Write the one-page succession plan this month

Succession isn’t a document. It’s a company that runs without you, and people prepared to take it. But it starts with a page, and most owners don’t have one.

Not because they don’t care. Because the full plan feels enormous, so it waits. And waiting feels safe, because nothing about it is urgent. That’s exactly the problem.

The one page answers four questions

1. Who runs it?

Write the name of the person who runs the business day to day if you’re out for a month. Then write the name of the person who runs it if you’re out for good. They may not be the same person. That’s fine. Write both.

2. Who owns it?

Running a business and owning it are different things. Will ownership go to family, to a partner, or to a buyer? If you haven’t decided, write down the options and what would decide between them. An undecided answer, written down, is still more useful than nothing.

3. Who gets told?

List the people who need to know: the person you named in question one, your key managers, your family, your bank, and your largest customers. A plan nobody has heard about protects nobody. It doesn’t retain your best people, and it doesn’t reassure anyone.

4. In what order?

Sequence matters more than most owners expect. A family member who hears about the plan from an employee, or a manager who hears about it from a customer, is how a good plan turns into a conflict. Decide who hears it first, and from whom: you.

Why a wrong draft beats no draft

Your first version will be wrong. Write it anyway. A wrong draft you can revise beats a perfect plan that exists only in your head, because the plan in your head can’t be used by anyone else.

And when a plan is missing, the handoff still happens. It just gets decided for you: by a health event, by a buyer with a 30-day window, or by a family member who believed they were promised something in a conversation you don’t remember having.

Make it a habit, not a project

• Put an hour on your calendar this month to write the page.
• Have the first conversation with the person you named in question one.
• Review the page once a year, on the same date, the way you’d review insurance.

One page. One hour. One conversation. That’s the start.