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A usable template ยท for owners of $5M to $50M businessesA succession planning template for owners, and how to actually fill it in
Most succession templates you find online are a form designed to collect your email address. The rest were written for HR departments with nine box grids and talent pipelines. Neither helps an owner who has to decide, personally, who gets to run the thing he built.
The short answer. A working succession template for an owner-led business has seven sections: the timeline, the successor, the role, decision rights, the dependency list, relationship transfer, and the emergency plan. Copy the table below and fill it in by hand. Blank rows are not failures. A blank row is telling you exactly where the next piece of work sits.
The template
Here it is. Copy it into a document, print it, fill it in with a pen if that is easier. It is meant to be used, not downloaded and forgotten.
Three columns. What you are deciding, your answer, and the next action that makes the answer real.
| Section and item | Your answer | Next action |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Timeline The date I intend to stop running this business | Write a real date. You can change it. You cannot leave it blank. | |
| What I want my week to look like after that date | Describe a Tuesday. Be specific. | |
| What the business needs to be worth for that to work | Take this to your financial adviser, not to a calculator. | |
| 2. The successor Who leads the business after me | Have you asked them, in those words? | |
| Internal, external, or family | If family, ask separately whether they want it. | |
| Second choice if the first says no | Never leave this blank. First choices decline. | |
| What this person is missing today | One gap per quarter, with a named way to close it. | |
| 3. The role Three to five results the next leader must deliver | Numbers where possible. Three year horizon. | |
| Decisions they own outright | List them. Vagueness here is where handovers die. | |
| Decisions needing my sign off, and the threshold | Real numbers. "Capital spend above $75,000", not "major items". | |
| What I will stop doing on day one | Name three tasks you hand over immediately. | |
| 4. Decision rights The ten decisions that most often reach my desk | Run a dependency week first. Do not do this from memory. | |
| Who decides each one after the handover | Agree it with the successor. An imposed limit gets tested. | |
| Who has bank and signing authority | Your bank needs paperwork for this. Start it early. | |
| 5. Dependencies What only works because of me | Five working days of honest recording. | |
| Knowledge that exists only in my head | Pricing logic, supplier terms, how we win work. Write one down per month. | |
| The one decision I will transfer this quarter | Pick it now. One beats a reorganisation. | |
| 6. Relationships Customers who deal only with me | Name the person who takes each one, and the date. | |
| Bank, insurer, landlord, main suppliers | Successor leads the next meeting. You sit in the second chair. | |
| Who tells each key customer about the change, and when | They should hear it from you, not from a competitor. | |
| 7. Emergency Who runs the business tomorrow if I am not here | Does the team already know this name? | |
| Who signs cheques without a board meeting | Check it is legally in place, not just intended. | |
| Where the passwords, policies, lease and loan documents are | One location. Someone other than you can reach it. | |
| First call: spouse, lawyer, or second in command | Tell that person they are the first call. | |
| Ownership Who holds the shares, and when they get them | Your lawyer and accountant. Not this template. |
Section one: the timeline
Start here, because everything else takes its dates from this row.
Owners resist writing the date. It feels like signing something. That resistance is the point: an undated intention is how five years disappear. Pick a date, write it in pencil if you must, and work backwards from it. A three to five year handover means the real work starts a long way before the date you wrote.
The second row matters more than people expect. "What does my week look like after" is where a lot of plans quietly fail. An owner who cannot describe his Tuesday will find a reason to still be in the building at 70, undermining the successor he chose himself.
Section two: the successor
The second choice row is the one everyone skips, and it is the one that saves you.
First choices decline. Your daughter says she wants her own thing. Your operations director takes a job with more equity. If you have never thought past the one name, that conversation costs you a year of standing still.
On the gap row, be concrete. "Needs more commercial experience" is not a gap, it is a mood. "Has never negotiated a contract above $400,000 and has never had to let someone go" is a gap, and both of those can be closed on purpose within a year.
Section three: the role
Write the job around what the business needs in the next three years. Not around what you currently do.
Those are different things and the difference is large. What you currently do includes work you kept because you enjoy it, relationships you never handed over, and decisions nobody else has ever been allowed to make. Handing over "everything I do" hands over a job that does not exist for anyone except you.
The threshold row is where most templates go soft. Write numbers. A successor who has to guess what counts as major will ask you about everything, which is how you end up still running the business two years after the handover.
Section four: decision rights
This is the section that converts a job title into actual authority, and it is the one most plans leave out.
Do not fill it in from memory. Run the dependency week first, then work from what actually happened. Owners consistently misremember what reaches them, usually underestimating the volume and overestimating the importance.
Fill this section in with your successor in the room. Argue about the numbers. The argument is the useful part, because a limit you set alone is a limit they will quietly test.
