This seems to happen about the same time that the next generation wants to recreate and expand the company.

I recorded this problem in a recent article entitled, "Not With MY Money You’re Not!"

Since the oldest offspring of the leader of the senior generation is twenty years (or more) younger than dad, there are often key managers who are much closer to dad’s age.

They can offer a vital bridge between the generations, or stumbling blocks that can be fatal to the company.

Their goals often parallel those of the senior generation.

The successors are betting on the future. And the heirs just want what’s coming to them (in cash please).

Seventy-five percent of successful businesses do not survive their founder.

There are many possible reasons for this, but invariably they have one thing in common.

The owners, successors, and heirs have never communicated successfully with each other about their respective expectations.

Then, all of a sudden, it’s too late. Every member of each family group involved in the business is affected by this lack of communication.

See the comments in the story You’re The Expert, You Fire Him and the A Tool For Defusing Family/Business Explosives

Add the business issues to the family issues and the plot thickens.

External business cycles (the ones Alan Greenspan tells us about) affect us all, the economy is up or down and business follows or leads the charge up and down and up and down, again and again.

Our Success Profiles demonstrate how businesses from a variety of industries are attacking external forces by growing their companies in a new ways – online.

They are harnessing the power of the family business to the emerging technologies to grow their companies.

While getting your family business online is a critical challenge for many family businesses today, it is the whole changing nature of how we can use today’s advances to create savvy responses to previously unexpected developments---just look at what companies like FedEx, Kinko’s, Wal-Mart, and Starbucks have done to the ways business is done.

Management must become more "professional" as the business grows and becomes more complex.

The increasing importance of the Internet to the company’s development may require them to go outside the family for someone to handle this important element of their enterprise.

Can the older employees and the senior generation of owners handle the necessity of these changes? Can the outsiders adapt to the ways of the family business? Will the successors (contemporaries of the outsiders) feel threatened?

These are just a few of the internal business issues that can sabotage a company’s growth, if the owners and their advisors do not address them.

Most agree that money is "the straw that stirs the drink," when it comes to family businesses.

It is either the tool that makes things work more smoothly or a source of continual aggravation, concern, and jealousy. Combine the needs of the different elements of the group with their different agendas and interest in the businesses´ future – you have some real opportunities for disagreement.

See the story Don’t Look Toward The House for a discussion on the need to manage expectations, even where people are fundamentally in agreement with each other on what they want to accomplish.

At the same time as the company needs money for growth, the senior generation needs money for their use - such as retirement income.

Frequently the resulting conflict affects the business, the employees, the owners, and their families.

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