Family Business Relationship Challenges: Managing Boundaries

Family Business Relationship Challenges: Managing Boundaries

In this episode, Keith Michaelson and Don Opatrny of The Lovins Group introduce and discuss the first of six key challenges that couples face when they are part of a family business: managing boundaries. Don and Keith walk us through why boundaries can be challenging for couples in the context of family business, the kinds of boundary conflicts that can occur—what they look like, how they can feel—and then offer some ideas and tools that can help couples begin to manage their boundary challenges. You can find all of our articles, interviews and resources at www.EngagedOwnership.com.

Family Meetings: Purpose, Pitfalls, & Practices

Don Opatrny and Keith Michaelson of the Lovins Group join The Family Business Podcast to discuss the role of family meetings in family enterprises and offer some practical ideas for improving your family’s family meetings. Family meetings play an important role in family business governance. They are an opportunity to grow the capacity of the family to meet challenges together, as a family, and create space to succeed in what the Don and Keith refer to as, “the task of family.” We will explore ways of creating effective family meetings; how family meetings fit into overall governance; and how effective family meetings can make all other meetings attended by family members, including ownership and management meetings, go more smoothly.

Enterprise Capital as a Competitive Advantage: An Interview with David Worth

In this episode, David Worth sat down with Engaged Ownership associate, Nathaniel Squires, to discuss how his family’s enterprise, Worth Industries, has turned a simple strategic concept into a robust form of Enterprise Capital. David is Chair and former CEO of Worth Industries, and Executive Director and our colleague at The Family Enterprise Center of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. New to the podcast? Be sure to check out our last episode, “5 Steps to Enterprise Capital” for a primer on the subject of Enterprise Capital and how it can become a driving force for innovation and resilience in your family business.

5 Steps to Enterprise Capital

Human Capital is essential to a family business. But Human Capital can also be fragile. How do you ensure that the essential know-how that makes your business uniquely successful gets carried on? How do you scale your competitive advantage? How do you protect your most important capital? You make it into Enterprise Capital. What is Enterprise Capital? Enterprise Capital is all the unique know-how embodied within a business that allows a product to be made or a service to be delivered better than the competition can do it. It is the coming together of Human and Financial Capital to solve a problem. Enterprise Capital can take almost any form: machines, systems, know-how, algorithms, techniques, patents, processes. The key is to identify your most important capital and then institutionalize it; transform it from an individual unit of capital to capital that can be replicated, redeployed, and repurposed to strengthen competitive advantage and to create new opportunities. In this episode, you will learn a 5-step process for transforming your most important capital into Enterprise Capital.

Human Capital and Collaboration: An Interview with Jane Sommers-Kelly

Trust | Listen | Respect In this episode, Executive Leadership Coach Jane Sommers-Kelly speaks on her three-element approach to improving collaboration and tapping into Human Capital in teams and businesses: Trust, Listen, and Respect. You and your team can use this deceptively simple concept to tackle big questions, leverage untapped Human Capital, foster collaboration, and find solutions when solutions are hard to come by. Listen in to learn more. You can learn more about Jane's work at www.JSKLeadership.com. You can find all our articles, interviews, and resources on www.EngagedOwnership.com.