Major League Soccer did something surprisingly adult this week: it named Larry Berg as its next commissioner months before he takes over. Don Garber will remain in the job through 2026 and then become chairman, giving Berg a transition window instead of a ceremonial key card and a stack of mystery binders.
To get there, the league used a succession committee and outside advisers, which is impressive planning for an organization whose games are built around people improvising with their feet. That is what succession looks like when it is treated as governance rather than an emergency.
Many advisors think succession planning begins when retirement becomes visible on the calendar. Three years out. Maybe five, for the especially organized. In reality, the most important choices are made much earlier.
Succession begins when a firm decides whether clients belong primarily to one advisor or to the institution. It begins when employees receive authority rather than an endless supply of delegated tasks. It begins when operating knowledge is captured in systems instead of residing in the founder’s head, where it is useful and completely untransferable.
The timing problem is not small. More than a third of advisors, managing roughly 40% of industry assets, plan to retire within the next decade. Yet many founders delay because the firm is still growing, they enjoy the work, or no obvious successor has appeared. All are reasonable explanations. None changes the truth: delay does not preserve options. It quietly removes them.
Wait too long and leadership transitions become disruptive. Potential successors remain underdeveloped, then become recruiting targets for firms offering them a clearer future. Capable people do not wait forever in the lobby while the founder promises that “someday” they will have a bigger role. Clients remain attached to one individual, making retention less certain when the handoff comes. Buyers see concentration risk, undocumented processes and a short runway, then respond as buyers do when nervous: with more conditions, longer earnouts and less generous terms.
Learn how to double or triple your revenue with Financial Gravity's Turnkey Multi-Family Office Charter
There is nothing noble about discovering your succession plan during due diligence.
Institutional firms approach the issue differently. They develop future leaders long before there is a vacancy. That means giving promising people meaningful client responsibility, decision authority, management exposure and room to make recoverable mistakes. Delegating tasks may create a useful assistant. Delegating authority begins creating a successor.
They also make client relationships transferable. The next leader should not be introduced as a surprise guest at the founder’s farewell dinner. Clients need years of shared meetings, visible responsibility and repeated evidence that the firm’s judgment extends beyond one person. A team-based relationship is not merely good service design. It is continuity insurance.
Processes matter just as much. Firms should document how clients are onboarded, decisions are reviewed, commitments are tracked and specialists are coordinated. Then they must manage adoption, because a 94-page procedure manual nobody uses is not institutional knowledge. It is office décor. Workflows, CRM ownership, meeting cadences and accountability have to become the normal way the firm operates.
Ownership and governance must evolve alongside leadership. Handing someone equity without real authority produces a shareholder, not a successor. Decision rights, compensation, financing, voting control and the founder’s future role should be worked through while everyone still has time, leverage and goodwill.
Peter Drucker said, “Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.” Succession is the clearest example. A name in a planning document is not a leadership pipeline. A valuation is not a transition. A vague promise to “take care of the team” is not governance.
And the best succession plans are not exit strategies. Far from it. There is rarely a clean exit from an institution a founder truly cares about. The role changes—from producer to mentor, decision-maker to steward, perhaps CEO to chair—but the responsibility to prepare the next generation remains.
Successful succession starts early because time is the one advantage no buyer, consultant or legal document can manufacture later. Firms that plan while the founder is fully engaged preserve more choices, more value and more trust. Firms that wait may still find a way out. They simply surrender the right to choose the best way forward.
A document drafted a few years before retirement won’t create the succession you want. The succession you want, the one that preserves your client relationships, your company culture and your competitive advantages, will likely be optimized by employing the family office model.
That’s the model at Financial Gravity, where our mission is helping advisors develop the client relationships, documented processes and leadership depth that preserve the founder’s legacy and succession options. Learn more by watching this short video.
