Why some family members.avoid succession planning

To understand why the members of a family business might be reluctant to initiate succession planning, it’s important to consider the family’s life stage at the time of succession, writes Trevor Dickinson.

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The need to start thinking about succession planning does not typically arise until the founder and his or her spouse enter their sixties. By this time, the last of the children will usually have left home, and the couple might be trying to adjust to the vacuum produced by the empty nest. Unresolved marital difficulties that for years had lain dormant, masked by the continual pressures of childrearing and business start-up, may well re-emerge during this period. The death or illness of the couple’s parents often exerts additional pressure.

The thought of growing increasingly dependent on others is especially difficult for couples who place value on managing for themselves.

Retirement and the changes of status that come with it exacerbate these difficulties. Couples at this stage resort to emotional strategies, such as denying the need to deal with succession, refusing to relinquish power, and reasserting their authority and centrality in both the family and the business hierarchies.

For the children, this is also a time of stress and adjustment, as they themselves are adapting to the many demands of the adult world, including marriage (and for many, divorce), careers and parenthood. In addition, they are eager to establish their own financial independence and autonomy at this stage in their lives. These conditions make it unlikely that the children will be patient and supportive of their parents’ attempts to assert their power over family members. On the contrary, they may resort to displacing their own difficulties with succession onto the founder, who is viewed as the only obstacle to their own advancement within the business.