Our Latest Articles
//November 10, 2025 - Issue #154
Planning Succession? These 10 Decisions Are Critical Succession is not a single choice -- It is a chain of choices that interlock and compound. Avoiding any one of them will create friction or ambiguity.
The 7 Gears of Leadership, And When to Use Each One Leaders acquire tremendous human capacities as they rise to the top. Their challenge is to deploy the right strength for each difficult situation.
Editor's Pick
Sherri Noxel
'Letting Go'
Oregon winery entrepreneur Susan Sokol Blosser is one of the founders of Oregon’s wine industry and a prolific writer. In “Letting Go” she captured the very personal and painful journey of exiting a family business that she founded. It’s the type of honest book about succession that is hard to find. Her first book, “Gracious and Ruthless: Surprising Strategies for Business Success,” shares her point of view as a woman founder in a traditionally male industry.
http://www.susansokolblosser.com
The World is Changing Faster Than Your Strategy Families that learn to use their cohesion, trust, and long-term orientation as strengths can implement strategies more effectively than their non-family peers, especially in times of uncertainty.
Family Firms: Building Resilience Across Generations Building on three specific attributes -- long-term orientation, social capital, and values-driven governance -- helps families build strengths for generations to come. 
Listening to the Family: The Strategic Value of Surveys Surveys can reveal differing perspectives, surface hidden tensions, and – when done well – build trust, and serve as an educational opportunity. 
Kudos to Our Authors Mat Hughes Congratulations to Kajsa Haag, Hanna Almlof, Marina Madsen and Mette Neville, whose research into how family firms approach legal advice was honored by the Family Firm Institute. Read their research summary here!
What Business Owners Can Learn From World War II Strategic Bombing Like military strategists, business owners face decisions that must balance vision and resources, courage and caution, innovation and discipline.
Family Ownership Can Undermine Financial Health However, those who invested more in R&D and operated in countries with strong and supportive institutions enjoyed better market capitalizations.
Define Your Legacy, and Strengthen Your Business and Your Impact Unless you clearly define what you want your legacy to be, your successors will interpret it in their own way -- and it might not be what you intended. 
Rather than inherited like family heirlooms, values are shaped and re-shaped by interactions between the generations at the family firm. Read more...
A family investment policy defines how a family manages its collective financial assets in alignment with its shared values, goals, and risk preferences. Read more...
A study of Italian firms shows how differences can be resolved, so the company can honor tradition and still make progress. Read more...
When families treat readiness as something they cultivate together, the handoff feels less like a loss and more like a natural next step. Read more...
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Supported by the Richard M Schulze Family Foundation