How To Lead a Retreat Dedicated To Succession Planning

When as many as 80% of all CPA firms never make it to the second generation, you’d expect succession planning to be a hot agenda item at partner retreats.

We always advise hiring an outside retreat facilitator to moderate your discussion, but in the event you’ve opted to have one of your partners lead the retreat, here are some tips for organizing a succession planning retreat:

Begin with strategic planning.  Describe what your firm will look like in 5-10 years.  How many partners will you need?

The tear-jerker.  Go around the table and have each partner state when he/she plans to retire.  This question will cause at least one partner to shed some tears and most partners’ eyes to well up.  Facing one’s mortality isn’t easy.

Assess your staff.  List the names of all staff with partner potential on a flipchart. Many of you will save the expense of a flipchart because you have no partner-potentials.  If you have some, discuss them one by one, decide how far away they are from becoming partner and most importantly, what the partners sitting around the retreat table will do to help the staff advance.

Do the math.  Do this simple calculation.  Assume you have 8 partners today, 4 will retire in the next 5-10 years, 3 staff will be ready for partner in 5-10 years and based on your growth projection, you will need 12 partners in 5-10 years.  12-8+4- 3 = 5 new partners needed.

The rest of the retreat.  Now the partners decide between two alternatives:  Commit to developing 5 new partners and stay independent or borrow Clint Eastwood’s line “a man’s got to know his limitations” and opt for an upward merger.  The rest of the retreat is dedicated to creating a game plan to implement whichever decision is made.

For comprehensive guidance on creating a succession plan at your partner retreat, we have two monographs for your reference:  Guide To Planning The Firm Retreat and CPA Firm Succession Planning:  A Perfect Storm.