Business Advisor Magazine

Wheel of Fortune

Succession plans often run afoul of family arguments and generational disagreements. A diagnostic tool design by the California Family Business Institute LLC (CFBI) may help. The Family Fortune Wheel is a carefully structured questionnaire designed to evaluate four key areas-family relations, ownership structures, management structures and CEO/founder succession readiness. Among the true/false statements. "A suitable successor has not been identified ," and "In our family, there is a strong expectation or obligation that family members will work for the firm."

Business owners and anyone else they designate respond to the questions, and the responses are then evaluated. The results include an analysis of the scores in the different categories as well as a color pie chart profiling the company in 16 key areas including business stability and succession plans. According to Stephen Woodworth, a principal at CFBI, the more people who complete the survey, the more accurate it is. Each respondent's answer is given the same weight, even if he or she has more control of the company.

"It is an effective tool to begin planning and implementing succession plans," Woodworth says. " the Family Fortune Wheel can help family businesses save money. they can share the results with professional advisors and begin to execute a succession plan." The Family Fortune Wheel is currently available in print form. An online version will be available later this year. A demo is on the company Web site, www.cfbi.com