Special Challenges of the Owner-Led Firm

Owner-led firms come in and out of favor in the larger economy — in favor for displaying their entrepreneurial quick decisions, ingenuity and risk taking, out of favor for owner abuses, family squabbles, lack of performance metrics. Whether in or out of favor, owner-led businesses — those where ownership is controlled by a relatively small group, with revenue roughly in the $30 million to $2 billion range — have an added set of challenges that other firms do not. Owners in such firms — a small group of close colleagues or relatives — have ties to each other that often extend beyond the financial, affecting the functioning of the firm itself. The close interaction across the boundaries of ownership, leadership, management, friendship or family makes the work of strategy formation and execution, leadership and ownership succession, governance and control, complex in ways that add a complexity to the challenges of running such businesses, and to resolving conflicts that arise around these important topics.

At CFAR, we have worked in partnership with owner-led, closely-held and family-dominated firms for almost three decades. As part of Wharton, we pioneered workshops for family firms, and as a private firm, we have worked closely with dozens of family and owner-led businesses. They are unique in many ways, since the personal, professional and strategic are nearly inseparable. We bring broad and deep experience, new ideas and analytical "bench strength" to founders, executives and boards seeking to:

• Assess and build the strategic capacity of a next generation of managers, so they understand the economics of their business and the risks and rewards of owning and running it.
• Create high-functioning top teams able to pool their expertise toward attaining company goals, instead of either working separately or at odds with each other.
• Devise plans for the future that tell a "believable story" about how the firm will compete effectively over time.
• Manage the inevitable leadership and ownership transitions with analytically solid plans sensitively developed, where the intention is to sustain rather than undo longstanding relationships.