Do you love your family enough to discuss a succession plan with them?

So many of us put off discussing succession because it does not seem as urgent as other things and because it's easier not to do it. But what are the consequences of our inaction?

Consider the story of a farming family from the southern hemisphere. They decided to have a facilitated family meeting to discuss succession. They had a large business and 3 children. Twins, a boy and girl of 21 who were in full time education. Both of them wanted to travel and neither had decided what they really wanted to do. There was also a younger daughter of 15.
When asked what was in their Will should something happen to both of them, the parents stated that 3/4 of the business would go to the boy and 1/8 each to the girls. The twin daughter turned to her parents and without any malice said "why have you brought me up to believe I was as good as anyone else and then treated me like this?" The parents were mortified and as a result changed their Wills leaving third shares to each child.

Think of the consequences for those girls if the parents had not had the forsight to have a meeting and they had tragically died. Those children could have suffered serious psychological problems and had very mixed memories of their parents.

Some people flippantly say that they are not worried about what happens after their death because they won't be there. However all of us want to leave a positive legacy to our family and would not like to think of our children and families suffering in any way due to our inaction or mistakes.

The cost to our loved ones could be very high if we bury our heads in the sand and refuse to consider succession.

So I ask again. Do you love your family enough to discuss a succession plan with them?

Managing staff the McDonalds way

McDonalds is a huge company in most cities worldwide and one of their many strengths is that wherever you are you know what to expect. You can be in Auckland or Cardiff and the food is going to be exactly the same. How do they manage such consistency? Manuals!
They have a proper proceedure for every operation to ensure consistency for the customer. I daresay someone could come along with another experience from McDonalds but those are rare. Also they manage this with young inexperienced and often temporary staff - an extraordinary achievement.
What can small businesses even farming businesses learn from this? There are so many proceedures that can be written down and standardised, yes even on a farm. The advantage of this is that in times of crisis anyone could come along and run that business. Also it helps so much when you are changing members of staff - they can settle in so much more quickly.
I was fortunate to see an example of this on a visit to New Zealand in 1999. A group of us were talking to a farmer and a car drew up with a relief milker who had never been to the farm before. Our host excused himself and spoke to the milker for less than a minute. He pointed out where the cows and milking parlour were and that was it! How could he do that? He had a manual in the dairy that covered the whole operation, from getting the cows in, milking proceedure and washing up afterwards.
So it can be done. Are there areas of your business you could put in a manual? That farmer said " you have to make it simple so that a monkey could do it because one day one may have to!"