This week we are pleased to continue our series of guest curated FFI Practitioner articles with Farida El Agamy and Ramia El Agamy Khan, sisters and editors of Tharawat Magazine. Thanks to Farida and Ramia for sharing their selection of must-read editions about family enterprise dynamics and governance.

Over the past forty years, our family has built several businesses, and at least for the last fifteen years, we have spent a lot of time with other family businesses, researching and working with them. You’d think this work would have helped us avoid the typical pitfalls that family businesses face, but it turns out we are exactly like everyone else. We wanted to share four articles from FFI Practitioner that have helped us better understand our dynamics and improve our governance structure.

Conflict

The Tao of Conflict Resolution in Family Businesses

By Yukio Fujimi, Chikako Kishihara, and Kazuyoshi Takei

It is important to understand the nuances of a family system and accept its irrational flows. We appreciate this piece for opening up the conversation around the irrational and unpredictable side of family dynamics. It is very important to accept that there is not always an answer to these dynamics but that this doesn’t make a family less whole.

Leadership

The Exercise of Power in the Family Business

By Miguel Angel Gallo and Begoña Pereira-Otero

The conversation around power can be such a taboo in a family business. However, understanding the nature of power and its different facets can help us facilitate a healthier discussion around it and find balanced decision-making models.

Legal

Future-Ready Shareholders Agreements to Help Family Enterprises Navigate Turbulent Times

By Dan Frosh

The shareholder agreement is, unfortunately, often considered a very technical document by the family and seems reserved to the purview of its legal team. This article reminds us that it is, in fact, one of the most important cogs in the governance mechanism, and families should take a direct role in shaping it.

Family Values & Legacy

Family Purpose in Family Firms: What it looks like and why it’s important

By Kendall Cotton Bronk

As enterprising families, we tend to assume that we have a shared purpose. Usually, the discovery that this isn’t the case happens during times of already mounting pressure on business and/or wealth. We agree with this article that understanding the role of family purpose is key to unlocking the family enterprise’s potential for growth and longevity.

About the Contributors

Farida F. El Agamy is a lawyer, entrepreneur, and governance expert and currently the General Manager of the Tharawat Family Business Forum, the private network and knowledge hub for family-owned companies in the Middle East and North Africa. Farida is also Editor-at-Large of Tharawat Magazine (https://www.tharawat-magazine.com), an award-winning global publication on family business and entrepreneurship. She is also the co-founder of Women in Family Business, a platform for women worldwide to share their expertise and leadership insights (https://womeninfamilybusiness.org). In 2019, she co-founded Kyma, a start-up focusing on sustainable FMCG products. Farida is a 2nd generation family business member and a Director at Target Developments LLC and Orbis Terra LLC, her family’s firms in Switzerland.

Ramia Marielle El Agamy Khan is the CEO and Co-Founder of Orbis Terra Media, a global content marketing agency and award-winning magazine publisher. She began her entrepreneurial career in 2008 as the founder and editor-in-chief of Tharawat Magazine, a publication for family businesses and entrepreneurs. Together with her family, she grew the magazine into a globally renowned title that garners hundreds of thousands of readers. In 2014, Ramia helped found the content initiative Women in Family Business in response to the lack of diversity in the family enterprise conversation. Ramia expanded Orbis Terra Media in 2016 by adding content marketing services focused on enabling brands to strengthen their positioning through data-driven content strategies. She hosts the podcasts “The Family Business Voice” and “Women in Family Business.”