In business succession, the biggest risk is not lacking a successor, but failing to transform the company. Treating this moment as a simple change in leadership means missing the opportunity for the business to evolve.

Shortcuts are well known: choosing an heir by default, postponing the decision until it becomes urgent, or handling everything with the sole aim of maintaining control. These approaches overlook a fundamental reality: new leadership also requires a new direction.

What’s needed is awareness. Every transition is an open window on potential change, and it must be handled accordingly.

A new generation also brings a new vision

A simple change of roles is not enough to face increasingly unstable environments, complex markets and evolving business models. The new generation cannot simply continue what the founders started. They must be given the space to redefine it.

The real challenge lies in carrying forward a company culture that continues to express identity, without becoming rigid or losing its connection to the past.

Where shortcuts hide (and the risks they carry)

In practice, shortcuts often take the form of automatic choices, overlapping responsibilities, and unshared decisions. Here are a few recurring examples:

• Choosing a successor simply because “he or she is my child,” without any objective evaluation.
• A founder who never fully steps aside, preventing true managerial autonomy.
• Families divided between ownership and management, with no clear rules in place.
• Transitions driven exclusively by asset or tax concerns, with no industrial vision behind them.

In all these cases, the risk is to weaken the company, feed internal tensions and generate external uncertainty.

Method and culture come before solutions

There is no single valid solution. What’s needed are tailored paths built on a working method and a business culture that values dialogue.

Key steps include:

• Starting intergenerational dialogue early, avoiding late-stage decisions.
• Separating roles and responsibilities between ownership, governance and management.
• Considering the introduction of external figures, such as advisory boards or independent managers.
• Linking the succession process to a long-term industrial plan.

Structure must come before tools. Without a sound method, even the best solution will fall short.

The future cannot be a copy of the past

The value of a company lies not only in what has been built, but in what can still evolve.

The new generation must be allowed to make decisions—and even mistakes. They cannot be limited to executing inherited plans. This moment can become an opportunity to relaunch the company’s identity in a way that fits the present.

Conclusion

The real issue isn’t the business succession itself, but the absence of planning. Shortcuts may feel safe, but they are fragile. True transitions are demanding, but they generate value.

The future of Italian SMEs depends on the ability to face this moment with strategic clarity. Not with prepackaged formulas, but with the will to build something that can outlast the founder.