Over the past several years I’ve seen one pattern in practice that keeps repeating more and more often: the owner of a company he built in the early nineties suddenly realizes he has no one to hand it to. This isn’t an isolated individual story — it’s a demographic wave that’s only just starting to roll through the Czech economy, and so far almost no one is really talking about it. And the longer we stay quiet about it, the more it will eventually cost us.
The Generation That Started at the Same Moment Is Now Aging Together
The big wave of company formation in the Czech Republic happened in the nineties, in the era of post-revolution transformation. People who opened a trade license or founded an s.r.o. in their thirties back then are in their sixties today. And because most of them entered business in the same decade, in the coming years they’ll be deciding the future of their companies at practically the same time. Economies with a comparable history of private enterprise are already observing a similar phenomenon, and it points clearly to one thing: the older the owner and the less certain the successor, the less the company invests in its own development. The damage is often done years before the company actually changes owners or shuts down.
To my mind, that’s the most important point in the whole succession debate. It isn’t just about how many companies will eventually close their doors. It’s about how many companies are quietly decaying in the meantime, because no one is investing in a future nobody can describe.
Why an Interim Manager Isn’t Just a Patch Until Something Gets Sorted Out
When I talk to clients about succession, I often hear the idea that an interim solution is just a temporary patch — something to hold the company together until a “real” successor is found. The reality is different. A professional interim CEO can take over running the company at the moment it’s most vulnerable, without the emotional baggage tied to family history that often stops an owner from making unpopular but necessary decisions. Similarly, if a company is also facing an uncertain financial future, a temporary interim CFO can straighten out cash flow and reporting before the problems pile up into a crisis.
This distinction matters: an interim manager doesn’t replace the succession process, but buys the company time and stability so succession can happen without chaos. That way the company doesn’t have to choose between a quick sale below value and the risk of deciding badly just because no decision can be put off any longer.
What Owners Can Do While There’s Still Time
The biggest mistake I see is waiting. Owners often put off the succession question until it becomes urgent — in other words, until it’s almost too late. Yet preparing to hand over a company should start years in advance, not at the moment health or circumstances force the decision.
The practical first step is simple: admit that the company will one day have a different owner or different leadership, and start treating that as a project, not a taboo. The second step is finding someone who can professionally run the company in the meantime — whether that’s an interim CEO taking over overall management, or a specialist for the specific area that suffers most during the transition.
The Czech Republic doesn’t need a rescue program for every family business. What it mainly needs is for owners to stop putting off succession, and for the market to have professional capacity that can take over a company the moment it’s needed — quickly, without emotion, and without unnecessary losses.
