Successful farmers know that management succession planning, not just the estate planning element, of transitioning their farm to the next generation is more important today than ever before. Fortunately there are time tested strategies the senior generation managers and their key employees can use to create an ongoing management knowledge transfer to their successors.

To the current economic environment, add our government’s interest in micro managing our lives and businesses, plus global competition that is fierce and getting more so. Succession planning mistakes a successful farm could absorb only a few years ago can absorb the farm completely today, while hardly leaving a wet spot.

Recent strategies show us that for the time being at least, Washington DC is an activist stronghold. The resulting uncertainties have altered the business landscape in so many ways, making effective succession planning far more difficult than it was just a few years ago. Not more difficult from a technical perspective or for that matter even a taxation related point of view. But more challenging none the less.

Many successful farmers are enlisting the resources of the industry peers, their fellow association members, and other successful business owners across the country to help them develop a continuously operating management succession process. Even though it may be your style to sort of make it up as you go along, when it comes to management succession planning you need to be sure that the information you are relying on is up to date. Books about management succession planning from 5 or 10 years ago will be out of date.

The advantage of relying on a group of your peers is that their information and insights are current, relevant, and actionable for you. Plus there is no charge for their services. If you decide to create your own business owner mastermind group, see if you can add at least one member of the younger generation.

Experience is important, because of the real-life insights that come from having seen their own or a colleagues 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.

Every successful farm operation is feeling the effects of an aging workforce. It is as true today as it has ever been that in almost every case the farm owner has key employees within ten years of their age, people they have grown up together with in the business.

We often referred to as the “bridge” group, the key players in the organization whose experience mirrors that of the senior generation and whose age creates a bridge between the senior and successor generations. A staggering number of these employees are ready to retire or will be within the next 10 years.

Those employees will take with them something very valuable; wisdom. Effective succession planning requires the head of the organization to be able to identify someone that can easily step into their role. That can be challenging.

A mastermind group of neutral eyes can help with that, too, even helping to manage the differences between and the opinions of these two important groups, the bridge generation and the farm’s successors. Online tools are available to help you “see” what’s going to happen, or at least, what is expected to happen, over the next two decades. Effective succession planning can ensure that your business will continue to be successful in the future.

Procrastination is one thing that you cannot afford. Let your management succession planning start today.

Find More Realty Reputation Management Articles