Preparing Your Family Business for Strategic Change

by Ward, John L.; Aronoff, Craig E.

• ISBN13: 9780230111073
• ISBN10: 0230111076
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-12-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

The family is key to the family business and thus key to the strategic plan for that business. It is important to incorporate family factors such as goals, needs, and relationships in order to build the strength of the firm. In addition, today's complex world requires a flexible strategic path. The next generation of leaders will be required to develop new strategies as quickly as every few years to account for the enormous rapidity of technology development. Redefining the business has become an important step in the process that ensures not only strategic survival of the business but the committment of the family.

Author Biography

Craig E. Aronoff is Co-founder, Principal Consultant, and Chairman of the Board of the Family Business Consulting Group, Inc., the founder of the Cox Family Enterprise Center, and current Professor Emeritus at Kennesaw State University. He invented and implemented the membership-based, professional-service-provider sponsored Family Business Forum, which has served as a model of family business education for universities world-wide. John L. Ward is Co-founder of the Family Business Consulting Group, Inc. He is Clinical Professor at the Kellogg School of Management and teaches strategic management, business leadership, and family enterprise continuity.

Table of Contents

Tables and Exhibits	p. ix
Preface	p. xiii
Shorter Life Expectancy of Strategies	p. xiii
The Family Factor	p. xv
Reaching Your Family Business's Strategic Potential	p. 1
Sorting through Mixed Signals	p. 2
Understanding the Family Business Strategic Path	p. 3
At Which Phase Is Your Family Business?	p. 6
Getting to the Next Phase	p. 6
Moving Forward	p. 10
Demystifying Past Success	p. 11
Unleashing Strategy and Structure	p. 11
Loosening Rigid Strategies	p. 13
Making Change Part of Tradition	p. 16
Moving Forward	p. 19
Preventing Past Business Strategy from Limiting Future Success	p. 21
Just What Business Are You In?	p. 22
Getting Over Resistance to Planning	p. 23
Developing Strategic Skills	p. 26
Making Change Less Threatening	p. 31
Moving Forward	p. 33
Responding to Family and Business Needs	p. 35
The Power of Family Values	p. 36
Reducing Personal Financial and Emotional Insecurity	p. 37
Matching Family Factors with Business Strategy	p. 41
Assessing Risk Tolerance of Family Members	p. 44
Developing Stewardship	p. 45
Moving Forward	p. 48
Strategic Liberation and Renewal	p. 49
New Models for Strategic Succession	p. 49
Appreciating Inherent Family Business Advantages	p. 52
Understanding Inherent Family Business Disadvantages	p. 58
Turning Disadvantages into Advantages	p. 59
What Have You Done for the Family Business Lately?	p. 61
Depersonalizing Disagreements about Succession or Strategy	p. 62
Getting Input from the Outside	p. 65
Moving Forward	p. 66
Conclusions: Getting from Here to There	p. 69
Appendix: Financial Performance Over the Family Business Strategic Path	p. 73
Index	p. 77
The Authors	p. 83
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