Succession Planning for Sustainable Small and Family Business

Small and family-owned businesses rarely employ first-rate, well-qualified talent in human resources. More typically, business owners must be jacks of all trades and serve as their own accountants, lawyers, business consultants, marketing experts, and HR wizards. Unfortunately, that does not always work well when business owners embark on planning for retirement or business exits. To help business owners avert problems, this book will offer limited advice on the management, tax and financial, legal, and psychological issues that should be considered when planning retirement or other exits from the business. This comprehensive approach is unique when compared to the books, articles, and other literature that currently exists on the market. This book takes on a bold and integrated approach. Relevant research combined with the rich experiences of the authors brings this comprehensive, evidence-based approach to action-based approaches for the reader.

• Deciding What to Do: Life and Career Planning for Small Business Owners and Family Leaders
• Considering Your Choices
• Planning for Succession in Small and Family Business
• Planning the Strategy for Succession
• Recruiting a Successor from Inside, Outside, or Utilizing Other Options for the Organization
• Special Issues in Small and Family Business Succession Planning
• Family-Owned Business Dynamics and Politics
• Questions and Answers about Psychological Issues in Small and Family Business Succession
• Questions and Answers about Legal Issues in Small and Family Business Succession
• Questions and Answers about Tax and Accounting Issues in Small and Family Business Succession
• Questions and Answers about Financial Planning Issues in Small and Family Business Succession
• Questions and Answers about Talent Management Issues in Small and Family Business Succession
• Transitioning the Business and Executing the Plan

So, what is preventing you from starting this effort tomorrow? Small and family businesses are the bedrock of all businesses. More people are employed by small and family-owned businesses than by all multinational companies combined. Yet the research on small and family businesses is bleak: fewer than one-third of small business owners in the United States can afford to retire. Only 40 percent of small businesses have a workable disaster plan in case of the sudden death or disability of the owner, and only 42 percent of small businesses in the United States have a succession plan. Fewer than 11 percent of family-owned businesses make it to the third generation beyond the founder. Lack of succession planning is the second most common reason for small business failure.

• Owners
• Senior Leaders
• Function Professionals of Small and Family Owned Businesses

William J. Rothwell, Ph.D., SPHR, SHRM-SCP, CPLP Fellow is President of Rothwell & Associates, Inc. He has worked in HR for more than 40 years and has also worked as a consultant for more than 50 multinational corporations--including Motorola China, General Motors, Ford, and many others. In 2012 he earned ASTD’s prestigious Distinguished Contribution to Workplace Learning and Performance Award, and in 2013 ASTD honored him by naming him as a Certified Professional in Learning and Performance (CPLP) Fellow. (ASTD is now called ATD.) In 2014 he was given the Asia-Pacific International Personality Brandlaureate Award.

He has authored, coauthored, edited or coedited 115 books since 1987. His recent books since 2017 include Virtual Coaching to Improve Group Relationships: Process Consultation Reimagined (Routledge, 2021), The Essential Human Resource Guide for Small Business and Start Ups (Society for Human Resource Management, 2020); Increasing Learning and Development’s Impact Through Accreditation (Palgrave, 2020); Workforce Development: Guidelines for Community College Professionals, 2nd ed. (Rowman-Littlefield, 2020); Human Performance Improvement: Building Practitioner Performance, 3rd ed. (Routledge, 2018);  Innovation Leadership (Routledge, 2018), Evaluating Organization Development: How to Ensure and Sustain the Successful Transformation (CRC Press, 2017), Marketing Organization Development Consulting: A How-To Guide for OD Consultants (CRC Press, 2017), Assessment and Diagnosis for Organization Development: Powerful Tools and Perspectives for the OD practitioner (CRC Press, 2017). He also authored such books as The Leader’s Daily Role in Talent Management (2015), Effective Succession Planning, 5th ed. (2015), and Becoming an Effective Mentoring Leader (2013).