Dan Aberhart talks with Patti Durand, author of The Future Leader, and Chris Corbett of Brightrack about why working hard and waiting is not a succession plan. They ask three questions: how well you know yourself, your farm business and your farm family. The tension is that operationally strong successors and founders who are doing their best are both missing the conversations that would prepare them for the handoff. The takeaway for people in agriculture is to start the conversation early, say what you don’t know, and agree on the outcome you want before you ask advisors for options.
Working hard is how most farm successors earn their place. It is not the same as being prepared to lead. A successor can run the sprayer, raise the crop and know the ground, and still be missing the decision-making, the numbers and the family conversations that the founder has carried without ever naming them.
Patti Durand, family business advisor and author of The Future Leader, and Chris Corbett, her partner at Brightrack, join Dan Aberhart for a live briefing built on three questions: How well do you know yourself? How well do you know your farm business? How well do you know your farm family? They explain why the successor's job is to prepare to lead and the founder's job is to prepare to leave, why "my parents have a plan" is an assumption worth checking, and what to do when a conversation gets hot.
What's Inside
• Why being operationally strong is not the same as being ready to lead, and which decision-making skills are usually missing
• Why the founder's job is to prepare to leave, and why that is harder than it sounds
• The assumption that parents have a plan they will reveal when the time comes, and the case for saying plainly that you don't have one yet
• Why the family's general accountant or lawyer may not be the right specialist for succession, using a family doctor and a hip replacement as the comparison
• How to notice when you are triggered, why a time-out of at least twenty minutes helps, and the safe word one family agreed on
• Four prompts that open a hard conversation: help me understand, say more, tell me more, I'm curious
• How to tell whether you have a transition question or a business sustainability question
• Why you don't have to love the numbers, but you do need to read the dashboard
• How to start family meetings: a meeting about meetings, a short agenda and a shared picture of the outcome you want
Key Topics
• Successor preparation and founder letting go
• Assumptions about a plan that may not exist
• Choosing the right specialist advisor for succession
• Self-awareness, time-outs and repairing a hard conversation
• Reading your farm's financial dashboard
• Starting family meetings and agreeing on the outcome
Resources Mentioned
• The Future Leader, by Patti Durand
• A successor assessment tool from Farm Credit Canada, mentioned by Patti
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