP) will help you build a valuable enterprise that doesn’t rely on any one, single professional for its success. The process unfolds in three separate steps outlined below.

Phase 1: Plan Design, Development, and Analytics

Our consulting team works with you to design a customized succession and continuity plan. To properly develop both a short- and long-term plan, we will analyze and offer suggestions to significantly improve key elements of your operations including your organizational, entity, compensation, and profit structures. A formal valuation is also included. Our analysts will model various transition and financing strategies necessary to empower next-generation owners while simultaneously helping the founders realize the value of what they’ve built. We will collaborate with your local CPA and hold separate meetings with founders and successors so they can fully understand the opportunities and obligations of small business ownership. In the end, you will receive the “blueprints” for your business in a written plan summary supported by financial models that extend, in many cases, for a decade or more.

Phase 2: Implementation, Documentation, and Corporate Governance 

Multi-owner/multigenerational businesses in a highly-regulated industry require a deft touch and a legal team that understands how to help all participants succeed. In Phase 2, our legal team translates your succession and continuity plan blueprints into a complete document set, guided by the Phase 1 plan design and analytics team. We also help your team understand and implement appropriate corporate governance measures to ensure that past leadership is maintained while future leadership gains a voice and a hand in the process.