Why Business Planning Often Fails Excerpts from: Becoming a Wealth Transfer Specialist Learn More

One feature of my work that had always mystified me was the fact that, while the solutions I proposed to my business clients were virtually always technically correct, they didn't always solve the problem. Sometimes my ideas worked and sometimes they didn't. The fault didn't seem to lie in the solutions themselves-there was something else happening.

After my daughter's death, given my propensity to overwork, it would have been easy for me to deal with my grief by burying myself ever deeper in my work. Instead, I chose to alter my work habits and search for balance between work and family. I later brought the lessons I learned about the importance of family relationships into my work.

I began to see my work with family businesses in a new way. I began to realize that it wasn't only about technical solutions after all. It wasn't about finding the most tax-favored way to pass the family business or the most effective estate planning technique-it was about the family itself! I emerged from my grief with a mission: to find a way to literally put family ahead of business in family businesses.

Some years later, I decided to survey my existing clients and verified what I had begun to suspect. In many family-owned businesses, a serious breakdown in family communication hindered both quality family relationships and business profitability.

Picture yourself growing up in a family where the father is a typical hard-working entrepreneur. Usually late for dinner. Constantly preoccupied with business problems. Unavailable for father-son or father-daughter events like school sports and music recitals. As the business becomes more successful, even less time is available for family events. While your friend's dad is available for camping trips and Boy Scout activities, yours is too busy. (If you're a second-generation business owner, you can probably relate to this.)

Many family business owners discover too late that their years of putting the business first has been at the expense of building quality relationships with the next generation of family members-the business' eventual new owners.

Rabbi Marc Gellman and Monsignor Tom Hartman, together know as the "God Squad" related a good example of this phenomenon in a Reader's Digest article dealing with the search for meaning in everyday life.

"We once heard of a CEO who spoke at his retirement dinner to a group of young executives. He said, 'I know you want my job and I'll tell you how to get it. Last week my daughter was married, and as she walked down the aisle, I realized I did not know the name of her best friend, or the last book she read, or her favorite color. That's the price I paid for this job. If you want to pay that price, you can have it.'"

Many entrepreneurs-and their families-are paying or have paid this kind of a price.

Given all the conflicting needs among family members involved and the needs of the business itself, it's not hard to see why planning is difficult and often fails. Does that mean planning is a waste of time? No, but it is challenging. Planning to transfer the family's wealth to future generations, when a family business is involved, takes a special effort. Instrumental in this effort is a proven process that takes into account the needs of the business, as well as the needs of the business owners and the needs of the next generation of business and non-business heirs. What's needed is a process that renews both the family and the business-a process that protects all the important assets of the family-personal, business and non-business.