Most owners know the handover is coming. Few have written anything down.
The business still runs through one person. The next generation disagrees about direction. A strong manager who was not family left last year and nobody quite knows why. There is no real board, just whoever speaks loudest.
None of this is an information problem. It is that no one inside the company can say it out loud.
Two things.
The Succession Audit
Six to ten weeks. I study how the company actually runs and interview the people who know. I find where it is losing money, people, or trust, and I tell you plainly what I found.
The Standing Seat
After the audit, I stay on. I sit in on leadership or board meetings, ask the questions an insider cannot ask, and keep watch on what we found. Paid monthly.
The audit shows you the truth. The standing seat keeps it from slipping back.
Answer them to yourself. Nothing here is recorded, scored, or sent anywhere. If you stop on one of them, that is the useful part.
- If you were away for six months starting tomorrow, who signs? Name one person.Does that person know?
- The best manager you ever had who was not family left. Do you know the real reason, or the reason you were given?
- Your children. Do they actually agree about the future, or have they simply never been in the same room for that conversation?
- Who around you is paid the same whether you sell the company or keep it for another twenty years?
Who this is for
Canadian private and family owned companies, roughly $10 million to $500 million in sales, where the owner is thinking about what happens next.
Who this is not for
I do not run training, workshops, or team building. I do not give legal, tax, or accounting advice. I work with the person who owns the decision.
Amina Djirdeh
I spent my career in investment banking, equity research, and private equity, reading businesses from the outside and deciding what they were worth. MBA from the Rotman School of Management. I teach finance at Canadian post secondary institutions.
You work with me directly. There is no junior team and no handoff to someone you never met. I work with a small number of companies at a time.
The firm is named for Ibn Khaldun, who wrote the first serious study of why powerful families and institutions rise, hold together for a while, and then fall apart.
Based in Mississauga, Ontario.
Start with a conversation.
If something above sounds like your company, send a note. The first conversation is thirty minutes and costs nothing.