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Farm Succession, Appoint a Planning Coordinator to Steer the Process
When it comes to family business succession planning, or farm succession planning, since they are the same thing - nothing good happens by accident. And that includes the possibility of succession planning progress in the right direction.
Having a team of professional advisors in place to assist you with farm succession strategies they know work and will most likely be attractive to you is great - but it is not enough.
Acting like you are actually ready to cooperate with the rest of the family when seeking creative solutions for your farm succession to the next generation may not actually fool anybody either. Is this the first time you have all started down this road or have succession plans been started before only to lose steam quickly?
If this is your first attempt at farm succession planning great, you can get it right the first time. And if business succession planning, up to a point, has become almost a full time job with no success so far, perhaps there's a reason.
It's like when you turn off the fire under a pot of boiling water. It will instantly start cooling off and in a short while the rolling boil will be just a few bubbles then nothing. However the water is still hot and ready to boil quickly when you light the fire next time.
EWith eery successful farm succession plan we've seen, one that have moved from the concept stage to ideas, to strategies, to the creation of the various legal documents - all the way to implementation there is one constant. Someone had been put in charge of seeing to it that things get done. Someone who will keep the heat on all the time.
This is not the job of the advisors. They will each sit back till the cows come home, waiting on the other advisors to do something. These professionals are not ever going to take the bull by the horns and call you up either - asking you what you think, what you want them to do next, and reminding you that the ball is still in your court.
And professionals who do take action are universally mistrusted by their peers. They are looked upon by their fellow professionals as pushy or worse, aggressive even. Never mind that being pushy is often necessary to get people off the mark and moving forward.
If you are the senior generation on the farm this role, the one we call "planning coordinator" is not for you. If you were really pushing the farm succession process forward, calling your lawyer and accountant every other day asking them what's taking so long, dragging your spouse into the bank to talk about the trust, and setting training goals for your on-the-farm successors, there would be no need to read this article - you'd already have your farm succession plan in place.
So, if someone must be put in charge to keep mom and dad in the loop, keep the advisors moving forward, and keep an eye out for successful succession strategies being used by their peers for ideas that work - who should it be? The planning coordinator's job is to ask questions, assemble information, talk with everyone involved, etc.
Decades ago that's what we did. That is what helped our clients actually move seamlessly through the farm succession process. Later we helped the farm owner appoint somebody who was directly involved in the business, a family member who had a vested interest in getting and keeping the farm succession process moving. Who has more interest in that than the appointed leader of the next generation of farmers.
I have personally seen how well this has worked for many dozens of farms. This was and is the method of choice for thousands of you today.
There is another option, hire a family business coach. They will do all the things a family member would do and they will not be considered to be allies of one side of the family or the other.
The bottom line, whoever is chosen to be the planning coordinator - they must be proactively asking the questions, pushing until the answers are given, and coordinating the activities of everyone involved, and everyone will be involved if you want your farm succession planning process to be successful.
About the Author When Wayne Messick decided it was time to create a version of Passing Down the Farm for the new millennium, he first had to ask and answer three important questions. "In two decades, what's changed, what's stayed the same, and what should we do?" If you are serious about farm succession or if you are a professional involved in farm succession planning, visit Passing Down the Farm to learn more.
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