Do You Need An Expert To Get Your Farm Succession Planning Started, Or Not?

When it comes to farm succession planning every expert selling farm succession and farm estate planning services has his or her favorite idea or strategy that will motivate you to get moving.

For the farm succession process to get any traction, momentum that will carry it forward to a successful conclusion, it first has to get started.

Something or someone has to break the inertia that stands in your way. What is it?

Perhaps the experts never mention it because they don't know what it is. If that's the case it can only be because they have not surveyed the folks whose planning is underway without interruption toward its conclusion.

Maybe they know what the 'secret ingredient' is but since they can't charge for the information, information that in most cases would make them and their services redundant, they keep it to themselves.

Possibly these experts know, in their heart, that it has nothing to do with them and what they are selling, being something that can only come from the farmers themselves.

So at their seminars and workshops they refer to such things as getting good advice, or taking advantage of planning strategies, or figuring out what others are doing successfully, or slipping through some clever business management succession loophole.

Or maybe it's having a conflict free atmosphere on the farm or developing better relationships at work.

Those things are all important but a file cabinet full of well crated cutting edge ideas and strategies will not result in the motivation required to get and keep the farm succession and farm estate planning process going.

What is it then that makes everyone willing to cooperate fully and unconditionally in the process?

It is enlightened self-interest.

In other words being able to set aside whatever petty feelings you have about the incompetence of your brother, dad, or uncle. Not only are they not going to change, they are not going to leave the farm for a better opportunity elsewhere. Wishing it were otherwise will not make it so.

The fact is that if you are going the succeed, if the process itself is going to succeed, you will need their help and their cooperation.

Plus they need your help. All of you must share one thing and one thing only, a commitment to right action, doing whatever it takes for the farm to survive and succeed.

That means making a commitment to investing the time and energy required to uncover what's important to each of you, to the farm, and to the non-farm heirs, then making an additional commitment to work together toward the goals you share.

It does not mean you will ever be buddies, coach one another's kids, or go on vacations together - you can if you want but it is not required to be successful today or tomorrow.

Everything that happens on your farm takes you closer to or farther away from your goals (and their).

Internal problems, often personality problems or feelings of entitlement, can reduce the effectiveness of decisions you or one of the others make. That is until you are all willing to set aside what's wrong with the ideas of 'the others' and look at what's right with them.

You and I know that most of the conflict that undermines well considered decisions is not based on facts - it is really the result of people wanting to have it their way because they want it their own way.

Lots of experts talk about how to build better relationships with your family members on the farm, arguing that it's important to success. There are hundreds of books on the subject, as if that makes it true.

But if your brother is a jerk and your sister is a spoiled brat (in your opinion) there is very little likelihood that any of the lessons in getting along are going to have any long term effect for any of you. They will still be who they are and you all know it.

Why don't you take a look at the situation from a different perspective.

What if you and your siblings could work together effectively, make more money (so you could all take longer vacations away from each other) without sitting around the campfire singing "We Are The World" and holding hands?

Your farm doesn't have to look like a Norman Rockwell painting to be successful. It has to identify what's important, create strategies that will move you toward that end and execute those strategies relentlessly.

There are lots of people out there who would tell you, in confidence of course, that making more money, being an industry leader, and having the respect of your peers goes a long way to make up for the fact that their brother and sister and them do not like each other very much.

Instead of spending your time sniping at one another, you can instead work together to create a farm succession plan that evolves from each person's self interest.