"Succession planning is a process whereby an organization ensures that employees are recruited and developed to fill each key role within the company." ~ Susan Heath

Our lives and businesses have all kinds of uncertainty in them.  We simply do not know what the next moment, day, week, or years are going to bring.  However, that being said, it is so critical that we all have a plan in place for all of this uncertainty we live with every second.

So many business owners I deal with just do not have a succession plan for many reasons.  Some of his or her reasons are, I just do not have time to make one, I do not know who can run my business if something happens to me, or someone will figure that out once I am gone.

Not having a succession plan is like playing Russian roulette with results potentially being a disaster.

I was helping a wonderful couple that has a building business.  They were doing well in the construction business in spite of a tough economy and I just could feel the love between the two of them even though they had been married for over 25 years.  The husband had the construction license and did all of the work with jobs from the estimating to supervising the work crews.  The wife was the office manager including taking care of the accounting.

I was coaching and mentoring them on their business, as they needed to put some controls on expenses and increase their marketing efforts.  They were always ready to follow my suggestions so I really enjoyed working with them.

Unfortunately, the husband had a stroke and passed away completely unexpectedly.  Needless to say the family was devastated by this loss as one day he was alive and fine and the next day he was dead.

When I met with the wife six weeks after this terrible occasion, she told me that her husband had left no will and no succession plan.  She needed the business income for her family but she did not have the construction license or the experience to keep the business running.  While it has been very tough for her, she is studying for a general contractor's license and doing some things to keep the business going but to put it mildly, it has been very difficult for her.  In fact, she was scrambling so hard to keep the business going that she had no time to grieve.  When I asked her when she was going to be able to mourn the loss of her husband, she said keeping income coming in and bread on the table for her and her children trumped this.  I did strongly encourage her to get some psychological assistance to insure that she got the proper help.

Clearly, in this case and so many others, if a succession plan were in place, this transition would have been so much better and less disruptive.

Now go out and make sure that you have a written succession plan, and of course a will, in place.  While this forces you to think of your demise, for the people left behind having a plan of action makes it worth the personal discomfort.

You can do this.

Jerry Osteryoung is the Director of Outreach of The Jim Moran Institute for Global Entrepreneurship in the College of Business at The Florida State University; The Jim Moran Professor Emeritus of Entrepreneurship; and Professor Emeritus of Finance. He was the founding Executive Director of The Jim Moran Institute and served in that position from 1995 through 2008. His newest book co-authored with Tim O'Brien, "If You Have Employees, You Really Need This Book," is an Amazon.com bestseller. He can be reached by e-mail at jerry.osteryoung@gmail.com. All of Osteryoung's articles can be found in a searchable format at http://jmi.fsu.edu/Services/Jerry-s-Articles.

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