14 GERMINATION.CA NOVEMBER 2017 you were 65 and when you’re 66 you want to be out of it, you may have a hard time finding the right buyer,” Guthrie says. “If you start at 60, and find a buyer when you’re 61 and say ‘I’m willing to work for another two or three years to ease the transition,’ then you’d be able to meet your goals of not having to show up at the office every day anymore.” Look Internally Rourke made a smart move in pro- moting internal staff to leadership roles, notes family friend Steve West, who operates Arizona’s RD4AG, which often collaborates with Ag-Quest to do seasonal research trials. Looking internally can ulti- mately make succession planning a lot easier, he says. “David tends to have a dominant personality, as most of us in this line of work do, and you don’t want two heads on the serpent. Having Dana step in and run things has worked well, and I think there’s definitely les- sons to be learned there,” West says. “In these small companies like ours, the work is a labour of love — and finding someone else who’s excited about it and interested in car- rying the business forward is hard. Typically, family is a place where that can stem from.” David agrees, and says it’s impor- tant to focus on the strengths of others and actively think about why they might be good candidates to take over the business after you’ve had enough. “I’m maybe more entrepreneurial than Dana, but she’s more manage- ment-oriented than I ever was. My role is largely over and hers is just beginning. She’s going to take the Steve West is research director for RD4AG in Yuma, Arizona. business in a whole new direction” Rourke says. Plus, there is such a thing as over- staying your welcome, he adds. “Henry Ford is a good example. He was innovative and success- ful, but after awhile he became an impediment to the Ford Motor Company and his own son, who was taking over the company at the time. He should have got out of it a lot earlier than he did.” One of the challenges Maxwell says she faces is initiating a timely discussion of her vision for her employees’ careers. It’s something she constantly makes an effort to do, when the time is right. “I don’t want to be in the posi- tion of thinking, ‘Oh no, so-and-so is retiring in six months and I don’t know what I’m doing to do to fill their shoes.’ We want to identify and develop people to fill those roles. Don’t wait too long to have that dis- cussion, because they might end up leaving for other opportunities, when had they known you had a vision for their future with the company, they might very well have stayed.” Maxwell adds that she hopes to be succeeded by a third generation of her family someday. “I want to see the business con- tinue for the long-term, and I see a role for Ag-Quest in the industry for a very long time.”