Book Recommendations
Our publishers and editors have hand selected the following books for you to consider adding to your library. Happy reading.
The Business Person’s Handbook consists of a series of practical tips which address real world issues facing today’s business person. The purpose is to provide concise, yet thought-provoking perspectives that will lead to timely, positive solutions for you and your team.
24 activities to plan your family and business future
Does your family own a business?
Does your family control significant financial or business assets?
Is family harmony an important goal for you and your business family?
Have family issues or conflict spilled over into your family business?
Have business decisions impacted your family?
Do you advise wealthy or business families?
Would you like to support your family business clients' planning activities more effectively?
Answer yes to any of these and this book is for you!
This activity-based fieldbook is designed as a rigorous planning tool based on more than 25 years of teaching and advising business families around the world.
It teaches the professional planning skills required for any business family to move from the founder or owner-manager stages (G1,G2), based on power, personality and politics, to a multi-generational family-team model (G3 and beyond), driven by planning, passion and purpose.
We call it a fieldbook because it creates real-world family learning experiences with activities to explore family and business planning.
After over 25 years of teaching family businesses around the world, we have seen some outstanding business families who understand and use professional planning tools to help their families and businesses perform better. But we have also observed, and research shows, that most business families do not have plans for succession and few have a clear family strategy.
The need for business planning is demonstrated and accepted but many families still neglect addressing their family plans because they know the issues are emotional and they do not want to risk potentially explosive conversations.
Leaving children with a substantial amount of money can be a boon or a burden. High-net-worth parents need to give their children an education to navigate today’s complex world. The question becomes how to raise children with a sense of reality and balance, imparting a strong work ethic, and making them good stewards of their wealth.
Family wealth is often emotionally charged, whether you have a small nest egg or financial abundance. Wealth creates unique opportunities and challenges. The greatest challenge is the least discussed: the place where money, values, and family intersect. As the level of our wealth increases, our decisions become more complex and sophisticated.
Most people have a straightforward vision of the perfect family business. First, they hope for continued strengthening of the company's financial and market position so it can support the lifestyle and needs of family members, from generation to generation. Secondly, they wish for family harmony. But life gets in the way. Sometimes family members' short-term or individual needs can overwhelm the needs of the business. In other cases, family members strongly disagree on the strategic direction, or even on the day-to-day management of the business. These family conflicts, when acted out on the stage of the family controlled enterprise, can seem insurmountable.