In 71% of Polish family businesses, the owner is still the person who founded the company and runs it. That need not be a problem in itself.
In conversations with owners, though, I keep seeing the same pattern: the business grows, there are more people, more clients and more processes, but the way the company is run changes far more slowly. The owner is still the person every important matter passes through.
So rather than asking about succession straight away, I tend to ask something simpler:
What would happen to your company if you were gone for a month, starting tomorrow?
Not for good. Not in the sense of handing the business on to the next generation. Simply for four weeks.
The question quickly reveals whether the company genuinely works as an organisation, or whether in many areas it still rests largely on one person.
1. Have you taken more than a week off this year — without daily calls to the office?
Going away proves nothing on its own. If you are still approving decisions, solving problems and taking calls from managers while on holiday, the company is still running with you in the loop. Those moments show clearly which matters genuinely need you, and which reach you mainly because they always have.
2. Is there someone who can sign a client contract while you are away?
I regularly come across companies where managers have been given responsibility without the authority to match it. Someone is accountable for sales or for a department’s results, yet every decision of any weight needs the owner’s sign-off. This is a good moment to check whether a job description actually translates into the ability to act.
3. Do your key clients know anyone at the company besides you?
An owner’s personal relationships with clients are hugely valuable. The risk appears when a client trusts only one person and will discuss anything important with no one else. At that point the relationship belongs to the owner rather than to the company. It is worth building a second point of contact deliberately, before it is needed.
4. Do invoices and payments go through without your signature?
This area often reveals what an owner means by control. But control need not mean approving everything personally. You can set limits, budgets, approval rules and the exceptional cases in which a decision really should come back up the line. In a well-ordered company, control comes from the system rather than from having to take part in every transaction.
5. Did your last major investment decision have a co-author?
This is a favourite of mine, because it separates delegating tasks from genuinely sharing influence over decisions. If managers prepare the analysis and the recommendations but the final call always sits with the owner, the company still has a single decision-making centre. A co-author is not someone who is merely consulted; it is someone who actually shapes the outcome.
6. Do your managers come to you with solutions, not just with problems?
In many organisations this habit forms over years. The team learns that the safest move is to go to the owner and ask, “what do we do?”. The owner, in turn, starts to feel that nothing moves without them. The longer the arrangement lasts, the harder it is to break. Independence is not created by announcing it, though — it takes real skills, clear limits on who decides what, and room for people to find their own answers.
7. Has anyone on the team recently made a decision you would not have made — and was it allowed to stand?
This is a very good test of real autonomy. Delegating is easy when someone chooses exactly as the owner would have. Accepting a different but still sensible answer is much harder. If every divergent decision gets corrected, people soon learn that waiting for the boss’s view is safer than taking responsibility themselves.
8. Is it clear who takes the helm in an emergency — and has that been formally agreed?
Owners often say, “the team will cope if anything happens”. The difficulty is that in an emergency very specific questions surface fast: powers of attorney, strategic decisions, who speaks to the bank or to the most important client. It is far better to settle these in advance. This is not succession yet; it is simply continuity of management.
9. Do your bank and main suppliers have a second contact at the company besides you?
The same applies to outside relationships. The bank, the law firm, suppliers and technology partners should not depend on the owner alone. The second person does not need identical expertise, but they should know the background and be able to pick up the conversation if the need arises.
10. Can you switch off your phone for the weekend without anxiously checking what is going on at work?
On the face of it this is the least business-like question, yet it says a great deal about the quality of management. When an owner cannot disconnect, it is not always about needing to stay in control. Sometimes the organisation really has been built so that plenty of things stall without them. In that case what deserves attention is not the habit of checking your phone, but the system that makes the habit necessary.
What does your score tell you?
8–10 YES answers mean the company can function without your constant involvement, with decisions and responsibility spread across several people.
4–7 YES answers may mean the company has outgrown the way it is managed. A second tier of managers is already in place, but some decisions, relationships or powers still cluster around the owner.
0–3 YES answers point to heavy operational dependence on one person. Very often this is not the result of poor management. Quite the opposite — it is the owner’s drive and effectiveness that brought the company this far. The trouble is that a model which worked beautifully on a smaller scale can, in time, start to hold further growth back. Nor is this unusual: in the same study, 36% of family businesses still have every key decision made by one person.
Every “no” points to a specific dependency
That is how I read this test — not as a verdict on the owner, but as a map of the places where the company still needs them personally.
One “no” may mean a missing power of attorney, another a weak second tier of management, another too many client relationships held by a single person. So the answer is not always simply “delegate more”. First you need to see why decisions come back to the owner, and what has to change in the organisation for other people to genuinely take on part of the responsibility.
A simple starting point works well in practice: for two weeks, note down which decisions come back to you — and why. Then pick one and hand it over in full, with the authority and not just the task. As for the emergency arrangements — powers of attorney, access to the bank, a second contact for your most important client — sort those out regardless, because that is not delegation, it is the safety of the business.
How to reduce a company’s dependence on its owner
Not every family business needs succession. Not every one needs restructuring either. Often what is needed is simply more professional management — a division of responsibility, expertise and authority that lets the organisation run smoothly without the owner’s daily involvement.
What does that look like in practice? Sometimes it starts with putting decision-making processes and areas of responsibility in order — the work we do as part of business consulting. Sometimes a company needs an experienced manager for a time, to take over a particular area, carry the changes through and get the organisation ready to stand on its own — that is what interim management is for. And sometimes the best move is to strengthen the management team permanently, by bringing in a director or board member through executive search. What matters most, though, is reading the problem correctly: sometimes the gap is expertise, sometimes authority, and sometimes the owner has spent years building a model in which every significant decision naturally finds its way back to their desk.
This is not about pushing the owner aside. It is about building an organisation in which their presence is an asset rather than a condition of the business getting through the day.
And what about succession?
The report “Firmy rodzinne w Polsce. Między tradycją a przyszłością” (Family Businesses in Poland: Between Tradition and the Future) found that only 15% of the companies surveyed have a formal succession plan, and 37% have not named a successor. In my experience, though, succession in a family business does not begin with choosing a name. It begins with creating an organisation that can be handed over at all.
If your score came as a surprise, I would not start with a major reorganisation. I would start with a single question: where does my company come to a halt along with me? That is usually a very good opening for a conversation about change. And if you would like to go through it with someone from outside — let us talk about where to begin in your company.
Data source: the report “Firmy rodzinne w Polsce. Między tradycją a przyszłością” (Family Businesses in Poland: Between Tradition and the Future), Kongres Firm Rodzinnych / Mariański Group / PKO BP, 2025.
Anna Podlaska | Managing Partner, Stalwart Manacus
Anna has worked with business owners, boards and senior managers for many years. She supports organisations through periods of change — from putting structures in order and strengthening management teams to sourcing managers through interim management and executive search. Her focus is on solutions that answer what a business actually needs.
