Multi-Generational Change Agents: New Leadership Lessons from Family Business

Family-owned companies face unique challenges to remain successful in today’s turbulent business environment. Analyzing how family businesses navigate them offers vital lessons for leaders of all kinds to apply in their organizations—lessons around change, adaptation, culture, innovation, and a multigenerational workforce.

Following highly popular webinars in 2019 and 2020, IEDP was delighted to welcome back renowned academic and shaper of the family enterprise field, MIT Sloan Senior Lecturer John Davis, for this engaging webinar packed with fresh insight and ideas from one of the most successful sectors in the global economy, that of family enterprise:

Today’s fast-paced and turbulent environment demands that businesses be agile and change-oriented. For the family business, this can be particularly challenging when long-standing traditions and practices—sometimes decades or generations old—can serve as obstacles to change. The generational tensions around change are widely felt in family companies: the senior generation of leaders and owners may be resistant to change in favor of caretaking the family legacy. Conversely, the next generation in business families can be a powerful source for change—spotting new business opportunities, recognizing new consumer trends, identifying new technologies, or other innovations.

While next generation members may bring the enthusiasm for change, they often lack the authority, status, or influence to approve and integrate substantive change into their family business. How can the next generation advocate for change and effectively persuade the senior generation to implement it?

These dynamics and tensions will be familiar to all those working at the leadership and ownership levels in today’s multi-generational workforce. In this webinar John Davis offered insights and takeaways to improve your own culture of change, and navigate these sensitive challenges.

About the Speaker 
John A. Davis, Senior Lecturer at MIT Sloan, leads the Family Enterprise Executive Programs in Executive Education. He is a globally recognized pioneer and authority on issues related to the family enterprise, family wealth, and the family office. Since the 1970s, he has been a leading researcher, professor, author, advisor, and speaker on family enterprise, and is the creator of some of the field’s most impactful conceptual frameworks. His insights help to develop leaders, strengthen families, professionalize businesses and family offices, grow shareholder value, and pass sustainable enterprises to the next generation. Read the full Faculty Bio Here.