Follow-up communication as an essential design task

Successful business and wealth succession depends not only on the professional legal and tax planning, but also on whether all parties are aware of their future roles, can understand decisions transparently, and are informed in a timely manner about what changes will affect them. Succession communication therefore begins long before the public announcement of a transfer and must take into account the diverse interests of all parties involved.

From Prof. Dr. Patrick Peters, Professor of Communication and sustainability and Vice-Rector for Research and Teaching Material Development at the Allensbach University

The transfer of assets and businesses changes ownership relationships and, as a rule, the management structure as well. In family businesses, it also impacts relationships that developed long before the actual transfer process. Parents and children must redefine their previous roles. Brothers and sisters may be connected to the company to varying degrees. Executives and employees are wondering what decisions the next generation will make. Customers, suppliers, and financing partners want to know whether existing relationships will be continued. In parallel, often corporate, inheritance, and tax-related issues must be resolved.

The economic scale of the issue makes the topic even more relevant. The Institute for Research on Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in Bonn estimates that between 2026 and 2030 around 186,000 companies in Germany will be handed over to new owners. A meta-analysis by the institute also concludes that well over half of the surveyed family-run companies were passed on within the family; 17 percent went to employees and 29 percent to external buyers. KfW Research takes a different approach and therefore comes to different absolute figures. According to the successor monitoring in 2025, by the end of 2029, around 109,000 medium-sized companies are planning to transfer ownership in the coming years. The two surveys are not directly comparable in terms of methodology, but they both show that many companies are facing a change in ownership or leadership in the years to come (Rieger-Fels et al. 2025; KfW Research 2026).

In the consultation, attention naturally focuses initially on the material issues. In the consultation, it is first necessary to clarify who will receive company shares and what the future management structure should look like. Likewise, the tax consequences of the transfer and the inclusion of personal assets must be examined. Such decisions determine the legal and economic structure of the succession. However, they do not yet answer how the parties will deal with the new order. This is exactly where succession communication begins.

Follow-up communication begins before the announcement of the succession

Succession communication involves the planned communication about how a company or asset succession is prepared, decided upon, and implemented. This includes first and foremost the exchange within the entrepreneurial family and between the transferor and the potential successor. Later on, executives, employees, and other business partners also need to be informed. Depending on the succession model, banks, customers, suppliers, or the public also need to be informed. This definition goes beyond traditional corporate communication. Succession communication is not primarily about preparing a decision already made in a linguistic way. A significant portion of the communication takes place while the parties are still developing their decision. Conversations can make it visible that a child does not even want to take on the intended entrepreneurial role. They can reveal that siblings have different ideas about distributions or the use of family assets. Even a senior entrepreneur may find during the process that his desired retirement is hardly compatible with the role he reserves for himself after the transfer.

The St. Gallen model of succession, developed by Frank Halter and Ralf Schröder, views corporate succession as a long-term development and transaction process. Its advantage lies precisely in the fact that succession is not reduced to the transfer of ownership or a single contract. The model combines various design dimensions and takes into account that decisions evolve over a longer period of time (Halter & Schröder 2022). Communication research on corporate succession has also gradually expanded the circle of stakeholders. Marcus Stumpf and Carsten Mestrom already examined in 2017 the role of communication with internal and external stakeholders. Their work is based on experiences from more than 240 succession cases and makes it clear that the timing, target audience, and content of communication cannot be planned independently of each other (Stumpf & Mestrom 2017). Communication planning begins as early as a phase when the family is still determining what form of succession they are actually aiming for.

In family businesses, the same people speak from different roles.

In family businesses, a particular difficulty arises because family, ownership, and business are closely intertwined. The same person can be the daughter of an entrepreneur, a partner, and a managing director. Her brother can also be a partner, but not hold a position in the company. A discussion about dividends then involves different interests than a discussion about the operational strategy, even though the same people are talking to each other. Rudolf Wimmer describes family businesses as a distinct type of company, where the company and the entrepreneurial family interact with each other over the long term. The family owners influence the development of the company, while changes in the company can in turn affect the family structure (Wimmer 2025).

