Succession Planning – plan for success case study

One of Australia’s most respected turf industry families has recently embarked on the greatest challenge of their 20-year business life – a succession plan. Charlie, Michael and Anthony Muscat have worked together every day of those 25 years in their family-run business, GreenLine Turf. But after more than five years deliberating, the trio, with their spouses, have put steps in place to allow them to integrate the next generation. The plan has meant GreenLine divided its assets and customer base to enable them to expand operations and commence trading as three individual entities – Green Life Turf, Greener Lawns, and Greenway Turf. The hardest step initially was keeping plans under wraps for more than five years while we problem solved every scenario possible before eventually nutting out the finer details of the plan before executing it during 2008,Michael said. Inevitable step With 14 offspring between them, the Muscats knew a succession plan was inevitable at some point. We all knew the time was coming but we kept putting it off and putting it off, they said. All three partners had children passionate about turf production, who continually displayed a keen interest in pursuing turf dreams to become more involved in their family-run operations. We really were motivated by our children to make it happen in the end – they were all so keen – you can’t dampen that enthusiasm, Alexandria Muscat said. The way the new generation has embraced their role within their individual businesses has been one of the greatest rewards to come from the transition for all families. The boys (young Muscat offspring) are all striving and thriving to go forward – and are enjoying working with their parents to contribute to driving new success and sustained business growth simply by integrating their own ideas, Margaret Muscat said. While the Muscat brothers said they no longer had each other to lean on in the way they had done traditionally, they were now tending to share ideas and discuss issues at a decision-making level with their kids and wives (who are all also entrenched in the businesses).

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