WHAT THIS BOOK IS ABOUT.
This activity-based fieldbook serves as a rigorous planning tool developed from over 25 years of teaching and advising business families globally. It teaches professional planning skills enabling business families to evolve into multi-generational teams driven by planning, passion, and purpose.
The resource creates real-world family learning experiences through activities focused on family and business planning exploration.
After over 25 years of teaching family businesses around the world, we have seen some outstanding business families who understand and use professional planning tools to help their families and businesses perform better.
But we have also observed, and research shows, that most business families do not have plans for succession and few have a clear family strategy.
The need for business planning is demonstrated and accepted but many families still neglect addressing their family plans because they know the issues are emotional and they do not want to risk potentially explosive conversations. It is understandable that planning for both family harmony and business sustainability is a daunting task, and therefore often ignored or avoided.
It is also clear that the family’s significant role demands the family’s capable and active participation so there needs to be a new approach to helping business families learn to work together more effectively.
This fieldbook is also a rigorous planning tool, teaching the professional planning skills for a business family to move from the founder or owner-manager stages (G1,G2), based on power, personality and politics, to a multi-generational family-team model (G3 and beyond), driven by planning, passion and purpose.
“Families are about emotions and caring, and businesses are about profit and performance, not a likely partnership.”