During a succession, this connection becomes particularly visible. Ruth Lerchster points out that transfers change relationships and that previous affiliations are rearranged. It can be problematic for family members not to be able to clearly distinguish which role they are playing in the conversation. The father may then simultaneously speak as a father, majority shareholder, and manager with his son, who is the child, minority shareholder and potential successor. Expectations from one area can be unintentionally transferred to another (Lerchster 2018).

Communicative openness is therefore by no means automatically helpful. What is crucial first and foremost is what is being discussed and the role played by the participants when they speak to one another. For example, a family may discuss the question of whether all children should be treated equally economically. For the management, another question arises: Who possesses the professional and personal qualifications to lead the company? Both conversations concern the same individuals, but follow different criteria. Professional succession communication must make these differences visible. It helps the participants to recognize which decision is currently at hand and who should be involved in it. In this way, it can also be prevented that a conflict over the company strategy actually conceals an unresolved family issue or vice versa.

Relations are also being rearranged between the donor and the successor.

At the heart of many succession processes is the relationship between the transferring and the receiving generation. Especially in the case of family-based solutions, the entrepreneurial handover can hardly be separated from the shared family history. Venter, Boshoff and Maas (2005) found a link between the relationship between the donor and the successor and the perceived quality of the succession process in small and medium-sized family businesses. The willingness of the successor to take over and his/her preparation also played a role. The results come from South Africa and therefore cannot be easily transferred to German family businesses. Gabriela Leiß and Anita Zehrer have explicitly investigated this relationship from a communicative perspective. Based on narrative interviews with predecessors and successors, they show that different communication patterns develop during the handover process. These patterns change as the next generation gradually assumes more responsibility. Successful succession therefore also requires that the participants can adapt their communication to their changed roles (Leiß & Zehrer 2018).

Communication involves far more than the formal transfer of decision-making authority. Entrepreneurs often possess knowledge that can only be documented in limited ways in manuals or process descriptions. They know long-standing customers, remember previous conflicts, are aware of the special characteristics of individual employees, and can assess market changes based on experiences that have developed over decades. For this reason, Federica Romano and Giorgia Maria D’Allura explicitly classify intergenerational knowledge transfer as a relational communication process. Knowledge is not passed on as a finished entity between generations. It is explained, organized, and sometimes also reinterpreted in conversation. The authors therefore suggest paying greater attention to how communication within a family takes place and which conversational culture facilitates or hinders knowledge transfer (Romano & D’Allura 2025).

For the succession process, this means that a longer period of joint activity can be helpful if it is actually used for exchange. Years of parallel work alone do not guarantee knowledge transfer. The successor must be willing to make their own assessments and explain decisions. The successor, in turn, needs sufficient space to develop their own insights and question existing practices. This is where tensions arise. From the perspective of the senior manager, a deviation from customary procedures, such as a disregard for their experience, can appear as a lack of respect for their expertise. The next generation may experience the same situation as necessary entrepreneurial independence. Communication can make the difference between the two interpretations visible, without therefore resolving the factual conflict already.

Succession planning expands the communicative task

Business succession and wealth succession often coincide, but are not identical. Entrepreneurial families often possess real estate, liquid assets, or other assets alongside their business interests. Therefore, decisions must be made regarding which assets remain jointly owned and which can be attributed to individual family members. Such decisions touch upon notions of fairness. A mathematically equal distribution may be economically problematic when it results in business shares being distributed to multiple individuals who pursue different goals. Conversely, economic rational concentration of entrepreneurial ownership can be perceived as unfair within the family. Tax and inheritance planning can structure this tension, but they do not automatically eliminate it.

Family Governance attempts to develop rules for such questions before a concrete conflict arises. The study by Tom Rüsen and Ann Sophie Löhde on family strategy shows that entrepreneurial families use, among other things, family constitutions, family committees, or regular family days to address such issues. In their study of 214 family companies, communication within the entrepreneurial family was also one of the most frequently mentioned challenges in implementing a family strategy (Rüsen & Löhde 2019). The communicative function of such governance structures is essential. A family constitution can stipulate under what conditions family members are allowed to work in the company or how the shareholders’ group treats distributions. However, its value only arises when the family has actually negotiated the underlying issues among themselves. A document can record the outcome of a conversation; it cannot replace the process of understanding.

