How to Maintain the Interest of My Family in My Company

Families have multiple structural compositions, which nowadays pose a challenge for the succession and legacy of businesses. It is anticipated that the new generations, even with fewer successors, will not necessarily remain connected to the family business. This is a result of a globalized world that relocates the children around the world, distancing them more and more from potential involvement in the company. This has a substantial impact on the organization because, without these successors, it will lose its familial character.

Dear reader, you have the clear answer, we know: sell it and be done with it! It's true, selling is the most coherent option to avoid assuming any position within the company. However, even though liquidity for the new generations will see a substantial increase, they will significantly reduce all the dimensions of wealth that the heritage implicitly holds as a family legacy. This encompasses a capital of much higher value than what this transitory economic benefit could provide.

That's why, from IR Foundation, we want to share with you four key tools that will help maintain family interest in the legacy:

1. Create Identity: This concept relates to the values, principles, virtues, and life lessons that the family has built over the years. It allows this unity to transcend, inspiring them to stay united and forge joint goals. By combining these goals with common objectives, it helps delineate both current and future purposes.
2. Establish a Purpose: Ancestors are responsible for captivating and enchanting the new generations. Sharing the passion developed by achieving goals and objectives linked to the impact of their decisions is a crucial element. Highlighting the "why" and "for what" from the foundations of the company will generate greater vocational affiliation.
3. Connection Tools: When material possessions connect with an emotion, they create value. Therefore, items that quickly stop telling stories should be discarded. Instead of being unifying elements for multiple users, they become archives without any value.
4. Management Strategies: Identifying all acquired assets in an organized manner to establish mechanisms that allow their management. Consulting a Family Office to guide and support the administration helps anticipate potential risks and improve the company.

Family interest is constant work, developed from the roots, with foundations that go beyond the autonomy of a single author. It relies on a group of multiple contributors working towards a common result.