How Family Affects Strategy

An exploration of the complex interactions that are at the core of family business decisions is presented. In family business strategy, family interests usually substantially influence business direction. Strategic decisions reflecting family interests usually make strategy more successful - even if the decisions do not seem best from a purely strategic perspective. Effective advisors to family firms should understand and effective non-family executives should accept the strategic interaction between family and business goals. Effective next-generation family successors must learn to manage that process. Family variables are rarely explicitly stated or even understood. Instead, implicitly they meld together into a family vision for the future. Seven alternative visions a family might imagine are: 1. proprietorship, 2. benevolent dictator, 3. partnership, 4. capitalist, 5. family mission, 6. entrepreneurial launching ground, and 7. as if public.