Succession in transformation
Handing over responsibility for the business in good shape for the future.
Succession is about far more than filling individual roles. When leadership, ownership, boards or key positions change hands, responsibility, trust, knowledge, relationships and decision-making capacity shift too. If succession planning starts too late or is scoped too narrowly, uncertainty spreads, from the owners and the workforce to customers and partners. It becomes especially critical when informal authority, personal influence or family dynamics go unspoken. For owners, supervisory bodies and management, succession is therefore not an HR matter but a question of continuity, control and securing the company’s future.
„We see succession and generational change not as a one-off handover of ownership or management responsibility, but as a profound process of transformation.“
Robert A. Sedlák
Founder and CEO transformis Consulting SE | Guest Professor ECNU Shanghai | Certified business mediator (German Mediation Act) | Head of the family business competence team
Succession is a strategic development process. It brings together business and relationship issues, role clarity, responsibility, ownership logic, leadership capability and the organisation’s future viability. We advise and support organisations, business families and leadership teams in shaping generational change, leadership transitions and ownership structures with foresight, transparency and durability. Succession and generational change call for more than handling legal, tax, HR or family questions in isolation. transformis® brings together systemic organisational consulting, strategic corporate development, leadership and people development, and advice for business families. Our systemic perspective helps to identify hidden expectations, conflicts of loyalty, competing interests and long-standing decision habits, and to make them discussable. We distinguish between conflicts that can be resolved and structural paradoxes that have to be managed for good. In our view, successful succession does not come from removing contradictory demands but from building the ability to work with them productively over time. We combine sensitivity to family relationships and owner interests with a clear focus on the company’s commercial success, leadership capability and future viability. We do not replace the decision-makers; as an independent adviser, we help those involved reach their own sound decisions. Done well, succession does more than secure the company’s survival. It enables the next generation to shape the company’s future on its own terms and to keep developing its strategic self-renewal.
Handover risks become security for the future. Unclear roles become shared responsibility. Succession becomes lasting renewal.
Your organisation gains clarity, continuity and trust. Roles, responsibilities and decision rights are settled before uncertainty holds back development. Transitions become an opportunity for strategic renewal rather than a risk.
We link a sound succession and ownership strategy with the company’s strategic development, including clarifying visions of the future and owner interests.
We develop family governance structures and define decision-making and participation rights so that the different logics of family, shareholders and company stay connected over the long term.
We prepare and implement the handover of leadership and responsibility, both within the family and to external successors.
We identify, search for, select and develop suitable candidates for key positions, using aptitude assessment, and build strong management teams.
We advise and coach successors and members of the outgoing generation one to one.
Where conflicts of interest arise from family relationships or shareholder law, we support structured conflict resolution and, where needed, family mediation.
We plan internal and external communication and stabilise the organisation during and after the handover.
Case study
How a business family brought together succession, strategic options and new roles.
Explore examples of our work and ideas for your own transformation.
All articles on this topicHintergrundinformation
Family businesses have to manage the family, the company and the shareholders at the same time: transitions, governance, shareholder skills and succession.
Read moreFachartikel
Succession in a family business touches family, ownership and management at once. How to look at all three together and plan the transition with foresight.
Read more
Orientation
Your first 100 days as a new leader: how to consciously clarify your mandate, expectations and working relationships when leadership changes hands.
Read moreWhen handing over responsibility, leadership and ownership becomes a question of the company’s future. A typical starting point is “Unresolved succession”: transitions in leadership, ownership or key positions have not been settled and put continuity, trust and control at risk. In family businesses, questions of ownership transfer, strategic direction and future leadership overlap with family expectations, personal life plans, emotional ties and existing balances of power and influence.
Our promise: handing over business responsibility in a way that secures the future. Handover risk becomes future security. Unclear roles become shared responsibility. Succession becomes lasting renewal. We advise and support the new management as it implements strategic change, establishes new leadership structures and secures the generational transition for the long term. transformis® sees succession and generational change as an integrated transformation task: strategic, organisational, personal and shaped by family dynamics.
As a strategic development process that brings together business and relationship issues, role clarity, responsibility, ownership logic, leadership capability and the organisation’s future viability. We advise organisations, business families and leadership teams on shaping generational change, leadership transitions and ownership structures with foresight, transparency and durability. That calls for more than handling legal, tax, HR or family questions in isolation.
We group the 17 services in this field of action into 3 areas: “Succession and ownership”, “Business family and governance” and “Leadership succession and transition”. Those described in detail include business succession and succession strategy, and family strategy. The full overview is further up this page; in the initial call, we relate each service to your situation.
We facilitate every working session, agree all results together in the room and document them online. Each session ends with minutes accepted by everyone present. Afterwards, transformis reviews each session internally and uses what it learns to prepare the next one.
External consultants add clear value when blind spots need uncovering, unhelpful established patterns need breaking, complex change needs facilitating, structuring and stabilising, or when neutrality and independence are needed, especially if conflict, competing goals or internal politics are blocking decisions.
In the documented case, management was handed over two years after the start. The project report on generational change in an automotive retail group also records a vision of the future with prioritised options, a strategy map and strategic initiatives, newly clarified leadership roles and a newly established supervisory board. transformis plans twelve months for preparing shareholders for their role and three to twelve months for filling key positions.
Your contacts are Robert A. Sedlák (founder and CEO of transformis Consulting SE, Guest Professor at ECNU Shanghai, certified business mediator under the German Mediation Act, head of the family businesses competence team) and Frédéric Sedlák (Head of Business Development, Senior Consultant, business mediator). We start with an initial call about your situation, the people involved and the right next step. Outside advisers bring structure and fresh observations, not the business decision; that responsibility stays with you.
If you have questions about succession, get in touch.
Founder and CEO transformis Consulting SE | Guest Professor ECNU Shanghai | Certified business mediator (German Mediation Act) | Head of the family business competence team
Let’s talk about your situation and what you want to develop in your organisation.