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Family and business are two of the strongest driving forces in the world. When combined, family and business amplify their impact and their complexity, on all the involved parties, who serve different roles within the family and business frameworks. The players on this stage include various family members, starting from a dominant founder of a business who seeks to pass on the family values and legacy to future generations, and ending with the grandsons who seek to spread their wings and fulfill their personal aspirations. The relationships among them are multidimensional and have many implications on both the family and business contexts.
Over many years of supporting family businesses as a multi-family office in the Alpha group, we have learned about the blessings and curses that can arise from a family business. In their best version, family businesses can serve as a vital family and community growth engine. In their less pleasant version, family businesses can be a fertile ground for volatile struggles among family members.
Less than a third of family businesses survive and transition to the second generation, and less than 3% survive for more than four generations. Since the dawn of history, inheritance stories have been of great interest. From the father of the Jewish nation, Jacob, who bought the birthright of the firstborn son and ending with the saga of the heirs of Rupert Murdoch, which is the inspiration for the television series “Succession,” and the story of the Walton family, which inspired the series “Dynasty.”
Tolstoy wrote in the famous novel Anna Karenina: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” What distinguishes successful families from those who fail in managing both their business and family? Why have families in Japan, Italy, and France managed to create a continuity that has preserved its tradition for over 1,000 years and for more than 40 generations, while families of modern tycoons such as the Eisenbergs have failed to forward their accomplishments to the third generation? How can we assist families in creating family and business mechanisms that enable them to be part of positive statistics?
There are two parallel axes that can help achieve this goal. The first, the value-based axis, depends much on the family dynamics that have been developed over the years. The second, the practical axis, is derived from precise and professional planning by experienced experts in the field of inter-generational transfer and is based on economic thinking alongside sensitivity and a comprehensive vision that takes into account the needs of the various family members.
At the value-based level, the common denominator of successful families is a culture of learning and adaptation to a changing environment, while preserving collective family values and traditions. Studies show that the most important characteristic for the success of family businesses is the creation of relationships based on trust and efficient communication. This characteristic is expressed both among family members and between the family business and its environment. Adopting these norms of flexibility and adaptation, alongside the creation of trust, can contribute to prosperity and meaningful and satisfying lives for generations of the family.
At the practical level, the Alpha group has been effectively assisting families for years in defining the goals of the business and family from a holistic perspective. The goals are examined through three complementary dimensions: growth, control, and liquidity. Creating a long-term plan for the business and family requires decision-making regarding these factors. For example, a family served by our family office, maintains a lifestyle that requires a high level of liquidity. Maintaining a prosperous lifestyle for the family requires distribution of generous dividends. This family reached a crossroads of decision-making in which they had to choose between the growth of the business, in light of the reduction of financial resources, and giving up part of the control, as a result of fundraising of external capital, from non-family resources. Understanding the interrelationships between these variables is the basis for creating a successful plan for managing a family business.
An attempt to rely on the goodwill of family members, both those who were born as family members as well as those who join the family, has proven to be very risky, and in other words, the victory of hope over logic. Most families that succeeded in the intergenerational wealth transfer adopted an approach that combines family values along with clear business planning.
The writer, Alon Tal, is the founder of Alpha Prosperity Funds (a group of fintech companies developing proprietary algo-trading systems and hedge funds management companies).
*The above does not constitute investment advice or investment marketing and does not constitute a substitute for investment advice or investment marketing.
Forbes Israel Contributors are independent writers that were individually picked by Forbes staff. The writers are experts in their field and provide professional commentary and analysis of current events. The content is unsponsored
