Teresa Spinelli took her first steps as a toddler down the pasta aisle of her family's European foods store in Edmonton, worked as a cashier during junior high and moved into the office when she finished university. But in her traditional Italian family, there was no doubt that her brother Pietro would take over the business when her dad moved on.

Then, in 1996, Pietro died at the age of 32. "He had hepatitis C and he was waiting for a liver transplant," says Spinelli, "but no one expected him to die. Until the very end, he was fine." Six months later, her father was diagnosed with cancer; within four years, he, too, was gone — making Spinelli the reluctant captain of Italian Centre Shop Ltd. (No. 14 on the 2008 W100 ranking of Canada's Top Women Entrepreneurs).

She initially struggled with the responsibility. She hadn't been groomed or educated for the job, and she faced a host of difficulties. Staff didn't want to take direction from a woman. Suppliers offered to call their wives to take her shopping during business trips. And rumours swirled that Spinelli would sell. "My middle name was Stress," she says.

Unfortunately, Spinelli's situation is all too common. Transitioning from one generation to the next can be rocky for any family business. It's even worse if it comes about unexpectedly because of death or disability. Without a plan that outlines a smooth, orderly handover, your successor and company may face a host of challenges, including confusion, uncertainty, employee angst and even a potential business devaluation.

Here's how three W100 CEOs survived the most common succession challenges. Heed their lessons to ensure the process of handing over the reins goes more smoothly at your company.

Challenge No. 1: The headless organization

Without a strong leader, entrepreneurial firms can flounder fast. And yet, according to a 2005 survey by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, only 35% of business owners have a plan to exit their business. And of those, just 23% have a process to identify a successor.

That was the case at Aecometric Corp. (No. 18), a Richmond Hill, Ont.-based company that designs and builds industrial burners and related equipment. Founded by Jill Anderson and her husband Larry, Aecometric was initially run from the couple's home. When it later moved to outside premises, Jill took a couple of years off with the kids before returning to work in the finance department. "Larry was the business," says Anderson. "He was in charge of all the sales, was the general manager and everybody in the plant reported to him. He was pervasive."

Then, in 1995, Larry had a massive stroke. Everyone, from clients to banks and employees, assumed the business would implode without him. The bulk of Aecometric's employees, including managers, left the company and the bank pulled its line of credit. Sales plummeted from $5 million at their peak to $1 million in the year following Larry's stroke.

How she beat it: Anderson considered selling, but when potential buyers lowballed, she dug in her heels. "My husband had worked so hard and given up his health for this business," she says. "I was damned if I would let it go cheap."

Telling herself that she could "break down later, when there was time," Anderson focused on keeping Aecometric afloat. She hired a general manager who had worked in the automotive industry, but he had little knowledge about the market for industrial burners. Six months later, Anderson concluded that she could do a better job.

Anderson's approach was to create a non-hierarchical team that jumped in and got the job done. "I didn't make speeches," she says. "I just put one foot in front of the other." She plugged the holes in her management team by promoting talented employees who had skills she lacked in areas such as sales and marketing, and production. Then she filled the remaining gaps with graduate students and immigrants. The approach was born of necessity, says Anderson, since more senior people wouldn't take a chance on a struggling firm. It proved to be a great strategy. The students were easy to train, and one Chinese employee ended up spearheading Aecometric's sales efforts when it expanded to China.

Anderson also set a new tone for the firm — one that is "a little less entrepreneurial and a little more systematic." The client list, technology and processes are now kept on paper or computers rather than being stored in a single person's head. Today, a number of family members work in the business, including Anderson's daughter Kelly, the operations manager. Anderson's goal is to ensure that no one person is indispensable.