Run a Family Business Without Losing the Family: Roles, Values, Succession

1. Write down: if I could choose my future business partners, what would I want them to know?
2. List the character attributes you would require of any partner.
3. List the experiences you would want them to have had (jobs, failures, travel, customers faced).
4. For each line, write one thing a child or young relative can do this year to move toward it.
5. Share the list with them at an age-appropriate level and revisit it annually.

Finish with: A one-page development map for each potential successor.

Copy exercise

1. Write your vision in one sentence: where the business is going.
2. Write your mission in one sentence: what it does and for whom.
3. List five business principles: how decisions get made here.
4. List five values: how people behave here.
5. Read it aloud with every family member in the business and edit until nobody objects.
6. Post it where the family works and refer to it whenever a disagreement starts.

Finish with: A single page that settles most 'pulling in different directions' arguments.

Copy exercise

1. List every recurring responsibility in the business (sales, dispatch, hiring, bookkeeping, vendor relationships, and so on).
2. Write one name next to each. Only one.
3. Circle every item with your name on it.
4. Choose the three circled items a family member could own within 90 days and write a one-line definition of done for each.
5. Hand them over with a start date and a check-in date.

Finish with: A role map with a single owner per responsibility and a 90-day hand-off plan.

Copy exercise

1. Before hiring, promoting, paying, or giving equity to a relative, write one paragraph covering: the role, the pay, decision rights, and how success will be judged.
2. Add one sentence on what happens if it does not work out.
3. Add one sentence on what a good exit or sale would mean for them.
4. Read it together and have both people initial it.
5. Re-read it together every six months.

Finish with: A signed expectation note for every relative in the business.

Copy exercise

1. Once a year, bring your accountant to the family and review the full financials together.
2. Explain revenue, profit, debt, and cash to the children at their level.
3. Ask each child one question about what they would do differently.
4. Record the answers and compare them year over year.

Finish with: Children who understand the business they may one day own, and a record of how their judgment develops.

Copy exercise

1. List the books that shaped how you run the business. The franchisee's list includes Your Next Five Moves and Atomic Habits.
2. Add books on money, character, and your industry until you reach a number you believe in (his is 75 by age 18).
3. Order them by the age at which each one makes sense.
4. Give one to each child this month and talk about it over a meal when they finish.

Finish with: A family reading list that gives the next generation the same vocabulary as the current one.

Copy exercise

1. Pick one successor.
2. For 90 days, include them in every meaningful conversation you have: vendors, hiring, customer escalations, banking.
3. After each one, take five minutes: what did you notice, what would you have decided?
4. At the end of 90 days, give them one category of decisions to make alone.

Finish with: A successor who has heard how you think, and one delegated decision area.

Copy exercise

1. Name the specific gap in plain words (skill, effort, or alignment with where the company is going).
2. Agree on what improvement looks like in 60 days and how you will both know.
3. Offer the help a non-relative would get: training, a mentor, a clearer role.
4. Set the review date now, and decide in advance what happens if the gap is unchanged.
5. Have a second family leader present so two opinions can line up.

Finish with: A fair, written improvement plan that protects both the business and the relationship.

Copy exercise