Sometimes the family grows much faster than the business, especially in saturated markets. This has deep implications for how we manage family and business expectations.

Are you curious about where your shareholder group stands—how knowledgeable and committed they are to the family enterprise, what values and personal goals they bring, and what concerns or expectations they may have?

Sustaining a family enterprise is not just a question of profitability. It’s a question of alignment between the pace of family growth, the business’s true capacity, and the expectations placed on both.

This article provides actionable recommendations on how to support your business through the current economic uncertainty while maintaining family unity and commitment.

This research-based article highlights the critical role of choosing the right successor to ensure business survival after a sudden death tragedy.

Anxiety, depression, and other conditions disrupt family business operations and strain family relationships. Ignoring them won’t make them go away.

Your "owners' strategy" should consider that in the future, the family firm will likely have many more owners. That’s why you might want to take a broader focus when you develop it.

Family businesses should consider a social media policy as a relatively “low-hanging fruit” to introduce the next generation to governance work.

Financial education is critical for business families with a generational vision - yet, it is often undervalued and not prioritized, despite its profound implications for family cohesion and business sustainability.

Consider how much white space you have in your leadership practice. What do you do to make yourself available to these other sources of wisdom: your heart, your gut, and your soul?

Money is hardly ever ‘just money’: When business families discuss distributions or family member compensation, capital structure or investment strategy, these conversations are often driven by the individual family members’ emotions and orientations towards money and wealth.

Families differ in their willingness to integrate outsiders into their family circle. These actions influence the included or excluded individuals in different ways, creating a ripple effect throughout the family that can last generations.

This fictitious case study illustrates what happens when a family outgrows its family office, and offers suggestions for a way forward.

Family firms that fail to educate their owners are putting their future in peril. In this article, we highlight where business families fall short in their ownership training and outline a simple process to identify the educational needs of your own family shareholder group.

Once established, family governance mechanisms are rarely revisited or evaluated. The result is that family governance gets stuck focusing on the past and present - instead of supporting your family on its journey to where it wants to be.

How do you keep a shareholder group of dozens, even hundreds of shareholders united and aligned? Family councils can counteract the growing family’s tendencies to grow apart - but they must evolve alongside the family’s changing needs, wants, and objectives.

Should you select family members for governance roles based on family branch or generation, their qualifications, or based on how well-respected they are within the family? Every choice comes with benefits and disadvantages.

Can you quantify your board’s contribution to the performance of your family business? What about its effect on the family, in terms of settling disputes, creating policies, and providing transparency, just to name a few?

What are the core elements of a successful and fulfilling career?

The salaries of top executives can be a hot topic and a source of stress – at family businesses and non-family firms. How can family business leaders decide what’s fair?