Every business owner leaves the helm, passes the baton, or just plain retires. So how do you plan for that event?
At least once a month on one of the major cleaning industry discussion groups, there’s a post about how to sell your cleaning business. Selling your business is usually a simple, cut-ties way of transferring the leadership hat to someone else. But what do you do when you intend to make a more complex, more subtle transition, even groom someone internal into becoming the new leader?
Leadership consultant Dan McCarthy offers these Dos and Don’ts:
- Do have at least one internal successor prepared to take over.
- Do notify your own manager(s) and partner(s) before beginning the process.
- Don’t send out mass, impersonal notifications.
- Don’t badmouth your company, the industry, colleagues, or employees.
- Do prepare a comprehensive transition list for your replacement.
- Don’t leave a pile of problems you’ve swept under the rug because you didn’t want to deal with them.
- Don’t finally get involved in every problem or project.
- Do give sufficient notice; the higher up you are on the ladder, the longer the notice and transition period.
- Do anticipate and respond to people’s individual concerns.
- Do take time to be “in the moment.”
- Do offer to maintain mentoring relationships.
- Don’t use this opportunity as “truth serum.”
- Don’t work on your new job on the current company’s dime.
- Do everything you can to set your team up for success.
- Don’t give too much advice to your successor.
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