It is rare that a manager or a business creator sits at his office saying to himself: “Here, and if I thought about the end?” ». Thinking about the fence of an entrepreneurial adventure seems almost indecent when one is still in the first steps, in the acquisition of the first customers, in efforts to balance the cash. However, the end is not only a distant deadline: it is a compass. It is by imagining how the story will end that we clarify the way of writing it.
Most entrepreneurs build their strategy by advancing step by step, reacting to opportunities, crises, meetings. But this logic of the moment often ends up trapping, because it says nothing of the final direction. And if the real strategic question was not “What are I going to create?” »»but “How will I get out of what I create” ?
The paradox of the visionary creator
We often see the entrepreneur as a visionary. He would see far away, he would draw the road, he would invent the future. But when we observe closely the lives of many companies, we see that this vision often stops … see you tomorrow morning. The founders are exhausted to manage immediacy: develop a product, sign a contract, recruit or resolve emergencies. Their horizon is short, their blurred compass.
This strategic myopia has a price. Thousands of small and medium -sized enterprises disappear each year in France for lack of buyer or preparation for transmission. Managers discover, often at the time of retirement, that their company is not salable, that it is based too much on them, that no architecture has been thought of for the future.
Conversely, entrepreneurs who dare to imagine the last chapter of their history from the first pages build more solid, more coherent, more attractive companies. They know that the end conditions the path.
Start at the end: a counter-intuitive but fruitful approach
The method is simple to state: wonder today what the exit will look like. Will it be a resale to a large industrial group? From a family transmission where children will take over the reins? Of a sale to employees, or of a clean and assumed closure?
The answer to this question changes everything. The one who wants to sell in fifteen years will structure his accounts, his governance and his processes now to attract a buyer. Whoever dreams of transmitting to his children will focus more on consolidating a culture, gradually forming a succession, creating stability over time. Even the one who imagines putting an end to the activity on a defined horizon will adopt a different management: he will pilot his investments, his debts and his commitments with the idea of going out smoothly.
This way of reasoning upside down may seem strange. However, she frees. It transforms each daily decision into a coherent step towards a chosen destination, rather than a disorderly reaction to the vagaries of the moment.
The multiple possible ends
Not all businesses know the same fate, and that’s the whole issue. For some, the dream end is a resale. We then speak of exit: to give in the company to a competitor, to an investment fund, to an actor in the sector. This scenario particularly attracts start-ups, which build their model with the idea of seducing a future buyer. But it also concerns family SMEs which, one day, prefer to lean on larger to continue to grow.
Others imagine the transmission. Family, when the children take the torch. Managerial, when one or more trusted executives gradually buy the business. In these cases, the financial value counts, of course, but the real subject is elsewhere: it is human, cultural and territorial continuity that prevails.
Some target the IPO, rare but still possible for certain Scale-Ups. It is a demanding scenario, which supposes having cultivated transparency, attractiveness and financial discipline from the start.
Finally, some leaders choose a controlled liquidation. Close in style rather than undergoing failure, solving the accounts proper, protecting teams and partners. This option is too little mentioned, but it can be a worthy, responsible, sometimes even liberating end.
The benefits of a “reverse” thought
Thinking about the end of his business is not a morbid exercise. It is an act of lucidity and strategy. First, because it clarifies priorities. We do not pilot in the same way a company intended to be transmitted to his family and a company intended to be sold on a side group. In a case, we put on the transmission of knowledge and the loyalty of a team; In the other, we focus on profitability, scalability and attractiveness of the market.
Then, because it avoids unpleasant surprises. Too many entrepreneurs discover, when selling, that their business has no value without them, that nothing is documented, that customers are too linked to them. Anticipating is to offer the luxury of a choice, rather than undergoing a constraint.
It is also a way of giving meaning to everyday life. When we know why we build and in what direction, each recruitment, each investment, each partnership takes new consistency. Finally, this approach reassures partners: investors, bankers, collaborators are sensitive to managers who know where they are going, including in the long term.
How to initiate this approach
There is no miracle recipe, but an attitude to adopt. It all starts with a simple question: “How do I imagine the end?” ». This question, which may seem vertiginous, actually opens a fertile field of reflection. Once the answer is sketched, it is a question of looking at your business through this prism.
Financial choices, investments, governance methods are decided differently according to the scenario chosen. Whoever aims to resale ensures to build an autonomous business, detached from his own person. Whoever targets the transmission will put more energy in the formation of a succession and in the consolidation of a culture. Whoever plans to closure will monitor their commitments to be able to go out cleanly.
This approach is not frozen. It can evolve over the years, depending on the desires, the family, the market. The main thing is not to wait until the last moment.
Thinking about the end is opening the field of possibilities
Basically, thinking about the end of your business is not to resign yourself to your disappearance. It is to give him every chance of lasting, of turning, passing his hand. It is to get out of the illusion of eternity to embrace the reality of economic life: everything has an end, but this end can be chosen, thought, prepared.
For the leader, it is also a way of freeing oneself. Knowing where we are going to find serenity, not to run out in all directions. And for teams, this is proof of responsibility. Because a company that prepares its end is, paradoxically, a company that is much more likely to last.
