Be Professional With Your Meetings.

How do we bring up those three little words, FAMILY SUCCESSION PLANNING

Family meetings are unavoidable and a must if you are to move forward and began to communicate effectively and achieve positive outcomes, meetings can be uncomfortable and confronting for some family members however they will over time prove to be of great benefit when working through the Succession Planning process.
Everyone needs to get to a place where they feel comfortable to speak up and be valued for their contribution, whatever that may be at the time. The main focus in the beginning is to just get bums on seats around the table together all at the one time. When we say bums on seats we don’t mean in the vehicle checking stock waters! This is a very common mistake that people make, while it may be nice and relaxed and non confronting it really just allows for more communication breakdowns in particular when it is only a couple of members of the family having these conversations.
Meetings require some form of structure which we know can be quite a struggle for some families in particular within rural businesses, why waste time sitting around a table when we could be getting a job done and having a yarn at the same time? This may be the case for a lot of rural families as it certainly was for our own family however after the first few meetings you soon discover just how productive these “waste of time” meetings can become.

MEETINGS AND LEARNING TO COMMUNICATE

For your first meeting your primary focus is getting as many family members or business associates as the case may be to the meeting and keeping it relaxed, the first meeting is all about setting yourselves up for a winning outcome. The first meeting may best be treated more like a chat over a cup of tea to allow people to get used to the idea of all being together at the same time, rather then trying too hard to control the situation. There may resistance from people to attend the meetings at first and that is their choice and completely normal, some people are reluctant to change and may see these meetings as a waste of their time or find them threatening. Meetings are best held on a monthly basis, this time frame allows actions from the previous meeting to be carried out and also keeps the momentum going with regular communication between everybody in the business.

SUCCESSION PLANNING REQUIRES CHANGE

One of the key elements families need to understand when getting started with their succession planning is that “if nothing changes, nothing changes” and “we cannot change other people, we can only change ourselves”.
It can be a harsh reality for some, but it is completely true!
We made many changes in our lives all be it small at first; the important step was choosing within ourselves to make those changes and starting with first things first and really at the time the only thing we had complete control over, OURSELVES!
We do not have the right to attempt to change other people, although for some reason we seem to believe that we can and spend a whole lot of time and energy on this exercise, only to be left feeling frustrated and deflated for all our seemingly good work.
We are not for one minute saying we know it all or that we have all the answers, that would be untrue, nor are we here to tell you how to run your family or your business. However what we are saying is what we did during our family succession planning process worked and that is the undeniable truth!
We are here to offer to you a real life example of a successful succession outcome and to share with you our real story about what we did to overcome challenges and achieve outstanding lasting relationships whilst going through the rural succession planning process. There is no silver bullet when it comes to family succession planning, the hard work is up to you, the key word here is YOU!, no one knows your business better and no one knows your family better.
On many occasion we have had people say to us that we were just lucky and that’s why things worked out for us. We say to them luck comes about when preparation meets opportunity. Our success was from hard work, education, determination and nothing more! We made a decision and dared to be different from 98% of rural farming families when it came to succession planning, we strove for excellence and worked on our relationships every day.
It saddens us when we hear stories from others whose families have become strained, children growing up hardly knowing their cousins purely because of the rift between family members due to family successional issues.
We could not imagine life without our family and to see our children and their cousins sharing in each other lives not because they have to but because they want to, brings a sense of pride knowing, that all our hard work has paid off, not only for our generation but also for past and present.

THE HARDEST THING WITH SUCCESSION PLANNING IS GETTING STARTED

It’s easy for us to look back now and see where we were going wrong in the beginning and also to remember what is was like, the feeling of despair, the hours of contemplating whether we go or stay working in the business.
We hope that this website will be a life line to families going through succession planning.
We are all meant to live wonderful lives, the life of our dreams!