Contents
Introduction: Understanding Your Family Business
What you will learn in the HBR Family Business Handbook
Cracking the Code of Your Family Business
1. Decode Your Family Business
2. The Power of Family Ownership
The five rights of family owners
The Five Rights of Family Owners
3. Design: Choose the Type of Family Ownership You Want
What type of family ownership do you want?
Understanding the current and future implications of your ownership type
Changing your type of family ownership
4. Decide: Structure Governance to Make Great Decisions Together
Structures: form your Four Rooms
Processes: integrate across rooms
5. Value: Create an Owner Strategy to Define Your Success
The right to define value: growth, liquidity, and control
Defining purpose in a business family
Developing your Owner Strategy statement
6. Inform: Use Effective Communication to Build Trusted Relationships
The trade-off between transparency and privacy
Drafting your communication plan
7. Transfer: Plan for the Transition to the Next Generation
The right to transfer: 2G or not 2G?
The essential elements of successful continuity planning
How to set continuity planning in motion
8. The Business Family: Four Disruptions You Will Face and What to Do about Them
New people entering the business family
How to stabilize after a disruption
9. Working in a Family Business
Deciding to work in your family business
Joining the business as an in-law
Preparing for life under the microscope
Thriving as an outsider in a family business
Decide how to attract the talent in your family
Create entry rules for family employees
Plan family employee career paths
Design feedback and development for family employees
Prepare an exit path for family employees
Draft your family employment policy
11. How to Be Responsible with the Wealth of Your Family Business
Build a portfolio to last generations
Prepare your family to be responsible with its wealth
12. Conflict in the Family Business
Finding the Goldilocks zone of conflict
Moving from fake harmony to constructive conflict
The conflict spiral: from diverging interests to family wars
13. The Family Office in a Family Business
The functions of a family office
How to know if you need a family office
Building out your family office
Deciding when to close your family office
14. The Dangers of Losing What You’ve Built
Recognizing warning signs that you might be losing control
Maintaining your family values
Responding to an economic crisis
Conclusion: The Good Journey, Together