学会放手

In the practical guide „Learning to Let Go – How the Older Generation Can Actively Shape the Handover Process and Their Own Transformation“ (2025), Simon Caspary, Tom A. Rüsen and Heiko Kleve demonstrate that business succession is far more than a formal change of ownership or role for the older generation. The guide focuses on the psychological, emotional and identity-related challenges of letting go and makes it clear that unresolved internal processes are one of the main causes of failed handover processes.

Based on a systemic understanding of entrepreneurial identity, this publication analyses the extent to which work and performance can act as a dominant pillar of identity, and what destabilising effects arise when this pillar crumbles in the course of a business handover. Using Petzold’s model of the five pillars of identity, the guide highlights resources for inner transformation. In addition, the guide draws on Worden’s concept of the grieving process and applies its four tasks of mourning to the context of business succession, in order to systematically address the loss of role, power and meaning.

This practical guide combines a theoretical foundation with numerous reflective questions and exercises designed to help senior citizens actively shape their handover process and develop new perspectives on meaning beyond the business. Particular emphasis is placed on reorienting one’s daily life, reshaping relationships and building a sustainable inner connection to one’s life’s work. In this way, the publication makes an important contribution to the professionalisation of succession processes by recognising the inner transformation of the older generation as an integral part of a successful family strategy.