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August 17, 2015 Silver Tsunami

When succession planning is done well

PHOTO | Contributed John Lyman III (left) — sitting with his uncle Michael Waller, seventh generation family member and former marketing VP — has three sisters and one brother, but he was the only child to stay at the Lyman Orchards business and success his father.
PHOTO | Contributed Making sure its ninth generation has the same appreciation for the land and the family business has been a priority of Lyman Orchards' board.

When John Lyman III was 14 years old, he got his first job helping to thin out the peach orchard at the family business, Lyman Orchards in Middlefield.

After college and traveling for a year, including a stint at an orchard in Holland, Lyman III came back to work for his namesake company in 1980. Lyman III, now 58, is the top-ranking family member of a 274-year-old business that has successfully been handed down through eight generations.

While financial planners and business advisers say up to 85 percent of small and medium-sized businesses aren't preparing adequately for succession, companies like Lyman Orchards have been doing it for generations.

Lyman III said the succession plan between he and his father — John Lyman, Jr. — was never that formal but was helped along the way by the corporate structure initially set up in 1949 and the support of the 191 shareholders who own the company.

Today, Lyman III and the company are busy preparing the ninth generation of Lymans to eventually take over. The key, he said, is making sure ninth generation family members — representing 90 of the 191 shareholders who are almost entirely family — continue to see the value in owning and operating the 1,100-acre property and identifying leaders who will take over the day-to-day operations.

Lyman Orchards has actually been run by three non-family presidents since John Lyman, Jr. retired — the current president and CEO is Steve Ciskowski, who has been at the company 21 years. Lyman III said a strong management team is key to ensuring smooth transitions generation after generation.

“It is going to be more of a formal process than what I experienced when I came back,” said Lyman III, who is the company's executive vice president.

Pat Ryan, too, is enthusiastic about the future of the West Hartford marketing firm he founded back in 1996. He and his daughter Lindsay Jensen Ryan have a plan in place for her to become the second generation to lead Ryan Marketing.

“Over the past five years, what she has been able to do has been unbelievable,” Ryan said.

Ryan said having his daughter with the company has helped generate more revenue, too, as it attracted family-business clients like transportation firm DATTCO and grocer Stew Leonard's.

Ryan Jensen started tagging along with her father to work when she was 7 years old, accompanying him on client photo shoots when he worked for a New York City firm. When she went to college, she knew she was going to come back and work for her father, and as time passed, it became clear to both of them that she was ready to take over one day.

Ryan Jensen said the hardest part of succession planning was coming up with that initial timeline. Ideally both she and her father would stay on as long as possible, she said, but they needed that set date where she would take on the main leadership role.

“It is a tricky thing to plan for. It is an awkward thing to plan for, but if you talk about these issues upfront, then that makes it easier,” Ryan Jensen said.

Even as he phases into a less day-to-day role, Ryan Jensen said it will be helpful to have her father available to drum up business and offer counsel.

“My father is a bit of a rainmaker in that his network and his connections are really what creates business for us, and — luckily — that doesn't go away with age,” Ryan Jensen said.

At Lyman Orchards, the board of directors is already talking about who will be the right person to transition in as the lead family member after Lyman III. He said he has a 23-year-old nephew and a 30-year-old cousin who are in the day-to-day operations and could eventually take the reins.

“We are very enthusiastic about the future,” Lyman III said. “There is a unified view in the family that the land is our biggest asset.”

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