The Soul Of Family Business

The Soul of Family Business by Tom Hubler takes readers on a journey throught the heart and soul of family business. Using case studies from his more than thirty-five-years as a family business consultant, Hubler explores what it takes to run a successful family business, illustrating how love is the foundation and family values are the secret sauce for success.

Family firms face issues and hazards that nonfamily firms never face. At the same time, family businesses can realize special opportunities that nonfamily firms can’t achieve. Tom Hubler, who has decades of experience as a therapist in family business consulting, details the practices that make these companies work. Though his manual is informative and useful, his repetitiveness and tendency to name business concepts after himself – Hubler’s Legacy Model, Hubler’s Speck of Dust Theory and Hubler’s Checklist – somewhat dull his worthwhile advice and practical insights. He does provide smart, proven conflict-resolution techniques to keep family members working together in harmony. And, he writes movingly of the importance of “heart and soul” in a family business. Relatives and nonfamily members in family firms will gain insight and understanding from his advice. This officially licensed summary of The Soul of Family Business was produced by getAbstract, the world's largest provider of book summaries. getAbstract works with hundreds of the best publishers to find and summarize the most relevant content out there. Find out more at getabstract.com.

Understanding soul in the context family business assists them in utilizing their family vaues as a resource to create a successful business and a loving family. It becomes their secret sauce that enables them to create a high performace team that is committed to the succes of the business also also building family harmony.

The challenge faced by family businesses and their stakeholders, is to recognise the issues that they face, understand how to develop strategies to address them and more importantly, to create narratives, or family stories that explain the emotional dimension of the issues to the family. The most intractable family business issues are not the business problems the organisation faces, but the emotional issues that compound them. Applying psychodynamic concepts will help to explain behaviour and will enable the family to prepare for life cycle transitions and other issues that may arise. Here is a new understanding and a broader perspective on the human dynamics of family firms with two complementary frameworks, psychodynamic and family systematic, to help make sense of family-run organisations. Although this book includes a conceptual section, it is first and foremost a practical book about the real world issues faced by business families. The book begins by demonstrating that many years of achievement through generations can be destroyed by the next, if the family fails to address the psychological issues they face. By exploring cases from famous and less well known family businesses across the world, the authors discuss entrepreneurs, the entrepreneurial family and the lifecycles of the individual and the organisation. They go on to show how companies going through change and transition can avoid the pitfalls that endanger both family and company. The authors then apply tools that will help family businesses in transition and offer their analyses and conclusions. Readers should draw their own conclusions from careful examination of the cases, identifying the problems or dilemmas faced and the options for improved business performance and family relationships. They should ask what they might have done in the given situation and what new insight into individual or family behaviour each case offers. The goal is to avoid a bitter ending.

The authors explore how effective planning and communication helps business families around the world address growth challenges as they strive to become high performing multi-generation family enterprises. This book shows family businesses working together at their best.

This book is a longitudinal story of seven Italian-Australian family business dynasties, spanning over a hundred years across three generations, and starting with the founding generation who migrated to Australia in the first half of the 20th century. With hard work and sacrifices, they set the foundations of a long-lasting family culture, and the values that form the glue of a multigenerational family business. The book focuses on the personal, family, and business values that keep family members, across generations, continuing to engage together and successfully, as a family and a business. The book elaborates on the complexity of ‘what is a family business’, what it represents for the generational members that are part of it, how these family businesses have emerged, consolidated and expanded, and finally, how they continue to survive into the third generation, enabling the dynasty to flourish.

Most family businesses fail to transition to the next generation due to a lack of next-generation preparedness, current generation unwillingness to step back, poor communication, and outright conflict. Henry Hutcheson, coming from two prominent family businesses, founded Family Business USA specifically to help family businesses successfully transition their family business and improve family harmony. Dirty Little Secrets to Family Business is a guide to understanding the complex dynamics of family businesses to resolve the family and business issues inherent in them. Henry has an MBA in Management from Columbia Business School, studied psychology in Switzerland, is a Certified Management Consultant and has a certificate from the Harvard Negotiations Program. He was a family business columnist for three newspapers, is a Newsweek Expert, and has been quoted in Forbes, Fortune, and the WSJ. Henry has helped hundreds of family businesses successfully cope with succession.

Family business planning has traditionally centered on two issues - estate planning and succession. These goals are far too limited for today's family firm. Business families want to turn the business into not only a tool for profit, but for self-expression, innovation and legacy. The authors introduce the new concept of the Parallel Planning Process, explaining how to integrate the needs and expectations of the family and business systems in order to create an organic and entrepreneurial unit. Planning and decision making templates are included as well as studies of well-known family businesses.