Developing and Sustaining a Successful Family Business

Louis Cauffman is a business economist and clinical psychologist with a wide range of therapeutic training, ranging from Systemic Family Therapy to Ericksonian Hypnotherapy through all possible directions within the solution-oriented approach.

The title exactly reveals what this book is about. Many books have been written about how to develop a family business, how to sustain it, and how to be successful. This book is different. It is the first book ever to thoroughly apply the solution-focused approach to the field of a family and its business. Cauffman pours his more than 25 years of experience into a format that is didactic, informative and highly readable. The storyline of the John & Annie family runs from the inception of the business to the arrival of the third generation. In between, the reader is effortlessly provided with many tools; useful insights from the solution-focused approach and updated best practices for the protagonist, his family, non-family family managers and the company's strategy. Prof. Mr. Jozef Lievens, lawyer and family business consultant, Managing Director of Belgian Family Business Institute, FFI Fellow.This is a special book that is written not for a professional audience or a business family, but rather one that is designed for both. Advisors can use it to add the solution focused approach to their expertise, develop their own toolkit and work with families while families can use it to look ahead to anticipate and prepare for each developmental challenge that is destined to emerge. This is a special book that will help so many advisors and families to chart their future, and deal with the deep and special family bonds that lie at the core of their shared life project.Dennis T. Jaffe, Ph.D., research associate at Wise Counsel Research

• Introduction  1. A Family Business Framework  2. A Solution Focused framework  3. Intertwining Life Cycles of the Family and the Family Business  4. Education is the Mother of Leadership  5. The Big Question  6. Challenges for the Next Generation  7. How to prepare the First Generation for succession  8. The Solution Focused Toolkit  9. The Solution Tango  10. Conversations with the Siblings  11. Eight tools for the Next Generation’s future  12. Eight possible Scenario’s for the Future  13. The Decision of a Lifetime  14. The Dance of the Stakeholders  15. How to let go after Succession?  16. Three Family@business Governance tools  17. Three Family@business Management tools  18. The John & Annie Family Business, ten years later