Succession and Exit

Is a Team Sport

By John E. Anderson, MS Management

          Entrepreneurs are confident in their abilities. Over-confidence can lead to bad results. You have a specialized team for your business operations. Do you have a specialized team to assist you with concluding your current business?

          Practicing the alternative perspectives of subjectivity and objectivity can increase one's understanding of the multiplicity of relative truths. You have inner and outer teams to compare perspectives for greater clarity and deeper understanding.

          Certainty of knowledge is frequently position related. Change positions and one can see a new truth, not realized from other positions. Insights realized in one team can be applied to other contexts. Thus, we build, refine and maintain our varied team(s).

          This is why business leaders depend upon advice on finances and the law, for example. It's why the ambitious are curious about performance and systems. To whom can you turn for intelligent business conversation?

          A robust team of external advisers can introduce you to new ideas before you risk being the last in your industry to know about competitive dynamics and innovative trends. YouTube, blogs, books and national industry conferences keep us connected across the country and globe, but who can you sit with to gain direct insights?

          Yes, technology allows us to isolate for focus, but life in dynamic business communities offers other advantages.

          In our experience, some owners sell their business without proper representation and suffer the consequences, i.e., getting full cash price but not planning for taxes in advance, then having to pay more than 50% to the IRS. Or how about the case where a key employee in a business about to be transferred threatens to disrupt the sale if not compensated to remain with the venture.

          Learn more about things to do and not do when selling or transferring your business ownership or in the legal transference of a not for profit entity you've begun or for which you are responsible, go to www.BeCauseBusiness.com and call the Be Cause Team to participate in our leadership study and practice groups.