Albert Esteves Castro, editor of Interempresas

A young man is a day on the street to an old friend of faculty, a rather mediocre student, who has not seen since that they completed the race. Wears a suit of brand and it seems that things have fared well:

-As you see, just to get out of the school I started to work as an accountant in a multinational company. Shortly after I amounted to head of Department, then responsible person of the Economic Division and now I'm the Chief Financial Officer.

The friend, hallucinating, can not disguise its perplexity given the low level of competence demonstrated by his former teammate during the race. And his amazement is maximum when continues:

- And look, just this morning the President of the company has offered me the position of Vice President.

-Tell me! And you, what have said you?

-Because what I always say: thanks, Dad!

It is an old joke told me many years ago an Italian businessman, whose son, by the way, began to take the reins of the company a few years later. I hope they will forgive me, it is known that summarized and written jokes lose any grace, but I used to illustrate a more serious reflection on the succession of small and medium-sized.

In this type of companies, the owner tends to be at the same time the director-general, a one man band (or a female Orchestra, that also is) who knows the company to detail, departe almost on a daily basis with the employees and takes practically all decisions. It is likely to be a man himself, who created the company for many years and who developed over decades based on tenacity and dedication, stealing to his private life and his family hours and which is now1960s, and many, faced with the choice posed by succession.

Casuistry is varied. Maybe some of their children, if there are, they are already integrated into the company and they have demonstrated their competence and their interest in continuing the work of the father. It is very likely that he cared at the time that it received the appropriate training and now feel with pride that the continuity of the company is assured. This is the ideal scenario. It will suffice to resolve in advance the fiscal and economic aspects, mechanisms for strategic decision-making, and the most difficult, that the empresario-padre know of away from the activity in time, and leave the business in the hands of his successors, with all the consequences. That it is not easy.

But there are other more problematic scenarios. Many entrepreneurs have no offspring or to none of his sons has shown interest in entering the company and continue the work of the father. Maybe that even the father (or mother) have advised the search for other professional roads safer and less slaughtered their children. In this case there are various possible solutions, depending on the characteristics of each society. Since the settlement of the same (ill-advised in true size companies since that involves the loss of goodwill), the sale to a group of managers (operations called Out By Management, financially supported many times by venture capital companies)the sale to third parties or even the continuity of ownership with external or internal professionalization of management. In any case, the employer must the solution more favourable for him and for the company and encounter with in advance as possible, always with the advice of experts.

The most controversial case is the joke that heads the article. That father or mother has joined her children in the company and they do not have the capacity, the interest or the temperament to manage it effectively. If this is the case my advice is to return to the previous paragraph. Perhaps at first their children do not understand it but it is likely that after the time they end up recognizing the wisdom of their decision and they end up thinking (although perhaps never be told) "thanks, Dad".