Practice Insight

Practice insights are articles submitted by practitioners, such as entrepreneurs, consultants, managers, and venture investors. These articles undergo editorial review but are not peer reviewed. 


The HERO Model: How Family Enterprise Leaders Can Accelerate Change

Hope, Efficacy, Resilience and Optimism can make us better people and better leaders.  Here's how to cultivate it within ourselves. All leaders and advisors struggle with organizational Read More...

Category: Practice Insight

Author: Doug Gray, PhD

Transferring Family Wealth to the Next Generation: What’s Fair?

Baby Boomers are set to hand down trillions of dollars to younger generations. Family firms must consider how to transfer their ownership shares, and how much goes to whom. Around the world, an aging Read More...

Category: Practice Insight

Authors: Martin Kemp and Susan Lanz

Include the Extended Family in Your Ownership Strategy

Your "owners' strategy" should consider that in the future, the family firm will likely have many more owners. Take a broader focus when you develop it. In the US, most family business advisory firms Read More...

Category: Practice Insight

Authors: Claudia Binz Astrachan and Tom Rüsen

'Yellowstone' Mirrors Real-Life Family Business Dramas

Like many family business leaders, John Dutton struggles to uphold longstanding traditions while external competitive pressures mount and next-gens clamor for change. "Yellowstone" is an American Read More...

Category: Practice Insight

Authors: Robin Burns and Ana Gonzalez

How to Boost Your Board's Performance

On an ideal board, directors with different levels of experience, backgrounds, and interests form a cohesive team that pulls in the same direction, and that achieves more together than "the sum of Read More...

Category: Practice Insight

Authors: Lars B. Sonderegger and Claudia Binz Astrachan

Involve Next-Gens in Developing Your Social Media Policy

Family businesses should consider a social media policy as a relatively “low-hanging fruit” to introduce the next generation to governance work. Does your business family have a social media Read More...

Category: Practice Insight

Authors: Claudia Binz Astrachan , Tom Rüsen and Rebecca DeYarman

Storytelling Vividly Illustrates Your Family Business Values

Values can form a strong foundation for a family business. Through shared values, we feel united and form a bond of culture, history, and pride. This bond can motivate each member of the family to Read More...

Category: Practice Insight

Author: Eva Fischer Hansen

A False Sense of Urgency Helps Neither Family Nor Business

Many of us are (or at least we believe ourselves to be!) natural-born problem solvers: Once we recognize a problem, we want to resolve it as expediently as possible. As a result, we fall into Read More...

Category: Practice Insight

Authors: Joseph Astrachan and Claudia Binz Astrachan

8 Things to Consider When Planning Your Business Budget

  As we showed in part 1 of this discussion , trying to use budgets as both a planning tool and an expectations setting tool can be destructive, because the self-interests of different factions Read More...

Category: Practice Insight

Author: Joseph Astrachan

Family Business Budget Planning: 7 Things to Consider

Part 2 of a two-part series As we showed in part 1 of this discussion , trying to use budgets as both a planning tool and an expectations setting tool can be destructive, because the self-interests Read More...

Category: Practice Insight

Author: Joseph Astrachan