The succession process can cause havoc in family business and family. Especially if process occurs only once and without a significant investment in planning. Here are three ideas to help ensure success for your family business. 1. Hire most competent advisors (attorneys, accountants, financial planners and family business experts you can find and afford.

Succession planning is a complicated process and requires different kinds of expertise. Not every professional service advisor has special training and experience necessary.

For instance, few lawyers, accountants, family therapists and psychologists are specifically trained or experienced in this field. You may wish to consider using family business experts to act as a quarterback for succession planning process. All too frequently different advisors to family business owner develop costly and ineffective sequential solutions to complexities of succession. If someone is selling elevators, escalators are usually never recommended as a means of transporting people within a building.

2. Business valuation is a critical element of succession planning.

There are many reasons to value a business. Unlike socks where one size fits all, one valuation does not fit all situations.

One of my favorite stories about Yankee catcher Yogi Berra is one about him going into a pizza shop and ordering a pizza to go. The proprietor asked Yogi if he would like pizza pie cut into 6 or 8 slices. Yogi replied 6 because he was not that hungry!

Families grow faster than business

For many family businesses, families grow faster than business. Their business is like a pie that is being cut into smaller and smaller pieces. This can end up with more family members in business than what business can afford to employ. Often this creates a situation where none of family members are making a decent living; or where, because of a lack of re-investment (machinery, trucks, computers, etc) in business, business loses its competitive advantage in market place.

Hiring strategies for family members

To avoid this problem, we recommend that family businesses develop hiring strategies for family members so that only those family members who acquire a skill or expertise that business needs are invited to join business.

Kemba Dunham, a writer for Wall Street Journal, said she could understand strategies for family members in business, but what about other family members. She posed a very interesting question to me – "What can non-employee family members contribute to family business?"

GREAT QUESTION! We went on to discuss two very successful strategies we have used with our family business clients.

Create a family foundation