“We must all be willing to take responsibility for our actions or lack of actions.”

I’m sure you’ve heard the expression that “everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die” – sort of like we wish we could play the piano, but do not want to spend the years required in learning to do so.

In the same way we want the farm to magically pass itself along to the next generation with no muss, no fuss, and no bother – yet we avoid discussing how it will be our actions that will govern whether that happens or not.

As you begin this process I hope you will start to consider that the more you are able to disengage your beliefs from “the way we’ve always done it” the more likely you’ll “see” the right ideas when they are presented.

You will be more capable of considering what’s actually possible to achieve. You will be better able to remain flexible and consider ideas coming from others, your family, your advisors, your peers, etc. with an open heart and an open mind.

No matter where you are in the farm’s hierarchy, ask yourself what you really want the future of the farm to look like for you?

Think of the process like this. Each one of you writes down what’s important to them on a 3×5 index card. The cards are all dropped into a bucket, to be taken out by the advisors who make notes on them before putting them back in the bucket.

The bucket is shaken and a magic door opens on the side and a single sheet of paper pops out, one sheet containing a strategy that addresses everyone’s concerns and proposes a solution – steps to be taken to insure that everyone’s needs are met.

OK, so it won’t be on one sheet of paper – but if you and every other member of your family discuss what’s important, your advisers will be able to help you create the solutions you are all looking for.

In the next session I will discuss the role of the person we call the “Planning Coordinator” – an insider who can take all those 3×5 cards, someone with whom to speak in confidence, and someone who will deliver the cards and their meanings to the advisors.

The planning coordinator will help you sort our which of your objectives are the most important and which are the most urgent. He or she will also ask you about your motivation and explain the motivation of the farm’s owners in taking on this process on behalf of the farm’s future.

When the planning coordinator communicates with the farm’s team of advisers they’ll be able to see more clearly how some objectives are leverageable – where one or two actions taken together can satisfy the goals of everybody for example.

And the advisers, armed with up to date information and wishes can reach conclusions quickly about objectives can be achieved easily – low hanging fruit if you will.

Here are five questions to get you started, they’ll give you an idea where you are right now as well as how close or far you are to answering them fully.

We have heirs who are strongly committed to running the farm in the next generation?
Needless to say this is critical – someone has to step up, raise their hand and say that they will be part of the farm’s future. Later I’ll be talking about the leadership and management training that must be ongoing so these individuals are as ready as possible to step up to the plate.

We have had an impartial valuation of our farm land and business operation recently?
This valuation gives you advisers something concrete to base their estimates of various transfer cost on. And it may provide a baseline – for measuring the values created by the actions and commitment of your successors, when considering how to address the “fair vs equal” dilemma I’ll address later.

In our current estate plan, our personal objectives, feelings, and concerns were given equal weight with tax considerations?
You won’t have to look far to find horror stories where documents created to save taxes that no longer exist create more problems for the heirs than they solve. Documents created by the number cruchers may have been right on target when the documents were created – you were going to have them updated regularly remember, but now they are not only ineffective they may actually punish one group of heir in favor of another. If you died last night – how would it all be working out today?

We have qualified open minded advisors helping us with our succession, strategic, and estate plan?
Don’t worry about this. By the time you get ready to take serious steps you will have the right advisors in place. I will show you how to avoid those afflicted with the deadly “NIH Syndrome” as well. The NIH syndrome is the actual belief on that the last really good idea was one of their ideas. Other ideas not invented here are discounted, never again to be considered seriously. You’ll learn by the end of this email series how to become a much better consumer of professional services for your benefit – not the benefit of the service provider.

We have already made specific plans for the distribution of our estate and we have written documents in place that effectively deal with future management and business continuation issues?
Your answers here will tell the rest of your family, and eventually your advisers, how seriously you have taken the creation of strategies related to passing down the farm in the past. The more attention you’ve paid in the past the more questions that have either already been answered or need to be looked at again. No matter what – the decisions you make along the way will all come down to this, so give the question some thought. If you could waive a magic wand, what would you want to answers to be?

It has been my experience that the above questions often create more questions than they answer. Often those questions are around “how can we…” or “what would happen if…” etc. These become great questions for the advisers to wrestle with.

I have found it important as well as instructive to ask everyone each of these questions and those that arise from the conversations as they move through the members of the farm family. It is a great first step in opening up the lines of communication that often result in surprises that simplify the process for everyone.

The process of asking and answering these and the other questions gives everybody a sense of how much thought and planning has been done as well as how much need to be considered as the process moves forward.

Next time I’ll introduce the key player in your farm succession planning process – the planning coordinator.

Wayne Messick,