This becomes even clearer with foundation models. Thorsten Klinkner and Domenik Wagener describe the family foundation as a tool that can be used to tie up assets for the long term and manage them according to established rules. The foundation creates an independent ownership structure and thus also changes the position of family members with regard to the assets (Klinkner & Wagener 2022). Thorsten Klinkner, Mattheo Ens and Martin Buß examine the organization of such a structure for the corporate-linked dual foundation. The distribution of competencies and the organization of the foundation bodies play a key role in this process. The authors understand the foundation as the link between the family and the company and emphasize the importance of uniform rules for the family (Klinkner, Ens & Buß 2020).

With a family foundation, the legal ownership structure simultaneously changes the relationship between the family and the assets it controls. Family members must understand what rights the foundation will have in the future, what decisions will remain with them, and under what rules beneficiaries will be included. The founder must also be able to explain what goals he pursues with the structure so that it is not perceived as a foreign-directed organization. Therefore, the design of a foundation agreement requires reflection on the time after the founder’s death. Klinkner, Ens, and Buß point out in an earlier article on „Checks and Balances“ that the founder must concretize his ideas about the long-term structure and rethink the distribution of authority among the organs (Klinkner, Ens & Buß 2018). Such decisions always have a communicative aspect: they must be translated into terms that advisors can legally implement and that the affected family can later understand.

Employees assess succession from a different perspective

While the entrepreneurial family discusses ownership, roles, and future visions, employees experience succession from a different perspective. They often only know the internal deliberations in part. At the same time, the change at the top directly affects their professional future. This explains a typical dilemma of succession communication. Too early information can unnecessarily publicize an ongoing process, while too long silence creates space for rumors, especially when changes are already visible. A future successor often appears more frequently in the company; the senior leaves certain decisions to others or external consultants engage in discussions with senior executives. Such observations are interpreted by employees even if the company management has not yet made a formal announcement. Hoffmann and Fischer (2026) investigate how employees perceive leadership communication during a corporate succession. Their survey shows a relationship between communication and trust; this trust in turn has a direct effect on motivation.

For the practice, what is of less interest than an abstract catalogue of demands is the different information levels of the parties involved. Business family members and advisors have been dealing with succession for months already, while employees are only now learning about it for the first time. What seems familiar to the family long ago begins to become clear to the workforce at this point. Good information must therefore explain what has already been decided and what questions remain open. Equally important is what concrete consequences this will have for the organization. Employees need clarity about who will lead in the future and when responsibility will be transferred. Equally relevant is the role that the senior executive will continue to play and whether the strategic direction will change. If there are any uncertainties in this regard, they should remain so.

Follow-up communication: Customers, banks and business partners need other information

Communication with employees cannot, of course, be transferred to external stakeholders. A bank that finances the company is interested in other aspects than a long-standing customer. Suppliers want to know whether the agreed relationships will continue. Customers can ask, especially in companies with a strong human focus, whether quality and contact persons will remain in place. Therefore, Stumpf and Mestrom rightly emphasized that follow-up communication must be planned address-specifically. Who is informed, at what time, and what information is needed depends on the respective relationship to the company (Stumpf & Mestrom 2017). With financing partners, early involvement may be necessary because the succession may change credit decisions or collateral. An important customer may need to be personally informed about the leadership change before a press release is issued. For other market participants, public communication is sufficient after the completion of the essential decisions.

Discretion and transparency are in a real tension here. In a transaction outside the family, confidentiality agreements can prevent employees or customers from being informed in advance. In a family-internal succession, on the other hand, it can be unclear for a long time whether a planned family member will actually take over. Therefore, a general demand for as early or as comprehensive transparency as possible is too short-sighted. Professional succession communication must instead determine when an information is reliable enough to be disclosed and what consequences an earlier or later disclosure could have. This timing is part of succession planning itself.

A communication chain alone is not sufficient for complex follow-up actions.

