When owners serve on the board

In many family businesses, the main shareholders also serve on the board of directors. It makes sense. They know the company’s history, bring the owners’ perspective, feel personally invested in the business and have a clear interest in its continuity. But being logical doesn't mean being free of risk. In this article, we’ll examine both…

Four rooms, four matrices: where do we start?

Imagine this scenario: for the first time in its history, a family business is considering appointing a non-family CEO. An initial question might be: Is the family ready for this next stage? But this question might be too broad. Owners may agree that they want to keep the company in the family for generations, yet…

Dear Distance: What "The Correspondent" Teaches Us About Proximity

Virginia Evans’ debut novel The Correspondent has become one of the literary surprises of the past year. The novel follows Sybil Van Antwerp, a retired lawyer living alone in Annapolis. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was eight. The story is told entirely through the…

Power, leadership, management or culture: not every tool works for every problem

Last week we examined the foundations of the four rooms model in family business and why addressing a specific issue in the right room is so essential. In today's installment, we’ll add another layer to this framework: the valuable tools proposed by the renowned scholar Clayton Christensen. Christensen’s diagnostic starts with two key questions Finding…
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