Learning in the Classroom and Beyond

August 18, 2025 - Issue #148

Family Business Professors: 40 Ways to Energize Your Class These free classroom exercises, interviews and other resources will add new energy, fun and inspiration to your students' course work.

What Family Firms Can Teach Us About Work-Life Balance Blurring work and personal lives can lead to stress and exhaustion. Family businesses do these four things to create healthier boundaries.

Family Firms: The Time to Learn About AI is Now Like the telephone or the internet, AI is here to stay, and we need to learn how to work with it.

Helping Next-Gens Envision Their Family Firm’s Future Success This classroom exercise seeks to motivate future family firm leaders to think ahead and design a holistic vision of their family firm in 10-15 years, covering many different (and potentially conflicting) aspects of it.

Growing Pains: Helping a Family Office to Evolve The Single Family Office should be a strategic partner that ensures future stability, but this family saw them as a piggybank.

The Psychology of Effective Exit Planning: A Guide for Families and Advisors Family firms can help the next generation move forward by understanding and supporting the emotional aspects of the exit for the current leader.

Team Exercise: How Parenting Styles Affect The Next Generation This experiential exercise is designed to enhance student learning about the four parenting styles and how they affect the dynamics within the family firm.

ESG Essentials For Family Firms ‘ESG is an existential issue. Businesses that don’t demonstrate their commitment to sustainable practices could be punished by consumers, the media and even regulators.’

CEOs Who've Been Mentored Achieve Better Financial Results Family firms where the departing CEO has mentored the successor enjoyed stronger return on assets.

A New Way to Resolve Extreme Conflict in Family Businesses Family members may feel “trapped” in conflicts, unable to resolve substantive issues without damaging their familial relationships. This often leads to disputes that persist for decades.

Why Don't You Educate Your Owners? Everyone agrees that families should train members to become competent owners and stewards of the family business – but few of them actually walk the talk.

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Learn to Defend Your Family Firm

What Business Owners Can Learn From World War II Strategic Bombing

Addressing Substance Use Disorders in a Family Enterprise

Cross-Generational Partnerships Can Be Magical for Business

Popular Topics

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Recent

How to Weigh the Consequences of Selling the Family Business

by Paul Edelman / Practice Insight

A strong valuation is not enough. Families need to understand the emotional, relational, and governance consequences of selling before they commit. Read more...

A Family Illness Can Infect the Business, Too

by Kristen Shanine, Kristen Madison, and Marilyn Whitman / Research Insight

Serious health problems can disrupt leadership, finances, customer relationships, and more. New research shows how family firms can prevent illness from becoming a business crisis. Read more...

Why PE Firms Want to Buy Your Family Firm (and Change it)

by Sören Paleit, Frederik J. Riar, Marcel Hülsbeck, and Andreas Hack / Research Insight

Family businesses are often viewed as ripe for operational improvement, making them especially attractive to private equity investors seeking value creation. Read more...

Give Future Leaders Exposure to Critical Roles

by Kimberly Eddleston / Interviews

A job rotation program gives next-gens both hands-on experience and a working knowledge of different departments and important outside relationships. Read more...

by Susan Lanz, Gary Burke, Kajsa Haag, and Omid Omidvar

How Family Dynamics Shape Family Businesses

by Joseph Astrachan and Claudia Binz Astrachan

Let the Next Generation of Family Firm Leaders Chart Their Own Path

by Klaus Lüber and Nadine Kammerlander

5 Practical Tips for Making Business Decisions With Family Members

by Rostyslav Vovk

Why Family Business Founders Struggle to Step Back During Succession

by Paul Edelman

Helping Daughters Become Successful Family Business Leaders

by Simon Caspary and Tom Rüsen