It’s amazing how much practical business advice one can get from reading Shakespeare. Most scholars will agree that Hamlet is one of the greatest tragedies ever written. What almost none of them will say, however, is how clearlythe Bard’s immortal work is a call for proper succession management.

Hamlet, for those who only remember bits and pieces of the Cliff Notes, is the prince of Denmark whose father’s throne was taken by his uncle after the king dies. Faced with a power struggle in the front office and a hostile takeover being considered by Norway, Denmark could be seen as a family business on the brink of collapse, and it’s all due to improper succession planning.

Hamlet’s father sees his son as the right man for the job of replacing him as head of the company, but he neglects to mention this to anyone until he’s already dead and a ghost. Without anything in writing, the king’s brother is able to swoop in and claim both the top office and his brother’s wife. Hamlet fakes being crazy to cover up his investigation, his girlfriend actually does go crazy, his college buddies get killed for helping him out and, eventually, everyone is poisoned, stabbed or both. The Norwegians are left with a heck of a lot of restructuring to do.    

This month’s Get Real column by Brian Salgado offers up a much less violent but no less dramatic example of the importance of succession management. Sandra Westlund-Deenihan trusted her father to have the family business’ future squared away, but ended up having to liquidate all of her assets just to keep the company from being auctioned off.    

Retirement planning is the focus of one of this month’s columns, and it should make for some interesting reading for business owners who have been putting it off. If you intend for your offspring to be your heir, the last thing you want is to see him or her puttering around in graveyards, talking to skulls.