Though "family business" may sound like it refers only to mom-and-pop shops, businesses owned by families are among the most significant and numerous in the world. But surprisingly few resources exist to help navigate the unique challenges you face when you share the executive suite, financial statements, and holidays. How do you make the right decisions, critical to the long-term survival of any business, with the added challenge of having to do so within the context of a family?
The HBR Family Business Handbook brings you sophisticated guidance and practical advice from family business experts Josh Baron and Rob Lachenauer. Drawing on their decades-long experience working closely with a wide range of family businesses of all sizes around the world, the authors present proven methods and approaches for communicating effectively, managing conflict, building the right governance structures, and more.
In the HBR Family Business Handbook you'll find:
- A new perspective on what makes family businesses succeed and fail
- A framework to help you make good decisions together
- Step-by-step guidance on managing change within your business family
- Key questions about wealth, unique to family businesses, that you can't afford to ignore
- Assessments to help you determine where you are—and where you want to go
- Stories of real companies, from Marchesi Antinori to Radio Flyer
- Chapter summaries you can use to reinforce what you've learned
Keep this comprehensive guide with you to help you build, grow, and position your family business to thrive across generations.
Author
Dr. Josh Baron is a cofounder and partner at BanyanGlobal. For over a decade, he has worked closely with families who own assets together, such as operating companies, family foundations, and family offices. He helps these families define their purpose as owners and establish the structures, strategies, and skills they need to accomplish their goals.
Before Banyan, he worked at Bain & Company and the Bridgespan Group. Baron teaches family business courses at Columbia Business School in the MBA, Executive MBA, and Executive Education programs. He publishes and speaks frequently on family enterprises and is a regular contributor to the Harvard Business Review, including "Why the 21st Century Will Belong to Family Businesses," "Why Family Businesses Need to Find the Right Level of Conflict," and "Every Business Owner Should Define What Success Looks Like."
A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Cambridge, and Columbia University, he is also the author of Great Power Peace and American Primacy: The Origins and Future of a New International Order.