Successful leadership must look at relationships from a strategic perspective. Part of this requires the Senior generation to intentionally transition strategic relationships. One of these, frequently forgotten, is the professional advisor. Here are a few tips:
• Long before you plan on “passing the baton,” design a plan for your successor to develop relationships with your advisors: your attorney, accountant, insurance broker, banker and others. Encourage successors to chair critical meetings or shadow you.
• Create projects for your successor to build a relationship with one of your advisors.
• Inform your advisors of your succession plan.
• Challenge your advisors to transfer their loyalty to your successor: make it part of their job. (In the case of a lawyer, for instance, this may involve a formal, legal agreement.)
• If your advisors plan to retire around the same time as the senior generation, and have a long-standing relationship with the family business, work with your successor on developing a plan for how use current advisors and how to select new ones if necessary. Help your successors get in the “driver’s seat.”
Sum and substance: Advisor relationships are strategic. Manage them well to insure a successful transition.
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