Success and Succession: Unlocking Value, Power, and Potential in the Professional Services and Advisory Space

Some Final Words

As we wrote this book, many people asked, “Why are you doing this?” There are two reasons. First, we believe that there has been a voice missing in the whole transition story—the voice of the successor. We have tried to present a thorough picture of the organizational, financial, and emotional dimensions of management and ownership succession, with a view balanced between the legitimate concerns, fears, expectations, and hopes of both sides of this necessary transition. Where we've had to make a choice, where we've had to express a preference, we've nodded in favor of the successors in order to encourage their voice for the future of their firms, to build legacies that duly honor the founders. All of that is to support the second reason for the book: the benefit to clients. In some important sense, these transitions are about leaving the past behind and looking to the future—and especially to a better future for clients. Their future needs to trump anyone's past.

This is not to say that irresolvable conflicts between founders and successors must occur. On the contrary, the goal of this book has been to help all parties avoid those conflicts altogether or comfortably resolve them when they do arise. We trust that the learnings shared in this book will ease the pressure for everyone involved and help create much greater clarity for the tidal wave of transitions to come. Nor is this to say that the past and the future can never collaborate. In fact, they do; the future ...