Dad says “Yeah!”

In family businesses, succession rarely arrives as a formal decision. It usually begins as a passing comment, raised in the middle of something else. In the yard. At the kitchen table. Halfway through a brew.

Someone mentions the future. Not as an announcement, just a thought.
Dad looks up, nods and says, “Yeah… we’ll sort that.”

And then everyone carries on.

Nothing is written down. No roles are clarified. It doesn’t feel unfinished, just parked. Close enough for now.

Over time, that nod starts to carry more weight than it ever should. The children begin stepping up. The name stays on the door. The business keeps moving, assuming continuity will somehow take care of itself. And for a while, it often does.

But slowly, almost without anyone noticing, things begin to blur. Decisions overlap. Authority becomes less clear. People hesitate before acting. Staff start quietly asking themselves who they are really working for now.

What began as trust, without clarity, turns into uncertainty. Not overnight. Gradually.

Why “handing it over” so often doesn’t land as intended

Passing responsibility to a son or daughter has always felt like the natural order of things. For years, it worked well enough. Ownership stayed familiar. Control stayed close. The business carried on.

The problem is that today’s family business is rarely the one the founder started. It’s bigger, more complex, and far more exposed. There are more people involved, more scrutiny, and now very real consequences when ownership, control and decision-making don’t quite line up.

With the planned changes to BPR and APR, that gap matters more than it used to.

What once felt like a workable, informal arrangement now sits under a much harsher spotlight. Who really runs the business? Who makes decisions day to day? Where does responsibility actually sit? What looks reasonable internally can feel vague, or even contradictory, when viewed through a tax or governance lens.

Inside the business, the pattern is familiar. The next generation is keen to move things forward. The founder isn’t quite ready to step back. Authority settles somewhere in between. Dad still signs things off because he always has. The children are expected to lead, but only up to a point. No one has actually agreed where that line is.

So leadership becomes situational. Decisions depend on who happens to be in the room. Change happens in pockets rather than across the business. On paper, responsibility may have moved. In reality, control hasn’t.

None of this is done deliberately. It just evolves. And in a world where clarity and evidence increasingly matter, that kind of drift is no longer neutral.

This is how good businesses lose momentum, and quietly increase risk, without anyone quite realising why.

The people who feel it first are rarely the family

Every family business has a group of people who sit just outside the family circle but hold the business together.

The finance lead who understands how everything really works.
The operations manager who has kept things moving through several “temporary” arrangements.
The long-serving staff who adapted to founder-led ways of working and made it work anyway.

They are often not central to the succession conversation, but they feel its impact first.

They are often not central to the succession conversation, but they feel its impact first.

When roles aren’t clear, they pause. When authority is uncertain, they second-guess decisions. And when the future feels undefined, they start wondering whether they should still be there.

Most don’t make a fuss. They wait. They watch. And eventually, some of them leave.

A proper handover doesn’t just help the family. It gives non-family leaders confidence about where they stand and reassurance that the business knows who is in charge, and why.

Structure isn’t bureaucracy. It’s how drift is stopped.

The strongest transitions don’t happen by accident. They are built deliberately, while the founder is still present, still respected, and still able to guide the process.

It usually starts with alignment. Not a big announcement, but a series of honest conversations. Where the business is going. What matters now. What leadership really looks like today. Clear agreement on who is responsible for what, and how that will change over time.

From there, governance gives it shape. Independent voices brought in early, not as a rescue move. A proper board rhythm, rather than decisions being made in passing. Clear thinking around decision rights, pay and how people step out of roles as well as into them.

This isn’t about draining the character out of a family business. It’s about removing ambiguity. Giving the next generation the space to lead properly. And giving the founder confidence that the business won’t unravel the moment they loosen their grip.

Turning “Yeah” into something that actually works

This is where TWYD tends to get involved.

Usually not because something has gone wrong, but because something no longer feels quite right. The goodwill is still there. The intent is good. But the assumptions are starting to creak.

Our role is to help families slow things down just enough to make things clear. To turn half-agreed ideas into proper decisions. To replace drift with direction, before uncertainty turns into a problem.

Through leadership alignment work, board support and structured handover planning, we help families put clarity around who leads, how decisions are made, and what “stepping back” really means in practice.

We don’t replace instinct.
We give it enough shape to hold.

We turn “Yeah” into something that actually works.

Oliver Denton is Associate Partner at TWYD & Co, a private talent advisory firm focused exclusively on family businesses and family offices. TWYD supports family businesses with the complex challenges of leadership, including the appointment of non-family executives and independent directors, as well as aligning boards with long-term family goals.