Succession is one of the greatest issues facing Australian family businesses as the country hurdles towards an A$3.5 trillion wealth transfer.
While 48% of baby boomer business owners plan to exit within the next five years, only 24% have formal succession plans in place.
According to the Grant Thornton 2025 Family Business Report, both the incoming and outgoing generations said succession planning was in their top three challenges.
“Both generations share this challenge because succession planning is complex and often uncomfortable to talk about, requires strategic foresight, emotional readiness, and it’s fair to say, succession is still thought of alongside retirement,” Family Business Consulting partner and national head, Kirsten Taylor-Martin, said.
One business that managed to successfully pass on the business after creating a succession plan is the workplace supply company COS.
Sister Belinda and Amie Lyone were forced to ramp up their roles as Co-CEOs in 2024 after their father and business founder, Dominique, unexpectedly passed away in 2024.
Despite this tragedy, Belinda tells Azzet that the transition as leaders of the company was easy for Amie and herself, as they had already begun succession plans in 2021 when Dominique took a planned step back from the business.
“My sister and I have both worked in the business for about 20 years or so, and probably about 10 years ago, the conversation about succession became a more important one,” she says.
“We basically designed a very detailed succession plan with our dad at the time, which was about a three-year project to get ready to take over, including the decision to be co-CEOs.”
COS now makes around A$400 in annual revenue and has 700 staff across the country, managing to survive thanks to a detailed succession plan.
Why don’t families create succession plans?
Despite succession plans allowing businesses to remain in the family successfully, many businesses forgo this important step until it's too late.
According to PwC’s 12th annual Family Business Survey in 2025, the biggest barriers in creating succession plans include training for specialised skills within the newer generation and resistance from the senior generation to transition leadership.
For COS, neither of these factors was an issue.
Both Belinda and Amie had already been part of the business for a long time, even sitting at the executive level, despite having somewhat specialist experience in marketing and HR, respectively.
“We had exposure at the executive table and everything that was happening at the business,” Belinda says.
“Over the years, our responsibilities increased, and we took on more and more departments as we prepared for succession.”
Belinda also says her father was “very brave” in taking more of a backseat in the business when he did.
“He was still very much in love with the business and still very capable of running it,” she says.
“It was a really big call for him to say, ‘even though I'm still capable and interested, I want to pass it to you girls, whilst I'm still here and able to guide you and be available if you need me.’”
Belinda suggests another reason families avoid making succession plans is that they are not being aligned on important factors, such as who will take what role, and finding time to iron out key details.
“I think in my family, I was very lucky that my sister and I both were in the business and both interested and capable. There are some families where maybe one person isn't interested, and the other person is, and that adds complexity,” she says.
“Everybody's already flat chat, getting everything done and getting through the day. It's hard to make the space for it and make it and prioritise it.”
How to make it work
Belinda says her biggest piece of advice for making a succession plan was to create space and time for succession talks.
“Let the conversation have it have its own meeting structure,” she says.
“You've got to create a separate space from your board structures and your current exec meetings.”
She says having conversations with her family over lunch on a monthly basis worked well.
Another suggestion was to bring in a third party that everyone agrees on if it's difficult to deal with.
“It needs to be someone who's considered to be kind of neutral and trusted by everybody and help them have those conversations,” she says.
“Sometimes having somebody else in the room, it just helps, keep everyone focus and manage what we called pineapple conversations, where it's kind of like a bit prickly, but if you can get through the prickle, there's something really sweet inside.”
The family behind COS also attended a programme at Harvard Business School designed to help families navigate succession plans over 10 days.
Another piece of advice Belinda says they were given was to pick a year for succession rather than a specific date. They initially chose 2020 but then pivoted to 2021 after COVID threw a wrench in the works.
