According to the 2017 BDC Report “The Coming Wave of Business Transitions in Canada”, 40% of Canada’s small-business owners are expected to exit their business within the next 5 years.
A serious and urgent problem is that many of these organizations are not ready and may fail soon after the owner stops showing up at work.
Reasons often include:
- the management team is not trained to independently lead the business
- responsibilities of team members are not clearly defined
- work processes are not sufficiently developed
It is obvious that when these problems are not addressed prior to the transition, the results can be devastating for the new owner or the younger generation that took over through family succession.
After almost 30 years of working in Management, Engineering & Manufacturing, including 5 years as a Business Consultant, I recently decided to bundle my experience and use it to help others.
Through Transformix Consulting I assist organizations, such as above mentioned small-business owners, with planning for and executing transformation (or “change”, in plain English).
In other words, I help them to go from an undesirable “Current State”, to a “Desired State” that is bigger, brighter and green.
When guiding a management team through such a transformation process, I assist with:
- Developing a simple and effective 3-year Transformation Plan
- Executing this plan
- Implementing applicable Process Improvement tools
As a result, small business owners will:
- improve the sellability of their company (aka the chance of finding a buyer)
- while increasing its market value (sell price) and
- reducing the risk of post-transition failure
Although the emphasize here is on small business, the same process can be applied in most other types of organizations, including manufacturing and service firms, non-profit organizations, first nations, as well as departments within government & crown corporations.
To summarize, small-business owners can achieve a much more successful exit from their business by developing a written transformation plan and making sure this plan gets actually executed.
In my next blog I will talk about the differences between Business Plans, Strategic Plans and “Plan Genie”.
Jaap has 30 years of Management, Engineering & Manufacturing experience in various industries in Canada and Europe. During this time he has been involved in many Lean and Continuous Improvement initiatives as well as Organizational Change programs. Since 2014 he has worked as a consultant, assisting start-ups and Small and Medium Enterprises with access to Government Funding programs for innovation and growth. He provides funding & business related presentations, takes part in panel discussions and has acted as a judge in pitch competitions.