The goal of this book was to help readers to understand the experience of a successor, from the successor's point of view. After almost 20 years of hearing the stories of successors in our Next Generation Leadership Institute, I had some ideas about the challenges that faced successors, but I wanted to know more. I wanted to understand, from the successor's point of view, what it was like to take the reins of a storied family business, and I wanted to be able to share that knowledge with others who might benefit from their stories.

To take this challenge on, I used grounded research theory, a methodology pioneered by Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss. Under the guidance and tutelage of Dr. Torsten Pieper at Kennesaw State University, and with the help of Dr. Corinna Lindow and Dr. Isa Botero, we culled through the hundreds and hundreds of pages of interviews, developing codes to denote the themes that were emerging from the interviews.

I interviewed 28 different successors before we reached saturation. The interviewees ranged from second generation to eleventh generation. They were 25 men and 3 women. And their companies ranged from $20 million in sales to multibillion-dollar companies such as Wrigley and Tyson. We coded interviews from these 28 successors, and these interviews generated 1,949 unique codes. Those codes were then grouped and narrowed down into segments in order to find the commonalities across interviews.

These themes or groups form the foundation of this book. Building on these common themes from our successors, I have sought to share their wisdom, and also to inject my experiences in working with successors for almost 20 years on how to deal with the challenges identified therein.

Although the stories and experiences found here are compelling, this grounded research approach really opens the door for future research to explore the themes explored in this book. For instance, it would be greatly beneficial for future research to explore the practice of a successor working outside the business to understand its true impact on the differentiation process. It would be interesting to understand if successors who carry the same first name as their parents encounter a bigger shadow. I think that future research could also develop a larger pool of female successors to explore gender differences in the experiences of successors.