The 15-step model is the succession sequence from Robert Forto’s Doctor of Strategic Leadership dissertation in December 2024. The research examined transgenerational succession and emerging female leaders in an Alaska family firm, and built the steps on sled-dog teamwork as a metaphor, not as a training method. Peak Experience teaches from that sequence. This piece doesn’t lay out the sequence. It uses the part the problem forces.
What this review is
Baltazar and colleagues sorted 32 papers they searched in December 2021 into three piles. How succession changes innovation. How knowledge moves between predecessor and successor. What gets in the way: size, sector, inertia, the way the successor is chosen.
The line they are willing to say out loud: the succession process itself hinders investment in innovation, and a family firm that cannot innovate is in trouble across generations. They cite Poza (2014) for the survival drop people repeat in this field: about 70 percent do not make the founder-to-second-generation pass, then 15 percent at the third, 11 percent at the fourth. That is their citation. It is not a finding from Forto’s study, and it is not a promise about any firm in this room.
They also say the literature is thin on the reverse question. Almost nobody has shown how innovation makes a succession work, or how a succession builds the successor’s capacity to innovate. Knowledge transfer is treated as necessary. The papers they cluster say it is not sufficient.
A review is not a law. One database, English, economics and management journals, nothing after 2021. Hold the claims at that size.
Where a family firm misreads it
The founder hears “share the knowledge” and builds a binder. Recipes, client history, the way we price, the story of the first hard year. The successor memorizes it. Both people call that readiness.
That is the transfer. The review says transfer does not raise the successor’s innovation capacity on its own. A firm that only hands over the recipe keeps the predecessor’s risk line. During the pass, the papers they group say investment in the new thing drops. The successor reaches for the short project. The predecessor stays close enough to protect the old one.
On a team, the next dog can run the same trail the lead already knows. The trail that is not broken yet is a different command. Metaphor only.
Three piles, and the decision inside each
Succession changes what the firm will fund.
Fifteen of the papers sit here. The pattern is mixed, and the mix is the point. Succession lines up with less money into innovation. A predecessor who stays on the board can drag product innovation down. The same literature says a predecessor’s continued influence can also show up later as more innovation, and that family adaptability can make the succession itself the opening.
Do not pick the sentence you like. Write both. What the predecessor’s presence is protecting. What it is blocking. If every new spend needs the old signature, the handoff is a story and the investment policy did not move.
The release is the work. One class of decision the predecessor will not make after the date you set. Not advice. The decision. Advice can stay. A veto dressed up as advice cannot.
The knowledge has to move, and then it has to be left behind.
Twelve papers sit here. Founder know-how matters. It does not, by itself, make a successor who can build the next offer. Some of what has to move is tacit, and it moves both ways: the successor often sees the rigid habit the predecessor calls a standard. Generational passes in this cluster also show up as less research intensity, because the new person funds what can be finished soon.
So the assignment is not “learn what I know.” The assignment is one skill or one offer the firm does not have, practiced where the predecessor is not the grader. That is the complementary-skill decision in the model. Watching the predecessor invent nothing new is not practice.
Outside the building matters here for the same reason. A boss, a client, or a peer firm that doesn’t share the family story will ask for what the recipe doesn’t cover. If the long outside stint is gone, shrink it. Do not replace it with another year of transcription.
The obstacles are already in the room.
Five papers sit here. Size and sector change what innovation can look like. So does inertia in the values, and a successor chosen to keep the place stable rather than to change the offer. Failure to move, in the paper they cite for this, is how the firm declines. That is a reviewed claim, not a forecast for you.
Name the obstacle in this firm in one line. The predecessor will not risk the off-season. The successor was picked because they will not scare the old clients. The sector really does punish a wild bet, and someone is using that fact to block a small one. Those are different obstacles. Only one of them is a reason. The other two are choices.
What you write before you leave the table
One page. Both people write. Trade.
- The recipe. Three things that must transfer or the firm breaks on a Tuesday. Stop at three.
- The block. What the predecessor’s closeness protects, and what spend it stops.
- The new thing. One offer or one skill the firm does not have. Where it gets practiced. Who grades it, if it is not the predecessor.
- The release. The class of decision the predecessor will not make after the date. Advice may continue. That decision may not.
- The obstacle, in one line, marked as a fact about the sector or a choice about comfort.
If line 1 is full and line 3 is blank, you scheduled a transcription. The survival numbers in the review are not your score. The blank line is.
If you are interested in working with us we have a 15-step, succession model coaching program. It is a researched path for moving ownership and leadership across generations, with special attention to the emerging next leader, including daughters stepping into the lead. Book a call today.
Source: Juliana R. Baltazar, Cristina I. Fernandes, Veland Ramadani, and Mathew Hughes, “Family business succession and innovation: a systematic literature review,” Review of Managerial Science 17 (2023): 2897–2920. A review of 32 articles.
