Difficult Dialogue

Haji Sahab was reading a book before going to bed. But tonight he had a question in mind which didn’t let him sleep peacefully. The question was “How should I identify the best successor within the family for my business?”

His friend has asked him this question. Wala Press owner, Ahsan, said, “Although Haroon, my eldest son has joined me in the business, but it is not mandatory that the head of the business will be determined in terms of years of experience only”. Haji Sahab agreed and told him that there are other factors to consider while choosing the successor who is going to lead the family business, like:

·???????? Entrepreneurial skills to take the decisions.

·???????? Leadership acumen to lead both family and business simultaneously – generally family comes first in family business.

·???????? Alignment with respect to the area of interest and expertise in running the business.

·???????? Visionary approach for the growth of the business, so that the upcoming generations can earn the fruits from the business.

·???????? Best representative of the family among the business community, which includes local trade platforms, associations as well as international business networks.

·???????? Acknowledgement as one of the most credible human within the family as the successor will be the custodian of family assets, so any misuse of family assets could lead to the family conflicts.?

·???????? Promoter of family well being both from health as well as wealth perspective.

·???????? The successor should have broad minded approach to listen to creative ideas and adopt diversification to target the growth opportunities.

·???????? Open to invest in the Next-Gen education and development.

·???????? Importantly, he or she should be able to identify exquisite talent within the family and exploit the skills of family members.

Haji Sahab realizes the importance of merit while selecting the successor for the leadership role to run the family business. He himself played a crucial role as the founder of Hawa enterprise and his brother also acknowledged his efforts. But is not always the case that the eldest one should be the CEO of family run entities, rather it has to be decided on merit basis. Haji also realizes the importance of this question and thought of writing various alternatives to address this question.

Few of those alternatives include:

·???????? Hiring professionals to run the business and family members can be on the board to oversee the affairs.

·???????? Family leadership can be delegated based on the functional areas of the business like retail, manufacturing, exports, can be segregated among the family members.

·???????? Demographic boundaries could be used to segregate the roles and responsibilities, which results in multiple leaders being trained within the family for senior leadership role.

So, there are ways to address this question which Haji Sahab was asked by his community friend Ahsan Wala, the Wala press owner. Family business advisors can be onboarded to facilitate this process of succession planning.