Section five: dependencies
Five working days. Write down every decision that lands on you, including the interruptions you would not call decisions.
Then mark why each one reached you. Nobody else has the authority. Someone has the authority but not the information. Someone needs more experience. The team expects you to overturn it anyway. Or you keep taking it back.
Each cause has a different fix, and only one of them is a training problem. If the honest answer on most rows is the last one, no template will help until you stop.
Section six: relationships
Relationships transfer slowest and they are what a buyer looks at hardest.
The mechanism is simple and it takes about four meetings. Your successor leads, you attend. Then your successor leads and you say nothing. Then your successor goes alone and reports back. Then you stop asking.
Put dates against each name. A relationship transfer without a date does not happen, because there is always a reason this particular meeting should be the one you take.
Section seven: emergency
If you fill in nothing else on this page, fill in this section, this month.
It answers one question: if you were taken to hospital this afternoon and could not work for three months, what happens on Monday morning. Payroll, the bank, the largest customer, the passwords, the first phone call.
Two copies. One with your lawyer, one somewhere your family can actually reach without your phone.
Why blank rows are useful
People fill these templates in and feel bad about the gaps. That is backwards.
A blank row is the cheapest diagnostic you will ever run. Blank "second choice" means one resignation costs you a year. Blank "what they are missing" means you have not honestly assessed the person you are betting the company on. Blank "who signs cheques" means your family is going to find that out in a hospital corridor.
Fill in what you know. Then look at what is empty and pick the one with the worst consequence. That is your next piece of work. Not the whole plan. One row.
This is not the legal document
Worth being clear, because owners conflate the two and then stall for a year waiting for the tax answer.
| This template | Your lawyer and accountant | |
|---|---|---|
| Covers | Who leads, what they decide, how the handover happens | Who owns, how shares move, tax, estate |
| Produces | A working plan you use weekly | Shareholder agreements, wills, trusts, tax structure |
| Written by | You, with your successor and your advisor | Qualified professionals, paid for it |
| Costs | An evening, then a quarterly review | Real money, and worth it |
| When | Now | In parallel, not after |
Run them at the same time. The leadership work does not need to wait for the ownership work, and the ownership work is better informed once you know who is actually going to run the place.
Questions owners actually ask
What should a succession planning template include?
Seven sections: your timeline and intended last day, the successor and a second choice, the role brief with real approval thresholds, a decision rights map, a dependency list, a relationship transfer schedule, and a one page emergency plan. Ownership, tax and estate structuring belong in separate documents written by your lawyer and accountant.
Is a succession plan the same as a shareholder agreement?
No. The plan covers who leads the business, what they decide and how the handover happens. The shareholder agreement covers who owns the shares and on what terms. You write the first one. Your lawyer writes the second. Run them in parallel, because waiting for the legal work stalls the leadership work for a year.
How do I set approval limits for my successor?
Use real numbers, not adjectives. Capital spend above $75,000, discounts beyond 12% off list, hiring anyone into the leadership team. A successor who has to guess what counts as major will ask about everything, which means you are still running the business long after you handed it over.
What if I cannot fill in most of the template?
That is normal on a first pass and it is useful information. Each blank row points at a specific piece of unfinished work. Pick the blank with the worst consequence, usually who runs the business tomorrow if you are not here, and close that one. One row at a time beats a complete plan you never start.
Should my successor help write the succession plan?
Yes, on the decision rights and the role sections. Filling those in together produces an argument about the thresholds, and the argument is the valuable part. A limit you set alone is a limit they will test quietly. A limit you agreed together is one they will defend.
How often should I review the succession plan?
Quarterly for the first two years, then twice a year. Each review checks three things: which decision moved across this quarter, which relationship transferred, and whether the timeline still holds. Reviews that only confirm the plan still exists are a waste of an hour.
Do I need a succession plan if I am planning to sell instead?
Yes, and it affects the price. Buyers discount businesses where the owner is the single point of failure, because they are buying a job rather than a company. A documented leadership structure with a capable second in command is one of the few things that reliably moves an offer upward.
Where Mind Shift fits
Mind Shift works with owners of $5M to $50M businesses on strategic advisory and leadership development. Filling this template in is usually the first session. The useful part is not the document, it is being made to answer the rows you have been avoiding, with someone who has no reason to let a vague answer stand.
Your lawyer, accountant and financial adviser own the ownership, tax, estate and personal finance side. We do not replace them and we do not give legal, tax or regulated financial advice.
Free. No pitch. Talk through where the business stands and what has to happen next.
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© 2026 Mind Impact Ltd trading as Mind Shift. This guide is general leadership guidance, not legal, tax or financial advice. Last reviewed September 2026.