Sustaining Family Enterprise

This second volume is intended to provide sustenance to those stakeholders committed to the core objectives presented in the title to the first book. It addresses ongoing issues facing both family shareholder control groups and the enterprises they control that surface in ongoing, mature, successful endeavours.

Most people have a straightforward vision of the perfect family business. First, they hope for continued strengthening of the company’s financial and market position so it can support the lifestyle and needs of family members, from generation to generation. Secondly, they wish for family harmony.But life gets in the way. Sometimes family members’ short-term or individual needs can overwhelm the needs of the business. In other cases, family members strongly disagree on the strategic direction, or even on the day-to-day management of the business. These family conflicts, when acted out on the stage of the family controlled enterprise, can seem insurmountable.This new book is a follow up companion guide to Family Enterprises: How to Build Growth, Family Control and Family Harmony. The first volume features chapters written and edited by experts from many disciplines and located across the globe to provide the architecture for enduring, continuing family controlled enterprises.This second volume is intended to provide sustenance to those stakeholders committed to the core objectives presented in the title to the first book. It addresses ongoing issues facing both family shareholder control groups and the enterprises they control that surface in ongoing, mature, successful endeavours.The audience for this book is the owners, directors, managers of, and advisers to, family-controlled enterprises and the families that control them. It assumes that such enterprises have been launched – or at least renewed – as expressly family controlled businesses, or other enterprises.

Preface 5Richard L NarvaNarva & Company LLCPart I. Understanding the power and constraints of family issues in family enterprisesManaging intergenerational expectations, responsibilities and relationships in a family enterprise 7Emily F AbramsNarva & Company LLCLouis TurchettaStrategic Psychological ServicesFamily values: the soul of family business 15Thomas HublerHubler for Business Families IncCulture and ethnicity in family enterprises 25Everett MoitozaMoitoza ConsultingCrossing cultural boundaries: the duties of Chinese successors to their family controlled enterprises 45Anna XiaMarket Ignition Group & Advisory LLCUshering out a family business founder who doesn’t want to leave 57Christian W DameInterim Executive Solutions LLCPart II. Building the ability to lead family controlled enterprisesOptimising the advent of non-family executive management in family firms 63George P BukurasMilestone Business Advisors LLCTransformation and tradition: transitioning to a non-family leader at the family firm 77Roger PatkinNext Generation GroupFamily governance: questions and answers 93Daisy MediciGenSpring Family OfficesAwareness and action: transforming a family business via family enterprise and vertical leadership 105Greg McCannMcCann & AssociatesLeading from the self 121Robert GoodmanRGoodman Associates LLCCreating a strong leadership team 137Ann LindseyLindsey Leadership ConsultingPart III. Solving problems of sustainabilityMediating family business disputes: a primer for clients, family business advisers and other professionals 147David A HoffmanBoston Law Collaborative LLCFamily business turnarounds: non-financial fixes are the key 163Gerald ShermanPathway Advisors LLCFamily enterprise guide to major mental illness 181Eugene J FiermanCommonwealth Medical Psychiatry AssociatesJanet B FiermanSheehan Phinney Bass & Green PAAssessing going-concern risk in family enterprises 199Patricia A FrishkoffLeadership In Family Enterprise LLCSpecial issues in strategic planning in family controlled enterprises 211Julian E LangeBabson CollegeMindfulness and the management of family business stress 221Thomas HublerHubler for Business Families IncPart IVAfterword 229Richard L NarvaNarva & Company LLCAbout the authors 233