Making Sibling Teams Work: The Next Generation

Where a business was once almost invariably handed from father to son, it is now increasingly passed from a founder to a next-generation sibling team. Brothers and sisters own and run businesses together in relationships that can be characterized by strength, joy, love and support or by dysfunction, disharmony and disaster.

This book is for business-owning parents who want to position their children for success as co-owners and co-leaders in their family business. It is for those children's wives and husbands who want to be supportive and yet not overwhelmed by the dynamics of the family into which they've married. And this book is for those who are or who may become part of a team of sibling owners or managers. Making Sibling Teams Work will help those who have accepted the responsibility of preserving and building a business to find success in their own generation while setting the stage for the generation to follow.

In Making Sibling Teams Work, you'll learn:

*How parents can improve the odds of next generation success by treating their children as a unit, challenging them to work as a team and resisting the temptation to intervene.

*How in-laws can prepare themselves for their roles and play them effectively.

*How brothers and sisters can gain the knowledge, skills and commitment to ensure successful working relationships.

*How to develop the necessary infrastructure of governance, policies, and procedures to provide the framework for planning, decision making and accountability.

*How to assure that Mom and Dad won't divide the sibling team.

*How to nurture positive personal relationships among siblings and their spouses.

*How to develop and articulate the sibling team's values and goals.

*How to prepare for the coming cousins' generation.

The second generation can be a very vulnerable time in the life of a family business. Making Sibling Teams Work will show how teams can pilot a family business through this critical phase.

Craig E. Aronoff is Co-founder, Principal Consultant, and Chairman of the Board of the Family Business Consulting Group, Inc., the founder of the Cox Family Enterprise Center and current Professor Emeritus at Kennesaw State University. He invented and implemented the membership-based, professional-service-provider sponsored Family Business Forum, which has served as a model of family business education for universities world-wide.

 

Joseph H. Astrachan is Wachovia Eminent Scholar Chair of Family Business, Executive Director of the Cox Family Enterprise Center, and one of the founders of the Executive MBA for Families in Business at the Coles College of Business, Kennesaw State University.  He is editor of the scientific journal, the Journal of Family Business Strategy, and immediate past editor of Family Business Review.

 

Drew S. Mendoza is the Managing Principal of the Family Business Consulting Group, Inc. and was the founding director of the Loyola University Chicago Family Business Center, recognized as a leading think tank on issues unique to business-owning families.

 

John L. Ward is Co-founder of the Family Business Consulting Group Inc. He is Clinical Professor at the Kellogg School of Management and teaches strategic management, business leadership and family enterprise continuity.