Business Succession Planning: Utah Attorney Shares How to Avoid Common Mistakes

Nearly six out of ten small businesses face an uncertain future because their owners never created a formal succession plan. Without proper planning, these companies struggle when owners retire, face health crises, or simply decide to move on.

Your business represents years of hard work and financial investment that deserve real protection. Many business owners recognize this reality and seek guidance from professionals who specialize in estate and business planning to navigate both legal complexities and emotional challenges. Here's what typically goes wrong and how you can avoid these costly mistakes.

When Waiting Too Long Becomes Your Biggest Problem

Utah-based attorney and estate planning professional Curry Andrews explains that business owners often delay succession planning until retirement feels imminent or until a crisis forces their hand. By then, the damage is already done because developing qualified successors takes years, not months. Starting early transforms succession from an emergency scramble into a strategic advantage that strengthens your entire organization.

The planning process itself demands considerable time and attention that you simply won't have during a medical emergency or unexpected departure. Companies that postpone this work end up making rushed decisions that serve nobody's interests well. Meanwhile, businesses that begin succession planning early can test different strategies, adjust their approach, and prepare multiple candidates for leadership roles.

Why Secrecy Backfires on Even the Best Plans

Keeping succession plans completely confidential might seem wise, yet this approach pushes your best employees straight out the door. Talented people leave when they see no advancement opportunities, completely unaware that the company planned to promote them eventually. Research shows that transparency about development paths actually increases both motivation and retention across organizations.

When employees understand that growth opportunities exist, they invest more energy into their work and stick around longer. The most effective succession strategies balance openness about career development with appropriate discretion around sensitive details. You don't need to announce every decision, but people deserve to know whether their future includes leadership possibilities.

The Family Business Trap Nobody Talks About

Assumptions That Destroy Relationships and Companies

Many family-owned businesses assume children or relatives will naturally want to run the company someday. Unfortunately, this assumption crumbles when family members lack the interest, capability, or desire to take over what their relatives built. Having direct conversations about everyone's actual goals prevents bitter disappointment down the road while protecting both family bonds and business stability.

Sometimes your most qualified successor sits in your finance department rather than at your dinner table. Accepting this reality early gives everyone time to adjust their expectations and find arrangements that actually work. Your plan should reflect what people genuinely want instead of what you desperately hope they'll want.

The Single Successor Mistake

Identifying one person for each key role feels like real progress until that individual accepts another job offer or realizes the position doesn't match their goals. Then you're back to square one with no backup plan and a critical role that needs filling immediately. Building talent pools instead of relying on individual replacements gives you options when circumstances shift unexpectedly.

This approach also solves the leadership vacuum that appears when your chosen successor moves up and leaves their current position empty. Companies with multiple qualified candidates handle transitions smoothly because they never depend on one person's availability or decisions.

What Most People Get Wrong About Choosing Successors

Technical Skills Don't Guarantee Success

Past performance and technical expertise don't automatically mean someone will thrive in your specific leadership environment. When you promote high performers whose personality clashes with your company culture, the resulting friction damages morale and drives talented people away. Every candidate needs evaluation against both skill requirements and cultural alignment to ensure they'll actually succeed.

The executive who excels at one company might struggle terribly at yours because culture fit determines long-term success more than most people realize. This factor deserves serious attention during your selection process, not just a quick checkbox on an evaluation form.

Letting HR Carry the Entire Load

Succession planning works best as a company-wide effort with clear accountability across departments. Your HR team brings valuable expertise, yet they cannot successfully implement plans without active participation from senior leadership. In fact, lack of management support ranks as the single most common reason succession planning fails.

When executives treat succession as someone else's responsibility, everyone in the organization follows that example. The plan becomes paperwork gathering dust instead of actual preparation for the future. Real success requires consistent engagement from the top down, not occasional check-ins or delegated tasks.

Building Plans That Actually Work

Write Everything Down

Detailed documentation creates accountability and provides legal protection if anyone challenges your selection decisions years later. Your written record should explain which competencies you evaluated, what candidates you considered, and why you made each specific choice. This becomes invaluable when demonstrating that your succession followed a fair, consistent process based on legitimate business needs.

Beyond legal protection, clear documentation helps you communicate program success when requesting resources to expand succession planning into other departments. Without written evidence of what worked and why, you're just telling stories instead of presenting facts.

Review and Update Constantly

Plans that sit untouched for years become outdated fiction disconnected from your current reality. People's skills develop, career goals shift, and business needs evolve constantly throughout each year. Reviewing your succession plan every six months keeps it aligned with where your business is actually heading rather than where you thought it might go.

Dynamic plans that change with circumstances serve your organization far better than static documents that ignore reality. Schedule regular updates and treat them as seriously as any other strategic business meeting.

Focus on Essential Requirements

Succession planning sometimes produces job descriptions for imaginary superheroes instead of identifying actual competencies necessary for success. This happens when planners list every admirable quality they can imagine rather than focusing on skills that genuinely matter for specific roles. By concentrating on what's truly required, you'll recognize qualified candidates you might otherwise overlook while chasing impossible standards.

The goal involves finding capable successors who can handle the job well, not mythical, perfect leaders who exist only in wishful thinking. Set realistic requirements that reflect the actual work instead of fantasy versions of leadership.

Plan for Tomorrow's Needs

Technology reshapes entire industries within just a few years, which means the job you're planning for today might look completely different when your successor steps into it. Consider where your industry is heading and what skills will matter most in that future environment. Training people for yesterday's challenges wastes everyone's time developing capabilities that won't matter anymore.

Balance current needs with future requirements, so your next generation of leaders can handle whatever comes their way. The business landscape keeps changing, and your succession planning needs to change with it.

Making Your Transition Strategy Stick

Professional guidance transforms succession planning from an overwhelming project into a manageable process with clear steps and realistic timelines. Attorneys who specialize in business transitions understand both the legal requirements and the practical challenges that arise during ownership or leadership transfers. They bring experience from working across different industries and business structures, helping you avoid expensive mistakes others made before you.

Taking action now allows for the development of talent, testing of different strategies, and adjustment of plans based on changing circumstances. Your business represents years of effort and supports multiple livelihoods that deserve better than last-minute scrambling or wishful thinking. Working with experienced advisors who understand estate planning and business succession helps you build transition strategies that actually protect what matters most when change inevitably arrives.

Curry Andrews Consulting
City: South Jordan
Address: 10808 South River Front Parkway
Website: https://www.estates-utah.com/
Phone: +1-801-960-3830