Craig E. Aronoff’s scientific contributions

Susan’s story is a composite of the many, many stories we have heard from spouses in business-owning families. Quite simply, it is hard to marry into a family business. The arrival of in-laws in the family system is a significant event; it represents growth in the family and the possibility of a next generation, but it also generates a lot of anxiety. These new family members often make a business-owning family edgy. The perceived danger for family businesses is that an unhappy spouse can threaten a sibling partnership and destroy any sense of team cohesion, in particular if the couple’s tension comes from the family member’s involvement in the family’s business. A spouse can represent a value system that differs from that of the family she or he is joining and may not understand what life in a family owning a business is like. In addition, unless the business is protected by prenuptial and shareholders’ agreements, an embittered spouse can gain access to assets and cripple a family company financially if the couple divorces.

The sibling partnership stage is generally more intense and volatile than any other. As a result of their growing up together, the level of intimacy is higher among siblings than it is in the cousin generation that follows. This deeper knowledge of one another can foster a particularly strong partnership between individuals who can finish each other’s sentences, share each other’s passion, knowledge, and commitment to the business, and care for one another as only siblings can. On the other hand, some siblings really know how to get under each other’s skin, have a harmful shared history that leads to mistrust, or are simply constantly in competition for the attention and favors of their parents. Whether the family history is good or bad, it will have profoundly shaped each individual and the dynamics between them, making the emotional tenor of the family business particularly intense for siblings.

Ownership in a family business can be a rewarding and important role. It means stewardship, protection and nurturing the family business. As a guide for shareholders, this book will developing understanding and insight into the role of becoming more valuable as an owner, not just financially, but intellectually and emotionally as well. It aims to provide the philosophical foundation that will support the decisions owners make about technical and legal issues and to help all shareholders understand how to be constructive in their roles. Ownership ought to be an interesting, challenging, profitable, and spiritually enriching experience.

Statistics show that many family businesses fail by the third generation-- those that survive are able to navigate the transition from a sibling run business to an expanded family run business. Here Aronoff and Ward show siblings and cousins how to work together on key issues that are critical to the future success of the business including how to attract the most capable family members into leadership roles, how to develop agreement among many owners, and how to create a "cousin collaboration" which will go a long way to determining the prosperity and fortune of your firm.

Strategies for family firms, unlike those of other businesses, can and should incorporate family factors. Responsible and disciplined strategic integration of family and business goals, strengths and values produces powerful results. In Preparing Your Family Business For Strategic Change, you'll learn: * How to reach your family business's strategic potential * How to make change your tradition * How to prevent past successes from limiting future ones * How to recognize and use your family business's advantages * How to overcome family business disadvantages * How to depersonalize successes to benefit the business and the family * How to create a strategic culture Creating and implementing successful family business strategy is no abstract planning process. It requires family business leaders to understand the real reasons for success, to create a culture of change, and to manage incremental strategic experiments in ways that consistently stimulate strategic thinking. Preparing Your Family Business For Strategic Change shows you how.

Family business leaders of the past could often guarantee decades of success built on a single, long-lived strategic plan. But the current rapid rate of change makes ongoing success an infinitely more difficult challenge. What works today is passé tomorrow. In Make Change Your Family Business Tradition, those involved in or with a family firm will learn how to: build and preserve a foundation for constant renewal; modify the company’s culture while preserving its values; recognize and overcome the inhibitors to change; adapt traditions to contemporary realities; develop characteristics of an effective change leader; respect the past while embracing the future; encourage and make room for the next generation’s changes; gain family and employee commitment to change...and much more.

Families can be good for the businesses they own, and businesses can be good for the families that own them—particularly when owners pull together in the same direction. Like one hand washing the other, a business can provide the cohesive focus that brings a family together, and the family cohesion, in turn, benefits the business and moves it forward.

As you and your cousins think about how your business should be managed while you are in charge, it is helpful to review some of the changing dynamics we described earlier. Your parents, the sibling generation, may have been seen as equals. Each probably had his or her own area of responsibility—perhaps a business within the family enterprise—and did not interfere in the others’ territory. Unless an individual proved truly incompetent, they generally assumed that the sibling running a given operation was the best person to do so. The arrangement enabled the siblings to avoid many of the conflicts common in family firms.

When we consult with a group of cousins in a business-owning family, we nearly always open the proceedings with two questions: “Do you want to continue to own this business together? If so, why?” These are the most critical questions the cousins have to answer and we urge them to be particularly thoughtful as they explore the questions together. It’s important that they not make the assumption that everyone wants to continue together. Continuing to be an owner should be a conscious, voluntary choice. That’s what “collaboration” implies, after all.

When you act like an owner—that is, a good owner—you accept a host of interesting and challenging responsibilities. You adopt what we call an “ownership attitude.” If we had to describe what an ownership attitude means in one word, we’d say stewardship.