The answer really depends on how large your business is and how much room you have to maneuver financially. If your business has sufficient resources, the best bet is to put a board of directors in place that will be responsible for securing leadership when you are no longer willing or able to provide it. With your children on the board, they can maintain active oversight and, who knows, it may even lead them to develop a greater commitment to business leadership.
If your business is small and somewhat cash-strapped, you may need to hire a bridge manager: someone who can manage the company for you when you are no longer there in hopes that, in a later generation, family may want to become involved.

If you do not think your children or their children will ever enjoy being owners, then hiring a manager and contracting with him to buy the business, or actually compensating him in stock, may prove one viable route short of an outright sale. In any case, as you are in your 60s and your children are probably in their 20s or 30s, it is still early; I’d be more concerned if they had hit their early 40s. So you do have some time to get things in order.

Joseph H. Astrachan, Cox Family Enterprise Center,
Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, Ga.

How dependent are you, financially, on income from the business? How much cash flow does it generate? If you are not at the helm, someone must be. Hiring someone as capable and experienced as you will be costly. If you need more income than the business can provide with an outsider at the helm, then your only option is to sell the business. Your successor, whether a manager or a new owner, may not be too keen on having you meddling in the business.

How much expertise and experience is required to run your unique business? How long will it take to find and train a good person? You’re already in your late 60s, late for effecting succession. Recruiting good nonfamily managers is a leading problem among family businesses. You don’t mention any key, capable people being on board already; if that were the case, looking inside might be an option.

Pat Frishkoff, Leadership in Family Enterprise, Eugene, Ore.

You have three options, depending on what you mean by keeping a hand in:

• Continue to participate in management at a reduced level, while beginning to enjoy the freedoms of part-time retirement. While a natural choice of many in your position, this approach, in reality, creates an out-of-touch owner with the power to hinder sound business management. Not a prudent choice.
  
• Continue your family’s ownership, but with no hands-on involvement. This would require establishing an outside board and including senior management (at least) in ownership. While workable, it’s somewhat irrevocable, and you really need some time and maturing before taking this route. Not a practical choice.
  
• Discontinue all management involvement, but oversee the direction of your family’s business as board chairman. Your connection with direction, strategy and management would be real. Governance could be handled with an advisory (versus fiduciary) board. Most important, you retain the full flexibility to return to family management, to choose option 2 or to sell. This may be more involvement than you want, but necessary to staying connected in a positive way. A sound choice.

Donald J. Jonovic, Family Business Management Service, Cleveland

I vote to cut the cord, and make your unique mark in fresh ways! Join a think tank, becoming an industry futurist. Start a provocative industry newsletter. Facilitate great thinking among noncompeting colleagues. Teach entrepreneurship to the offspring of your peers. And consider: You accepted a very old baton, luckily enjoying it. But what aspect of it did you most relish? Maybe focus in on that, heading off to greener pastures and prettier sunsets.

Ira Bryck, University of Massachusetts Family Business Center,
Hadley, Mass.

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