You could take over the family business. You do not want to.

Why do successors say nothing for years, even when the numbers are good?

Because there is never a good moment: while the company does well, “I do not want it” sounds ungrateful; when it struggles, like desertion. And the better you do the job, the less anyone would believe you: someone this good cannot seriously not want it.

The second reason is the people around you: everyone who could hear it belongs to the company or the family. The father who has planned the handover for years, the mother who holds both sides together, the board, the parents’ fiduciary (Treuhänder), the senior staff. With each of them it sets something off: a plan, a disappointment, a rumour at the trade association. So it stays unsaid, and grows.

The handover plan, the valuation, law and tax are for others to settle. This is about one person, you, and the question that comes first: what you want, before you tell anyone.

Not wanting it, not being able to, not like this: which three things must you keep apart?

“I do not want the company” is usually one of three sentences, each with different consequences.

1. I do not want it. Not this industry, not thirty years in one place, not this life. Then the company goes to someone else; all that is open is when and how.
2. I cannot do it, not the way it runs now. What is missing is not ability but room to breathe: a father who still countersigns every decision, a board made up of his friends. The conditions are the problem.
3. I do not want it like this. Not as the heir who takes over what is finished, but as the owner who makes something else of it. That is an ambition, not a refusal.

From the inside the three feel the same. From the outside they are easy to tell apart, provided the person asking stays neutral and does not already know which answer would suit them. Only once that is clear is the how and when worth discussing.

Is your partner’s plan a way out or your decision?

The question rarely comes alone. Your partner has an offer in another city, or wants to go home, and suddenly there is a reason that is easier to say than your own: “We are moving.” Convenient, and dangerous: if the move is the reason, you have sidestepped the company; you have not decided. If the relationship fails later, the question is back, and the company is gone. Equally, the move may be the right decision; it just has to hold when you take the company out of the equation.

So I separate three things: what do you want for the company? What do you want from this relationship? And what do you simply want to be rid of? The third is the least comfortable: “I want the pressure to stop” is not a decision but a state, and it comes back with the next decision.

I talk to you alone, not to couples; the conversation with your partner is one you have afterwards, yourself.

What do you owe your parents, what do you owe the staff, and where does it stop?

Guilt here is a price, and a price can be itemised.

You owe your parents honesty, early enough for them to still act; you do not owe them your working life. A company is an asset and a life’s work; a child is neither. Carrying on to spare your parents a disappointment postpones it by twenty years and spreads it over more people.

What you owe the staff is a company that is properly run, not you personally as the boss. Whether an outside managing director who wants the job would serve them better than a successor who stayed because he could not leave is a question you are allowed to ask.

Shareholding, shareholders’ agreement, salary, an advance on your inheritance: that is a fiduciary’s and a lawyer’s job, preferably your own. I do not advise on any of it, refer nobody and take no commission.

Is talking to an outsider just cowardice by another route?

Cowardice would be to replace the conversation with your parents with conversations about them; preparation is saying it out loud once before you say it where it cannot be taken back. As an engineer on large projects, I learnt to test a part before anyone builds on it.

You say the sentence out loud for the first time, to someone who belongs neither to your company nor to your family. I ask which of the three sentences is yours and which assumption about your father’s reaction you have never tested, then tell you what I see, even the uncomfortable version: that you might want it after all, just not on these terms; or that you really do not want it, and the terms were only the easier reason. Push back. At the end we note what you do next, or deliberately nothing yet. If a deadline is pressing, read A decision under time pressure.

One limit: if sleep has been missing for weeks, nothing gives you pleasure any more, or thoughts of harming yourself appear, your family doctor or a psychotherapist comes first; in an acute crisis call the Dargebotene Hand helpline on 143, in an emergency 144. I do not diagnose, and I will tell you if you need more than a conversation; see When you need a therapist.

Why is a succession adviser the wrong person to talk to, and who is the right one?

Succession advisers, banks and fiduciaries are paid when the handover succeeds; whoever is paid for the yes is a poor listener for the no. More in Who do you talk to when everyone around you has a stake?

A sparring partner is independent and earns nothing from your answer: no mandate from a company, a bank or an association, no commission, no role in the handover, paid by you, per conversation. Essentials: What is a sparring partner?.

Because Zug and the Gold Coast are small, a word on confidentiality: I commit to it in writing, and that includes the fact that we know each other. The commitment has three limits: a legally binding order of a court or authority, acute danger to life and limb, and the welfare of a child. If it turns out that I know someone from your company or family, I tell you, and you decide whether we continue; if someone from there later comes to me with the same question, I stay with one side: yours. I record nothing; brief notes are destroyed no later than twelve months after our last conversation. I have no professional secrecy of the kind doctors and lawyers have (Art. 321 Swiss Criminal Code), and I do not promise it; see Is coaching confidential in Switzerland?.

I come to your home or a quiet place in Zug, Zürich or on the Gold Coast, in English or German. The fee depends on the format and the length; I tell you what it is in the first, confidential conversation, before you decide. The formats: Sparring.

In short

Being able to run the company does not mean you have to; and not wanting to is only a decision once you know whether the problem is the business, the conditions or the pressure. Work that out before you tell your parents, with someone who earns nothing from the handover and belongs neither to your company nor to your family. The sentence at the dinner table is then your own, not your partner’s and not the fiduciary’s.