Harvard Business Review – Top Family Businesses Focus on Value-Based Succession

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Harvard Business Review (video): Top Family Businesses Focus on Value-Based Succession

Family-run businesses are often highly successful initially, but flounder after two or three generations. How can they improve their sustainability? In a video interview with the Harvard Business Review, Claudio Fernández-Aráoz senior adviser to Egon Zehnder, reports on the key findings of the firm’s recent survey of leading, longstanding family firms. The survey reveals that top family businesses implement four best practices: they adopt great governance as a baseline, preserve “family gravity”, invest heavily in identifying and developing talent, and opt for structured CEO succession. Key family members need courage and objectivity when dealing with succession issues that involve close relatives, notes Fernández-Aráoz. The best family business look for leaders who are a close match to their corporate culture in terms of integrity, respect, a long-term perspective and ambition. According to Fernández-Aráoz: “Values are really the acid test for success in family businesses.”

Watch Video: 4 Lessons from the Best Family Businesses a video interview with Claudio Fernández-Aráoz by the Harvard Business Review (14 December 2015).

See also: Claudio Fernández-Aráoz, Sonny Iqbal and Jörg Ritter: Leadership Lessons from Great Family Businesses, in the Harvard Business Review (2015).

Full Egon Zehnder survey