New planning tool for the owner-managers

The Danish Industry Foundation, Centre for Owner-managed Businesses at CBS and INSEAD in France are collaborating on a project to help strengthen the owner-managers in their decision making about the future of their businesses and the development and management. "The Ownership Strategy Map is a useful tool in this work," Mads Lebech CEO of the Danish Industry Foundation explains and elaborates, "it focuses on the strategic considerations that the owner-manager should have when he or she must choose the future owner of their business - and its management structure. It is therefore an important tool that can contribute to the owner-managed businesses eventually being managed in a way that ensures their survival and growth in the future."
At first, the 7,000 owner-managers who participated in a survey in the autumn receive the tool. But the plan is, that especially the accountants of the owner-managers will take advantage of the tool.

"The Ownership Strategy Map is a useful tool to raise questions about the current and future management issues, including how to build leadership and ownership within the family and between family members and non-family members" says Professor Morten Bennedsen from Insead, who is behind the tool. The Ownership Strategy Map is a practical tool that can be used to plan the future management and the future leadership of the company. The tool is based on two main ingredients: the owner resources which are the unique contributions that the owner-manager and his or her family bring to the business, and the challenges that the business may face.

Future based on owner resources and challenges
The Ownership Strategy Map identifies the strengths and weaknesses of the business and measures them up against 13,490 other owner-managers. Specifically, the planning tool is based on three steps: identification of resources and challenges, the planning on how the ownership should look 10 years ahead, and finally an implementation of the management and ownership elements needed to get there. The personal bench-marking report shows the owner-managers how strong their own resources, such as brand, network and reputation, are compared to similar businesses and the gravity of the challenges the owner-managed business are facing in relation to the industry and the size of the company. The map provides suggestions on how ownership and management in the future must be based on the strength of owner-manager's own resources in relation to the size of the challenges.

Centre for Owner-managed Businesses offers a variety of activities and offers for owner-managers, among other things, the conference "Owner Management - Plan for the future" on April 15.  At the conference, the new tool The Ownership Strategy Map, is officially launched and there will be presentations and examples of how you can use it as a basis for future planning and development of ownership and leadership of owner-managed businesses.