ABSTRACT
Above all else, family business is the business of relationships. Ask a family employee, a professional advisor to family businesses, even a casual reader of the Wall Street Journal, and there will be consensus that the biggest factor in the success or failure of a family business is the relationships between family members. The intensity that this reality creates is demonstrated by the following story:
Two attorneys who had been working for some time to resolve a very difficult family business problem and had run out of ideas, sat down to discuss what to do next. One of them said, “As I see it there are really only two alternative solutions; one is logical and rational, and the other would be a miracle. The logical, rational solution is that an angel will suddenly appear from heaven, float down and sprinkle angel dust over this family and make the problems all go away…. The miracle would be that these people could just sit down for more than five minutes and talk to each other like civil human beings!!”
