When Business Conflict Is Personal: ADR Protocols for Family Enterprise Disputes
Family enterprise disputes often combine legal and financial questions with deeply personal concerns involving fairness, identity, legacy, and belonging.
Intimacy, Integration, and Inheritance: Diagnosing the Legal Risks of Family Dynamics
Family enterprise advisors regularly encounter legal issues that are easy to overlook because they are embedded in family relationships, informal practices, and expectations about the future.
When Family Businesses Misjudge CEO Successions. And How to Fix It.
Choosing a family member to lead the enterprise is rarely a purely rational decision. Familiarity, lineage, seniority, and family expectations can easily overshadow the capabilities the business will need next.
Minding the Gap: How Advisors Empower Founders to Address Transition
Drawing on survey findings and the experiences of hundreds of family enterprise advisors, Dennis Jaffe and Chris Graves examine the psychological, relational, and practical barriers that often stall transition planning.
Rip off the Band-Aid: When a Faster Succession Is the Right Succession
In this third issue of our 2026 series from BanyanGlobal, Rebecca Yu and Rob Lachenauer challenge the conventional wisdom of a slow succession process, arguing that, in some cases, prolonged transitions can create ambiguity, undermine new leadership, and ultimately delay the very change they are intended to support.
FFI Practitioner: Most Popular Articles of the First Half of 2026
As we reach the midpoint of 2026, we're taking a moment to look back at the editions that resonated most with our readers.
The Geek Way in Family Businesses: Moving from Intuition to Long-Term Sustainability Without Losing the Family Soul
Family businesses often balance two powerful forces: the emotional bonds that sustain the enterprise and the governance structures needed to ensure long-term success.
Stop Calling It Succession: How Language Is Sabotaging Family Enterprise Transitions
How we frame family enterprise transitions matters. In this thought-provoking article, Jean Meeks-Koch argues that the language commonly used by advisors—particularly the term succession—may inadvertently create resistance among founders by signaling loss, replacement, and diminished relevance.
What to do When Owning your Family Business Has Become an Obligation Instead of a Privilege
As an advisor working with family enterprises, it is important to recognize when ownership begins to feel like an obligation rather than a choice for next-generation members.
When Succession Goes Public: How NextGens Build Legitimacy Beyond the Boardroom
Succession has traditionally been negotiated behind closed doors—within families, boards, and leadership teams.
Embedded Family Offices in Asia: Moving Beyond Enmeshment
As family enterprises across Asia grow in scale and complexity, many families find that historically embedded approaches to wealth management no longer serve their long-term needs.
Philanthropy as a Strategic Tool for Family Business Succession: A discussion with Joshua E. Chadajo, CEO, JEC Philanthropy
Succession in family enterprises is rarely just a legal or financial event—it is a test of leadership readiness, legitimacy, and continuity. Increasingly, research suggests that philanthropy can play a meaningful role in meeting these challenges.
Stronger Family Bonds and Better Strategic Decisions: Mediation in a Second-Generation Family Business
In the first article of a new series from the Family Firm Institute Virtual Study Groups, Paul Edelman and Nuria Lasheras Mayoral of the Mediation Group examine how a second-generation family enterprise used mediation to navigate a leadership crisis, repair strained relationships, and strengthen strategic decision-making.
Leadership Succession: Selecting an internal or external successor?
This week, Paolo Morosetti explores the complexities involved in the process of selecting the successor in a family enterprise and shares an approach to help your clients answer the fundamental question of whether to select an internal or external successor.
Challenges of the Sandwich Generation in Leading a Family Enterprise
Thanks to the FFI Asian Circle Virtual Study Group and Yirhan Sim for this week’s edition that features a family enterprise case that demonstrates the challenges experienced by the “sandwich generation” through the transition to lead a family enterprise.
Sympathy and Succession: Lessons from history
This year is the 300th anniversary of notable economist and philosopher Adam Smith’s birth.
Three Kingdoms: Three Succession Results from Chinese-Indonesian Family Businesses
Thanks to the FFI Asian Circle Virtual Study Group and Linda Salim for this week’s edition featuring mini-cases on succession planning in three Chinese-Indonesian family enterprises with lessons for advisors around the world.
Professionalizing Family Businesses: How to orchestrate, change, and get things done
In this week’s FFI Practitioner, Paolo Morosetti addresses the topic of family enterprise professionalization.
“I’m Never Working for My Family Business.” What I Learned from My Transition to My Family Business and Becoming a Family Advisor
In this week’s FFI Practitioner, members of FFI’s Asian Circle Virtual Study Group, Kimberly Go and FFI Fellow Paul Chung, explore the complex choices facing next gen family members about whether to join the family business and the role of family business advisors in helping the family navigate these decisions.
The Challenges of Working with a “Flat FOOT” Enterprise
In this week’s FFI Practitioner, Steve Legler shares his observation that, in some family enterprises, when a generational shift occurs, an existing corporate hierarchy may transform into a less defined and ambiguous structure when the next gen leaders have roughly equivalent managerial roles.