The truth of the matter is, about 90% of what you know about your business was taught to you by someone else. The remaining 10% you probably learned from experience. Therefore, what you know about business transition could be limited and this begs the question: should you dive into it blindfolded?
Running a business is a risk composed of trials and errors. As a matter of fact, it is often said that a business will encounter a lot of mistakes before repeatable success can be achieved. What you learn or experience from running a business will depend on your skills in applying strategies and using innovations to your advantage.
Making Exit Planning Your Second Nature
There are basically four stages of learning and these are: a) the unconscious incompetent, b) conscious incompetent, c) conscious competent and d) unconscious competent. The importance of learning these four stages is to understand how you can make transition planning – an area not molded by past mistakes or experiences– your second nature as a business owner.
The first stage is the unconscious incompetent. In this stage, you do not know anything so you are not expected to act competently.
Then follows the second stage, which is the conscious incompetent. This means you already know something about your company but your knowledge is limited for you to act competently. In this stage, you’re willing to transition your business so you did some research and have accumulate some knowledge in theories. However, you realize that you do not want to learn just by example; but you don’t want to apply the same mistakes other companies did as well.
The next stage is the conscious competent. Here, you know what you need to know and thus, you have the knowledge to act in a competent manner. At this stage, you already understand the many things that need to be done prior to and during the business transitioning process. You are now ready and extremely competent to make the transition a success.
The last stage is the unconscious competent, wherein you are already a master of your business that you don’t have to think too much when running it on a day-to-day basis with the highest level of accuracy. At this point, doing business has already become your second nature.
If you’ve been doing business for quite some time, it is very unlikely that you will ever become the unconscious incompetent in exit planning. Yes, you could have thought of it or done it once but you might not be repeating the process so many times to reach even the third stage of learning.
Therefore, what you can do is to seek out a conscious or unconscious incompetent who can sufficiently educate you about business transitions.