One day, the child in this photograph might expect to inherit her parents’ motorbike.
She couldn’t expect to use it until she’d learned to drive it safely, keep it in good order and register it with the appropriate authorities. If that seems like too much trouble, she might very well sell it, run it into the ground, or simply leave it to rust.
Handing over your business to your employees (or your children for that matter) isn’t enough to ensure that it will thrive afterwards. Transferring ownership transfers power, but not the ability to use that power responsibly.
Of course your people might have that ability already, but if you’re the boss of a 5 or 10 person business, it’s unlikely that you or they know that conclusively.
After the sale is almost too late to find that out. You’re not the boss any more.
So, if you’re planning to go employee-owned, or to pass your business on to your children, make sure they know how to run it before they take ownership.
- Spell out your Promise of Value, so everyone know exactly who the business serves and what it really does for them.
- Document your desired customer experience with an OurScore , so everyone can see the context of the business as a whole.
- Let people learn and play multiple parts of that score, so they feel how it all fits together.
- Give them responsibility for living up to the Promise in all the parts they play, and the autonomy to interpret it, to enhance the audience experience.
- Automate admin and the collection of feedback from each performance.
- Get everyone used to regular practice at using that feedback to improve both the OurScore and their own playing skills.
This takes effort, but not as much as you might think. Like most things, the sooner you start, the better. But you could do it while the legalities of transfer are being worked out, or even include it as part of the transfer process.
The upside is you’ll have something even more worth handing over, and for all the new bosses, the ability to truly cherish it as your legacy.
Discipline makes Daring possible.