Nancy Drozdow
Principal
PwC does us a huge service by regularly surveying family businesses globally about issues of central importance to all.
The recent Family Wealth Report highlights “sticky baton syndrome”, one of the topics that appears in the most recent survey. At CFAR, we would observe that the baton has always been sticky. And, full-blown succession plans are an exception, today and yesterday.
So after more than 30 years of helping families navigate the polarities
- between wanting to see their businesses last, while also worrying about the gap between the generations
- between leading change in the face of the challenges that have faced every generation, while holding onto values and philosophies of culture that really do create their own stickiness; and
- between wanting to be financially rewarded for a lifetime of work, via buy outs and other compensation, while also wanting to recognize and feeling the pull of the contributions of next generation, while also acknowledging the capital needed by the business to sustain itself…
…we can’t feel anything but great compassion and admiration for the effort that goes into succession, as we have seen it among our many client families. These are dilemmas that would and do sink many.
Yet many do the work anyway. How great is that?