PAUL H. GRAHAM
← All GuidesCan you protect the business as the family's top asset while keeping it in the family long term?
Most owners want both. Getting both usually means treating the business and the family as two separate plans that work together, not one plan trying to do both jobs.
A business plan focuses on operations, leadership, and growth. A family plan focuses on fairness, communication, and how decisions get made among people who love each other but may not agree on the business. Treating these as the same document tends to shortchange one or the other.
Formal governance, a family council, clear decision rights, a written policy on how disputes get resolved, sounds bureaucratic for something built on trust. In practice it's what protects the trust, by giving disagreements a process instead of letting them become personal.
The families who protect both the business and the relationships tend to start this work well before there's an actual crisis forcing the conversation, while decisions can still be made calmly instead of under pressure.
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