Riding a Ghost Train: “What Happens If ‘Nothing’ Happens?”

In the course of our contact with business families over the years, a range of experiences have indicated problems closely linked to the development dynamic of such families. The need to establish the fundamental future course of family strategy grows not just over a period of years but over decades and generations, especially if its importance is overlooked due to a traditional outlook and repeated postponement or because it is simply not deemed to be a problem. Again and again, business families have had to deal with the undesirable, unexpected, long-term consequences of implicit strategies that were originally regarded as solutions to the problems of family succession. The effects are felt in the form of personal pressure, unresolved or insoluble conflicts or in a gradual loss of competitiveness due to the business family’s decision-making problems.