Crucial Conversations

There Are Five Critical Succession Conversations That All Family-Business Owners, Including Entrepreneurs, Should Be Prepared To Have, Says Rochelle Clarke, Author, Founder And CEO.

- Rochelle Clarke

Flying home from a funeral a few years ago, I started pulling together a business continuity plan for a family friend’s business.

The father and his wife had died and even though he had been preparing their daughter to take over the business, she wasn’t ready yet. It threw the entire business into disarray. And it made me stop and think because he had done everything ‘right’. He had identified a successor and ensured that she was being prepared but what he hadn’t planned for was his own mortality.