DES MOINES, IA, December 2025 – In family-owned and agricultural businesses, succession planning often begins with urgency and good intentions. Families schedule meetings between planting seasons or after harvest. Advisors are brought in. Documents are outlined. Yet in many cases, those early efforts never reach completion. Decisions are delayed. Momentum fades. Plans sit unfinished while day-to-day operations continue.
Rena Striegel, President of Transition Point Business Advisors, has spent years working with families at this exact point of stall. Raised in rural Iowa and familiar with the realities of multi-generational operations, she has seen how succession planning can quietly lose traction even when everyone involved agrees it matters.
Striegel’s experience suggests that stalled plans are rarely the result of apathy or resistance. More often, they reflect deeper uncertainty around expectations, timing, and responsibility. Families may understand that transition is necessary, but feel unsure how to move forward without risking conflict or disruption to the business they depend on.
According to Striegel, one of the most common obstacles is a fragmented approach to planning. Legal, financial, and operational considerations are often addressed separately, sometimes by different professionals who rarely sit at the same table.
“The industry of succession planning is messy,” Striegel said. “Most professionals look at what they provide and package it as succession planning. A single professional is only serving one piece of the pie and neglects or discounts the other critical pieces. This is one of the reasons families fail to complete the planning process.”
Without a clear way to connect those pieces, families can feel overwhelmed. Questions about ownership, leadership readiness, and decision-making authority linger. Rather than risk making the wrong choice, many families choose to wait. That waiting, Striegel notes, can last years.
In agricultural businesses especially, the cost of delay is not always obvious at first. Operations continue. Crops are planted. Livestock is managed. But beneath the surface, uncertainty grows. Senior generations may hesitate to step back. Successors may wonder where they truly fit. Conversations that need to happen are postponed, often in the name of keeping peace.
Striegel sees these moments not as failures, but as signals that clarity is missing. Families may not be aligned on when the transition should occur, what ownership will actually mean, or how decisions will be shared. Until those questions are addressed together, even well-designed plans struggle to move forward.
“The goal is to create as much clarity and certainty as possible,” Striegel said. “When we do that, stress and tension are reduced.”
Her work focuses on helping families examine succession as a whole rather than as a series of disconnected tasks. By bringing communication patterns, decision-making habits, and next-generation readiness into the same conversation, families gain a clearer sense of direction. Progress becomes less intimidating when everyone understands what is being asked of them and why.
When that clarity is present, succession planning shifts from something families avoid to something they can complete with intention.
About Rena Striegel
Rena Striegel is President of Transition Point Business Advisors and a nationally recognized authority in family business and agricultural succession. Raised in What Cheer, Iowa, she brings both professional expertise and lived understanding to the challenges facing multi-generational enterprises. Striegel holds a Bachelor of Arts from Central College in Pella, Iowa, and an MBA from the University of Iowa. Her work centers on clarity, communication, and completion in succession planning. She is the creator of The DIRTT Project and host of the Ag Inspo podcast.
About Transition Point Business Advisors
Transition Point Business Advisors works with family-owned and agricultural businesses to support successful ownership transitions. The firm specializes in succession planning, communication alignment, and next-generation readiness, helping families move through change with clarity and confidence.
Website: Transitionpointba.com
LinkedIn: Renastriegel
Instagram: Renastriegel
