Sibling rivalry. Mendacity. Greed. Betrayal. A controlling, narcissistic father and a crumbling household empire with nobody to carry it up.
Although we could possibly be any variety of Shakespearean tragedies, the above is a free plotline for the HBO present Succession. Whereas the present is fictionalized, there are dysfunctional households and dysfunctional firms in all places. Typically, the 2 coalesce in a dystopian actuality that makes for nice leisure however horrible enterprise. It additionally provides the misunderstanding that households that go into enterprise collectively will solely ever implode their relationships with their purchasers, their shareholders and one another.
In fact, well-educated leaders perceive that the unpredictable and surprising remaining episode of Succession is what it appears like once you don’t have a succession plan—one thing that ought to be in place lengthy earlier than the top of the corporate passes away or Dr. Phil is known as in for an intervention.
In actual life, efficient succession planning can save firms, not destroy them.
Nobody is aware of this higher than Ivan Lansberg and Devin DeCiantis, who co-wrote The Enduring Enterprise as a tribute to the work they do collectively at Lansberg Gersick Advisors, an advisory firm devoted to serving the world’s main household enterprises.
“One of many issues that’s so distinctive about succession is simply how predictable and inevitable it’s,” DeCiantis says. “Not all dangers are going to current themselves in such an apparent method to each single group.”
“This is among the explanation why we’re on the market speaking about this,” he provides. “We would like extra folks to take care of this proactively moderately than reactively.”
But reactively is what number of firms—together with family-run ones—reply.
Why accomplish that few firms take into consideration succession planning?
“Even supposing we’ve been at this now for 30 years, warning [people] that this is a crucial factor to do,” Lansberg says, “a number of very subtle firms globally don’t have good succession plans.”
Domestically, knowledge from PWC’s 2023 US Household Enterprise Survey reveals that in 2021, solely 34% of family-run companies had a strong, documented succession plan in place. So what’s stopping so many companies from proactively creating succession plans in the event that they’re so vital?
The reply, Lansberg says, is layered—notably in the case of household companies.
“Many entrepreneurs launch into constructing firms, and in some unspecified time in the future of their improvement… limitations of their very own biology are available and hits them within the face, they usually begin questioning, ‘How are we going to proceed this enterprise? And the way do I cross it on to my youngsters or not?’” he says. “Wrestling with that query turns into an important characteristic, not only for the household’s continuity as an enterprising household however for the entire households that reside off the enterprises that… [these] founders create.”
Nonetheless, broaching subjects of demise and hierarchy aren’t issues that almost all households are naturally hard-wired to debate.
“For those who do the psychological experiment of sitting together with your dad and mom to speak about what’s going to occur with the household once they’re now not with you, it’s a scary proposition,” Lansberg continues. “It raises the query of how we’re going to cope with life with out them, nevertheless it additionally erases the entire uncertainties of… my youngsters being grasping. Are they pursuing different targets and never caring about us, and so forth and so forth.”
Succession planning takes time
One other difficulty is one in every of obsolescence. In response to Lansberg, reinvention is usually obligatory for a corporation to outlive within the present market. This could embody bypassing blood lineage by bringing in non-family executives who might be able to provide contemporary views that may transfer the enterprise ahead. However most households could keep away from these discussions out of worry.
“The sum complete of all of those elements leads many firms to get caught flat-footed on the very second when these points have to be clarified and thought via,” Lansberg says. “And sadly, due to that, many find yourself failing.”
Scrambling can simply be averted, DeCiantis provides, however catastrophe prevention takes concerted effort.
“It behooves any group that needs long run success to… be extra proactive and never simply look forward to the guts assault or the ultimate episode of an HBO sequence to encourage them to take care of one thing that really does take a substantial period of time,” he says. “Succession planning isn’t one thing that you simply sit all the way down to at 3 [p.m.] on a Friday afternoon and end at 4 [p.m.] and name it a day, and also you say, ‘Okay, I’ve received the plan, [so] let’s go and execute this now,’ and by Monday morning, there’s a brand new regime in cost.”
Which firms are doing it proper?
Of their ebook, DeCiantis and Lansberg present household enterprise leaders the world over who they are saying have gotten succession planning proper. Along with highlighting notable family-run firms like Kikkoman, Samsung and the New York Occasions, the duo have profiled international firms which might be nonetheless standing robust after surviving navy coups, warfare, financial challenges, terrorist conflicts, technological shifts and political instability.
Listed below are only a few notable examples:
Toraya
One marker of success that DeCientis and Lansberg have seen replicated around the globe in lots of cultures and industries—in addition to on this firm specifically—is submitting to the patronage of a robust political entity. As an illustration, Toraya’s founding household has been making Japanese sweets (wagashi) for the Imperial Home for over 4 centuries.
“Toraya was the popular candy maker to the Imperial Home,” DeCiantis says. As a result of the household’s wagashi turned fascinating to the crown early within the first technology, he provides, they got an imperial crest, which cemented their lifelong relationship to the now constitutional monarchy.
“[Toraya’s] success was so tied to the Imperial Home that when [the capital] moved from Kyoto to Tokyo within the 1800s… Toraya [moved] with them,” he provides. “Their success is vested within the integrity that comes with the blessing of the Imperial Home.”
CEMEX
One other enduring enterprise within the ebook is CEMEX, a pioneering Mexican household enterprise based by the Zambrano household in 1906. DeCiantis and Lansberg say that the household navigated financial upheavals and international market expansions to remodel the corporate from a regional cement agency into a world chief in constructing supplies.
IKEA
Based by Ingvar Kamprad in 1943, the Swedish startup leveraged its early mail-order enterprise to grow to be a world chief in residence furnishings. It additionally deployed modular methods in enterprise and possession to beat important financial challenges and shifting market dynamics and keep its dedication to reasonably priced, high-quality, resilient designs.
Seeking to the long run
For firms which might be hoping to climate the storms of unpredictability—whether or not they’re financial, political or familial—Lansberg and DeCiantis say that whereas being rooted in custom has its benefit, rising with the occasions is a extra direct path to success.
“It’s important to take into consideration the corporate… you wish to construct, not the one which exists at present,” Lansberg says, “after which break down the ability units you want to have the ability to succeed at that firm.”
DeCiantis provides that success in succession is feasible—“You simply have to be intentional and affected person and make investments the time [and resources] essential to get it proper.”
This text initially appeared within the July 2025 difficulty of SUCCESS+ digital journal.
Picture by dotshock/Shutterstock.com
