Those employed in the business will be more inclined to channel profits to re-investment and bonuses, while owners will be disposed to pay higher dividends. Some family members work in the business, and some are owners (some are both others are neither). However, given that family members have different roles and responsibilities as the family business grows, interests naturally diverge. Most business families are united first and foremost in their wanting to protect the Golden Goose i.e., to keep the business healthy. Some interests are shared others are individual. In their book in Getting to Yes, Harvard negotiators Roger Fisher and William Ury define an interest as a broad desire that a person or group of people have for something.

The tragedy is that these stages are largely avoidable, but the owners of family businesses have to be aware of them - and of the ways to extricate themselves when they get caught up in a spiral.ġ) Interests diverge. Our firm’s partners have worked with more than 200 family business clients in 20 countries, and over time we have seen seven predictable stages of conflict. Actually, strong disagreements are inevitable in all human relationships, but families that own businesses are more at risk for serious conflict than ordinary families because the power, status, and money at stake are greater, and so the decisions that these families face are also of greater consequence. Reading the banner headlines about family businesses gone sour - Market Basket, Rollins, L’Oreal, among others - people often conclude that conflicts in family businesses spiral out of control like mighty tornadoes that destroy everything in their paths.

Family feud stage family feud set 2015