Decision-making & responsibility structures
A successful succession solution combines professional management within the company with appreciation and fairness among shareholders and their families—often across generations.
A successful succession solution combines professional management within the company with appreciation and fairness among shareholders and their families—often across generations.
Bearing responsibility for a business, family, and assets requires clarity in goal setting and methods to systematically resolve conflicting objectives.
Shareholders and business families bring different experiences to the succession process. Founders often make different decisions than entrepreneurs in the third or fourth generation. The size of the company, as well as the size of the shareholder family or families, are among the central factors in shaping business succession.
The succession process is time-consuming. Beyond the obvious and explicit questions, numerous other issues must be discussed, addressed, and resolved. In a business, decisions usually follow a clear, competence-based logic. However, this logic cannot be applied to the business family, as families follow different rules. We categorize different perspectives and make the underlying areas of tension transparent.
Transparency and awareness create the foundation for sound decisions, as they foster an understanding of diverse interests and the necessary compromises. The step-by-step development of structures that facilitate decision-making is a key success factor in a smooth succession.
The owner strategy, or family strategy, answers the central questions facing a shareholder family. Its scope is determined by the complexity of the family. As a minimum, we establish the fundamental topics of the entrepreneurial family and its family business: an active or passive shareholder role, the family's claim to leadership within the company, requirements for managing shareholders, and so on.
From the company's perspective, the role of family members in the business is one of the key areas to be regulated. Shareholders have to answer the question of whether leadership of the company is assumed by virtue of family membership or whether it is tied to qualifications and competencies.
How shareholders see their own role determines the competence they need. We distinguish between active and passive shareholder groups. While the active group shapes and develops the normative framework and strategic principles, the passive group largely decides on the basis of proposals put forward by management. The competence required therefore differs accordingly. As a rule, we recommend acquiring broad knowledge as a shareholder and anchoring it systematically within the shareholder family.
The role played by spouses and partners in an entrepreneurial family is one of the central questions for a growing shareholder family. Changes brought about by divorce, inheritance or new family constellations can have a lasting effect on the group of shareholders. Many entrepreneurial families therefore put clear rules in place, often building on a family constitution. The same questions arise in the case of adopted children or children born outside marriage. The effects on ownership, the shareholder group and succession need to be taken into account at an early stage.
The family business is embedded in the interplay between the entrepreneurial family, the family business and the family assets. The question of selling the company regularly arises in the context of succession. Opportunities, risks and the consequences for shareholders need to be examined openly and transparently so that well-founded decisions can be made. A clear strategic direction on the part of the owners provides orientation, weighs up the available options and supports decision-making.
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