Family Business

June 30, 2011 - Being engaged with family in a business model provides great opportunities for both conflict and shared success. Ignoring the family dynamics in the family business would be like ignoring the lava flow of an active volcano. You know it's there and you must address it.

March 31, 2011 - How to compensate has been a dilemma since the hunting and gathering societies. From communism to capitalism, mankind has questioned the value of work, education, time and brawn. Even within capitalism, we range from "performance bonus" to "union scale" - a wide variety of employment reward systems to say the least.

April 29, 2010 - How to plan for a graceful exit from the family business on your terms -” before it's too late

Sept./Oct. 2009 - The critical balance between the business and the family in business-owning families is in constant flux. No recent era would attest to that more than our current economic situation.

November 5, 2009 - As a business owner, most of your time is spent managing the business and the employees, especially in today's tough economic times. Unfortunately, too many business owners don't give enough thought to what will happen to their business if they die, and how the business can be passed on to their spouse, children or family in the most tax efficient and least costly manner.

July/August, 2009 - Can you think of a time when your advisors were more important? Probably not! Certainly, no time has seen the kind of economic drama and trauma we have lately.

May/June 2009 - My parents used to marvel at the memory of Win Schuler. We made the stop in Marshall, Mich., every time we traveled the I-94 corridor and "the consummate host," as Win Schuler became known, would greet us at the door and call us by our names.

March/April 2009 - Isn't it amazing that when the term "family business" is used it conjures up images of mom and pop operations like the corner party store or dry cleaner? For those of us who work with family firms, we know that the images couldn't be further from the truth.

January/February 2009 - While most have heard of sweat equity, in case you haven't - it is the hard work you put in theoretically beyond your compensation in hopes of a future reward. Sweat equity is the foundation on which many family firms are built.

November/December, 2008 - How families who have family businesses can create workplace conflict by not setting proper boundaries.

 

September/October 2008 - Careers may be marathon runs - but they do have a beginning and an end. That is unless your career is serving as the head of a family business.

July/August 2008 - Is there something in the universal human condition that says that a family-operated business tends to fail when the grandkids take over? Is it being accelerated in the digital age? Columnist Richard Segal explores the idea in Family Business.

May/June 2008 - Although the family has chosen to remain anonymous, it seems that they too may have run out of interested family to continue the business. There were seven family shareholders and only two were actively in management. The managing family members were in their 50s when they decided that it was time to explore the "sell option."

March 2008 - According to the American Family Business Survey, the number of female CEOs or presidents has doubled every five years since 1997. The most recent survey, done in the summer of 2007, indicates that 24 percent of the businesses surveyed currently have a female CEO or president - up from about 5 percent in 1997.

January 2008 - In 1986 a group of multidisciplinary professionals got together to explore family business. Twenty years later that group has evolved into the Family Firm Institute (FFI), an international organization of service providers to family firms.

November 1, 2007 - Nothing is more critical to both the short and long term success of a family business than the transition between the first (G1) and second (G2) generation. Fewer than half of family companies make it from the first to the second generation.

September 1, 2007 - Parents with a special needs child worry most about what will happen to that child when they are no longer able to care for him or her. If the family is fortunate enough to own a business, planning for the child's life after the parent's death can become complicated.