Succession Readiness Assessment
Eleven questions. A frank reading of how ready your ownership actually is — before an ambulance sets the timeline for you.
This assessment measures one thing, without flattery: if you stepped away tomorrow — by choice, age or accident — would your enterprise keep operating, or would it slide into a legal and family unraveling? Eleven direct questions about the instruments that actually carry a transition: the named successor, the incapacity documents, the buy-sell, the rising generation, the family's ability to decide together. You'll see your score and band immediately; leave your email if you want the full written reading for your band.
What this assessment measures — and why
Most American family businesses don't lose the company in the market; they lose it in the transition. Industry data says only about 30% survive into the second generation, and PwC's US Family Business Survey has found that only about a third — 34% — have a robust, documented succession plan. The gap between those two numbers is not a paperwork problem — it's a decision nobody wanted to schedule.
The Succession Readiness Assessment is the entry instrument of the Transition front in The Four Fronts — the framework Pedro D. Miranda developed over twenty years of operating companies and sitting inside partnerships. In eleven answers about your real situation — dependence on the founder, the incapacity instruments, the buy-sell, the rising generation's preparation, the family's ability to decide together — it reads how exposed your ownership is today and where the transition should begin.
What the band reveals
The result places your case on a readiness scale and flags the factors that weigh on it most. A company with excellent revenue can sit in the most exposed band if everything depends on one person; a harmonious family can hide a frozen transition where no one has prepared anyone. The assessment raises specific flags — like total founder dependence and stacked timing triggers — that change the order of what to do first. Succession is not a document: it's a process with layers (control, ownership, the successor's preparation, the family's governance), and each band calls for a different sequence.
What to do with the result
The first use is honest: knowing whether you have a plan or merely a hope. The next step, if the reading warrants it, is a structured look at the whole picture — all four fronts, your actual documents, your actual people. That is the Ownership Readiness Diagnostic: two to three weeks, a written report, and a private debrief.
Free educational instrument · The Four Fronts framework · by Pedro D. Miranda. Sources for the statistics above: John Ward, Keeping the Family Business Healthy; PwC, US Family Business Survey.