Resources
Leadership Succession : Best Practices from the World’s Leading Family Businesses
Best Practices from the World’s Leading Businesses seeks to fill that need. This handbook outlines the five steps to success that enduring family businesses follow in their own leadership succession practices and is based on extensive interviews with the chairman and chief executive officer of such companies. Each element of success is described in detail along with diagnostic and implementation tools to help readers apply the principles to their own organization. The handbook is built on research conducted by Egon Zehnder and the Family Business Network, the world’s leading family business organization, as well as guidance from Sabine Rau, professor of Entrepreneurship and Family Business at King’s College London.
Leadership Lessons from Great Family Businesses
Consider a few high-profile examples: Banco Espirito Santo was rescued by the Portuguese government last year following the resignation of its CEO, the great-grandson of the bank’s founder, was thrown into turmoil when the clan that runs it replaced on brother with another in the chief executive role. Fiat, the Italian auto group run by the heirs of Gianni Agnelli, went through five CEOs and three chairmen in two years before beginning in an outsider to lead it. And in the United States the New England grocery chain Market Basket faced employee protests and lost $583 million in sales as two cousins-one a board member, the other the chief executive, both grandsons of the founder-publicly vied for control of the company.
