Making Good Decisions is More Important than Succession Planning

Let’s say for a moment that succession planning wasn’t important. Making good decisions is always important.

Many of us humans are either “tree people” or “forest people” to varying degrees. We’re apt to automatically make decisions based only on what we see right in front of us; or what the long term goals are. Apt to be real good with detail or the big picture, again to varying degrees.

However, to run a viable business, IMO we need to both make decisions based on now and how it might affect the company’s future. Ergo, when someone has a business it’s important to create (at a minimum) a vision for 1 year, an exit vision, and a vision for somewhere in better. They can be start-ups or in business 20 years looking at options for exit. 3 visions help.

It’s easier for a business owner who has comes from corporate America to understand doing that. We Executives are taught to look at all angles. Plus it’s necessary because a whole heck of a lot of people’s lives are involved in that decision. We see from the recent fiasco on Wall Street that somehow since the time I was there, traders, bankers, mortgage companies, even people (etc) got very short sited. Look what it has cost us.

So, even though I can’t see the future, I, a micro-business owner can “think” of how it might go; and update my visions at least yearly. If I do that, I have a tool that gives me a fighting change to chance to leave a company worth something to whomever in my family wants it; or whomever buys it – depending on the exact way “it ends”.

There are many things I would have never done (create products or write down so much of what I do for instance) had I not looked “into the future” and realized that one day I want to license others to use/sell my products. Plus my clients receive additional value because I’ve already created those things based on all the other mistakes I made  .

My company is worth more because we have those items to sell.

I read stories all the time about owners dying at their desk (etc) and their families can’t even get into their computer. I find that sad. Why? Because so many of us invest so much of ourselves in our businesses and we owe it to ourselves to leave a legacy.

I can tell you this though. My clients humor me and we create the two “extra” visions for their company. Then one day they call or email me to say “they get it” – they get why they really do need those three visions.

Another thing comes about.tpp. I’ll hear them say things like. I can do this now and it will work, but to do it better or right I need to do “x”. So indeed succession planning helps them make better decisions… and as an extra … it helps make their business worth more.

(c) 2010 Maria Marsala

What do you think about creating more than one vision? OR succession planning?