Succession planning and the family farm

I am always inspired by families who take succession planning seriously. It is one of the top reason’s family owned businesses fail or flourish and family relationships either break down or are strengthened.

The simple cure for this problem is an open, honest, and timely facilitated communication process.

The reason it needs to be facilitated is to allow everyone a reasonable chance to have his or her voice heard in a non-threatening, safe environment. My role as a facilitator is to create a new space into which you, as a family business, can start moving.

It is a process and not an event.

It takes commitment and effort to initiate and perseverance to complete. However the rewards far outweigh the effort if you truly want to leave a legacy for your children and family to build on.

I am a trained facilitator with 15 years’ experience and a qualified NEURO LINGUISTIC PROGRAMMING COACH and PRACTITIONER.

I have been through a number of successions in my own large scale beef, crop and dairy family farming business from being an employee, to a profit share partner, to full business partner and lastly to owning my own successful dairy and beef  businesses. I have recently relinquished the management of the dairy business to a share milking partner, in this way converting my operation into a passive income generating operation, so I have done the whole loop one could say.

The reason this is important is that I have experienced the process from all sides as a son, parent, sibling and owner. During this process I have learned what to look out for and especially to listen to what is not being said by the family members. No two situations will ever be the same but the principles are most important.

Most families have once off succession planning discussions, sometimes producing useful manuscripts that never get acted upon.

It seldom works like that!!

 I am more interested in creating capacity over time, in each person, so that he or she can deal with the situations as they arise. This relies on you doing the work to create your PREFERRED FUTURE while I guide the process and help resolve conflict when it arises and it will…

I will help you have courageous conversations that would otherwise not have been had, give you tools that you can practically use to move things forward and give you my commitment to initiate and sustain the process required.

I also specialise in WEALTH CREATION STRATEGIES and STRATEGIC CHANGE MANAGEMENT in the family owned business as part of the succession planning.

I have worked with more than 200 farming families in South Africa and Australia who are seeking to deal with generational transfer of management and ownership between older and younger generations, between siblings and also in-law relations as well as share farming opportunities as a means of succession planning.

I live on THE SUNSHINE COAST, QLD and can either travel to you or invite you to come here for a break to discuss the future, away from your daily grind!

I can be contacted on:

Mobile : 0449 887 875