State of Owner Readiness Survey
The Central Penn Business Journal polled 111 business leaders, nearly a third of whom were approaching retirement age, most of them running family-owned businesses, about transition plans.
The research was conducted using questions from the Exit Planning Institute’s State of Owner Readiness Survey.
The bigger picture rendered by the data is one of unpreparedness. Despite the fact that many respondents ranked getting the full value for their business as a top priority, nearly half of respondents did not know their company’s value.
With a few exceptions, respondents either said that a transition has not been documented (40.9 percent) or there is no plan at all (47.3 percent). The majority of respondents characterized their business as essentially unprepared to transition away from having them in a leadership role.
No contingency plan in case of emergencies is in place for more than half of respondents, and they are largely unfamiliar with their transition options.
