Your Critical Path to Farm Management Succession Planning
Farm management succession planning is more important today than ever before.
And lots of so-called experts are taking the podiums at your association meetings to describe how their experiences help farm families build on the strengths of their family business structures.
These are the folks who advise you that the way for your family to achieve it’s full potential is by seeking outside advisors and resources to prepare you for your organization’s future.
If you believe that either you are terribly naive (call me about the bridge I’ve got for sale) or you have unlimited resources at your fingertips.
What they really mean is that they want you to pay them to do for you what you are fully capable of doing for yourself.
These so-called experts are living proof of the old adage, that an expert is someone over fifty miles from home and has a laptop computer. A person who borrows your watch and then sets about telling you what time it is. Is that a joke or what?
Farm management succession planning is more important today than ever before.
However it does not require outside advisors or experts to achieve success in the process. Farm families can absolutely realize their full potential as people and as organizations with the help of the folks they already know.
Family farms often find that effective management succession planning is hard, because personal feelings come into play. But what is it about farming that isn’t hard?
Unlike the weather however, there is something you can do about it.
Naturally, when it comes to management succession planning you will absolutely need professional advisors. Those who can and will think outside the box when considering what’s possible for your farm.
But that should be after you’ve come up with the specific direction your want the farm to go.
Your advisor’s job is to know how to convert your goals and dreams into reality. To do that, they have to know your dreams – you do not have to know what’s possible, they will.
If you do decide to hire outsiders to help you, choose a group with at least a couple of young members. Experience is important, because of the real-life insights that come from having seen management succession plans through from conception to creation to implementation. But being “in touch” with today’s specific challenges is just as, if not more important.
Many farms are feeling the effects of an aging workforce. It is as true today as it has ever been that in almost every case the business owner has key employees within ten years of their age – people they have grown up together with in the business. This is often referred to as the “bridge” group – the key players in the organization whose experience mirrors that of the founder and whose age creates a bridge between the founder and the successor generations.
Successful management succession is the key to achieving what the founder – whether it is you, your father or mother, or your grand parents, even your great grand parents had in mind when they began farming in the first place.
When the farm is successfully passed down to the next generation and the next and the next – all the faith, hope, and sacrifice that made it possible has been worthwhile.
That success, just like the successful founding and managing of the business is the result of making more good decisions than bad ones over the years.
Both farmers and their team of succession planning professionals understand that making good decisions today will keep the business on track for the future. Success comes from making better decisions.
It’s that simple, not easy to do on your own however.
In fact the most farmers I know systematically reach out to their hand-pick board of advocates and supporters for insights and advice.
If you want to be even more successful in the future than you are today, you are always on the lookout for ideas and resources to help you.
If developing your farm’s management succession strategy is important to you, you know by now you are in the right place.
Recommended Reading
- Family Farm Succession Planning
- Who in The World Requires a Farm Succession Planning Consultant?
- Are You Someone Who Thinks They Need a Farm Succession Planning Expert and Precisely Why or Why Not?
- Are You Someone Who Requires a Farm Succession Planning Specialist?
- Farm Succession and Strategic Planning Group
