Are You Protecting the Golden Goose?
Are Your Protecting the Golden Goose?"We have to protect the golden goose" sounds like wisdom. But it rests on three assumptions: that you know what the golden goose is, that your current decisions are protecting it, and that the proposed change is the threat. All...
The Problem AI Just Made Impossible to Ignore
The problem AI just made impossible to ignoreThe knowledge that makes a family business distinctive lives in people, not systems. That's always been true. AI is just making it more obvious, more quickly. This piece looks at how one webinar attendee already knew...
Who Needs What You Do?
Who Needs What You Do?Most generational brands know their longtime customers well. What they see less clearly is who already needs what they do but hasn't walked through the door yet. This piece introduces a framework for finding that growth without abandoning the...
The Missing Brick
The Missing BrickThere's a moment most generational businesses eventually face: the first year the numbers go backward. What leaders do next often defines the company's trajectory for decades. This piece explores what LEGO's recovery reveals about the instinct to...
AI Is Not a New Question for Family Businesses
AI Is Not a New Question for Family BusinessesEvery generation of family business leaders has faced some version of the same test: something new arrives, and the business has to decide what to do with it. AI is the current version of that test. The leaders who...
Our Customers Are Dying: What Family Businesses Get Wrong About Finding New Buyers
Our Customers Are Dying: What Family Businesses Get Wrong About Finding New BuyersWhen a family business general manager told us his best customers were dying, he wasn't joking. It's a pattern that shows up across industries and generations, and it rarely gets...
If You Want to Understand Water, Don’t Ask a Fish
If You Want to Understand Water, Don't Ask a FishThe most valuable asset in many family businesses isn't a product, a process, or a customer list. It's reputation and it's often the least examined. That's not negligence. It's proximity. When something is woven into...
Next Generation Leadership in Family Business
What Founders Build, and What the Next Generation SeesA shift happens in family businesses that doesn’t always get named. The next generation stops seeing just the company and starts seeing the system around it. This perspective changes how decisions get made, how...
The Transferability Trap in Family Business
Transferability, or trap?Much of what makes a family business successful lives inside people. It’s instinct. Judgment. Relationships built over decades. An ability to read a room, close a deal, or sense when the market is shifting. So when succession becomes real,...