10/4/2021
Questions for family business successors
General information
1. Your name: Adryan Tkaczyk 2. Your age: 26
3. Company name: Vivende sp. z o.o.
4. Industry: Power Generation/ Renewable Energy 5. Location: Poland, Warsaw
6. Year of foundation: 2014 7. Age of the owner: 52
8. Number of employees: 20 – 30 Questions
• Is your company going through succession within the next 10 years?
Yes, within the next ten years my father plans on retiring and giving me control over all operations.
• Does your family business have a family council in place?
Yes
• Are family council meetings conducted in a formal or informal manner?
The periodic meetings are planned in advance with a clear meeting agenda. The current business owner leads the meetings, however each of the family members has a right to speak up on any matter. The meetings and discussion itself is rather informal and direct, in order not to create any boundaries for discussion.
• Has there been a selection of a clear successor in your business?
Yes
• How much responsibility does the successor currently hold over daily operations?
(Please describe your functions and assign a percentage)
As of now, not much, the main successor, I’m currently pursuing his professional career in IT consulting which I see as a very valuable experience for my professional and personal development as well as a valuable experience for me taking into consideration the succession plan. However, I am involved in ideation discussion and playa role of a main strategic consultant in any project conducted by the company, as well as provide ad-hoc support in terms of any issues related to operations/public relations and
especially IT and business. I’m always up-to-date with all the activities conducted by the company.
• Are business strategy decisions made by the incumbent, successor or both?
By the incumbent with each decision being consulted with the successor.
• If such decisions are made by the incumbent and successor are business perspectives aligned or differ?
They are definitely aligned, and we work together on the strategic vision that we are trying to achieve. There are slight differences in terms of tactical decisions and different point of views, however we are trying to understand pros and cons of each approach, conduct valuable fit gap analysis towards the objective we are aiming for to select the best option. The incumbent makes the final decision.
• Will you make drastic changes to the business strategy after the transfer of ownership has been completed? If so would you describe the strategy you plan on implementing to be more aggressive or conservative than the current one?
We are planning to leverage on IT/Business knowledge that I have acquired and we are planning to be more aggressive in terms of new revenue streams development within the power generation vertical and expansion of ongoing business models (especially
international within EU).
• In your own words please describe what you believe contributes to the competitive advantage that family businesses hold over non- family business
The trust among the founders and board members, ability to speak directly, the ability to stay together even during the most severe crisis and very cross functional roles.
• Are there criteria for hiring family members in your business? (education, experience) Depends upon the role in the organization. What we value most is trust, honesty and curiosity. We believe that those values is the base and often we hired a family member with no experience, giving us the opportunity to shape them to make them perfectly fit to our needs. Additionally, we’ve been lucky enough to have each family member with higher education and we would like to make it a standard for future hires to motivate the family members to upskill themselves.
• Are stakeholders aware of your succession plan?
Yes, they have always been
• Is succession planning part of your businesses overall strategy or are they unrelated?
At the moment, unrelated.
• Do you intend on keeping the business family owned/operated?
Yes, I intend to keep it a family operation for as long as possible.
• How many years have you been active in your family business and how have your responsibilities evolved?
For more than 8 years. As we started, I used to play many roles. However, as we grow my responsibility now is to define strategic visions, obtain finance, recruit and look after the staff and define clear goals to company’s managers, look after company growth and profitability
.
• Are your main competitors family businesses or non-family businesses? Please briefly describe your competitive position in your industry.
Rather not family businesses. We are competing with various European VAWT producers. We are currently rapidly growing however we are still a small-medium company. We have a significant competitive advantage in terms of innovativeness of the products offered (aerodynamic break patent) as well as European Union funding to further develop our products. We are mainly operating in Poland right now, but we are planning to roll out pan European commercialization of our product to match and even top our competition within next 5 years.
