PASSING THE FAMILY BUSINESS TO THE NEXT GENERATION - IS IT THE BEST CHOICE?

As Penn State professor William Rothwell ominously points out in the forward to Exit Right: A Guided Tour of Succession Planning for Families in Business Together, more than 40% of the people who run the closely held operations that comprise 80% of the North American economy will retire by 2007. It makes me wonder, what is going to happen to all of those businesses? Although it is a noble gesture, passing a business down to the next generation is more often than not, unsuccessful. In fact, statistics show that only one-third of all family businesses are successfully transferred to the next generation and only 13% are transferred onto the third generation. Many family business consultants say the primary reason for this low survival rate is the failure to develop and effectively plan for the transfer of ownership and management of the closely held family business. I agree that this is a factor, but in my dealing with family businesses I find that there are some more fundamental reasons. The first is that the next generation has a lot different life style than the business founder and entrepreneur. They do not share the same drive and commitment that dad needed to build the business from scratch. They go to the good schools, get a taste of the good life and generally do not share the passion of the business founder. I recently was involved in selling a produce distributor. I found that most of the firms were in their second or third generation. I asked a third generation owner why this particular industry had such success with keeping the business in the family. He said,