Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: KEYWORDS: family business advice, Help with a family business, family business succession planning, family business conflict.Succession is not a single choice --It is a chain of choices that interlock and compound.Avoiding any one of them will create friction or ambiguity.Succession is the defining challenge of the family business.Most of us know the proverb about shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves, and the research statistics are no less bracing.Fewer than one in three family firms reaches the second generation with the business intact, and only a fraction of those continue on to the third.The difference between those who endure and those who do not is rarely luck.From decades of teaching, research, and advising, I have learned that families who succeed do one thing consistently.They decide.Succession is not a single choice, it is a chain of choices that interlock and compound.Avoiding any one of them creates friction or ambiguity that spreads through the system.Confronting them in a direct, transparent, and respectful way creates alignment.The framework that follows is decision-driven on purpose.It is built around ten explicit questions that every enterprising family must answer, and it is designed to be used in conversation, not filed in a drawer.I offer examples from recognizable companies because real stories make the choices, and the tradeoffs, easier to see.My aim is practical.Read this with a pen in hand, and answer each question for your family.
Author: David Deeds
Language: English
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
OpenAlex ID: W4415358976
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