For practical planning, the question „Who communicates with whom when?“ remains helpful. It forces one to identify the relevant groups and consciously set communication times. The St. Gallen succession model provides a suitable framework for this, because it views the handover as a longer process. However, a rigid communication chain can only capture the actual dynamics to a limited extent. Family discussions do not necessarily conclude before management is involved. Banks can be involved early on when a financing is being prepared. An important employee may need to be informed earlier than a remote family member, because their continued involvement is crucial for the company’s value. Furthermore, communication can have repercussions on planning. When a leadership team expresses significant doubts about a planned successor solution, this reaction is in itself information for the donors and advisors. A conversation with the children may lead to the original plan for an internally family-run succession being abandoned.

Therefore, communication in such situations does not convey a final decision. It generates new knowledge that is then fed back into the decision-making process. A mere sequence of information steps only inadequately describes this process. As a communication architecture, one can understand a planning that determines which conversations prepare decisions, when other stakeholders are informed, and how their feedback is then fed back into the process. Such an architecture remains flexible: it adapts to the specific case and changes as new information comes in, and it differs precisely in this from a standardized communication campaign.

Follow-up advice gains through coordinated professional perspectives

Business and wealth succession involve different professional issues. Tax advisors examine the tax consequences of a transfer and develop suitable structures. Lawyers create the corporate, inheritance, and contractual legal requirements. Chartered accountants and other business advisors can assess corporate assets, financing issues, or economic impacts. Wealth advisors deal with how corporate assets, real estate, and liquid assets can be incorporated into a long-term wealth planning. Each of these perspectives answers a different part of the succession. Communication connects these professional decisions with the people who must understand, mediate, and implement them later on. A corporate-law developed succession model must be able to be explained in a comprehensible way within the entrepreneurial family. A tax-wise beneficial transfer of assets can have different consequences for siblings or other family members and therefore requires discussion. Executives, employees, banks, or important business partners also each require the information relevant to their own role in the broader process.

Communication consulting thus takes on an independent role. It can structure which stakeholders should be approached at what time, which information is relevant for the respective group, and which communication channel can be used effectively. In a company, this applies, for example, to communication with management and employees. In dealings with external stakeholders, personal conversations, customer information, or public communication may be necessary. In this case, the communication planning must remain closely linked to the actual status of legal, tax, and economic regulations.

It is precisely this kind of communication that makes the collaboration of the professional disciplines important. Communication can be visible when participants understand a planned arrangement differently or when a decision has not yet been sufficiently explained. Such feedback can, in turn, be relevant for tax advisors, lawyers, or other successors, because it shows which questions within the family or the company still need to be clarified. Conversely, communication consulting requires reliable professional foundations so that it does not create expectations that do not correspond to the later legal or economic arrangement.

Succession communication therefore does not replace tax, legal or asset-related advice. It complements these fields of expertise by addressing how decisions made or evolving between the involved parties are communicated in a comprehensible manner and integrated into the subsequent process. The better these perspectives are aligned with each other, the more likely it is that professionally developed solutions can become practically effective within the family and the company as well.

Succession communication as part of succession planning

Business and wealth succession change ownership relationships, responsibilities, and often personal relationships as well. Legal, tax, and economic solutions create a binding framework for this. However, whether this framework works practically within the family and the company also depends on how the parties understand the intended changes and what role they themselves play in it. Communication therefore accompanies this process from preparation to implementation. In early stages, it can help make different expectations visible and prepare decisions. Later, already developed solutions must be explained and tailored to the respective addressees. The timing depends on the stage of the succession and the positions of the parties involved. Family members require different information than executives, employees, banks, or important business partners.

In the case of asset succession, this task becomes particularly evident when property is tied up for the long term or is intended to be passed down over several generations. A family foundation can determine how assets are managed and what rights family members will have in the future. For such arrangements to be accepted and understood on a lasting basis, their objectives and consequences must be understandable within the family. The same applies to corporate law regulations, participation models, or the future division of responsibilities between the donor and the successor. Succession communication can thus be understood as a separate part of asset succession planning. It combines the professionally developed solution with the individuals affected by it and ensures that they implement it in the future. The task is to initiate discussions in a timely manner, distinguish information needs, and convey decisions in such a way that their significance for the respective parties becomes apparent. Especially in the case of complex business and asset succession, this vote determines whether a developed structure will work in the daily lives of the family and the company as well.

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