How to Keep Your Family Connected: Templates, Techniques and Resources for Strengthening Your Legacy (How to Make Your Family Business Last)

The most common cause of family breakups are family quarrels. While every family has a culture, when it’s a culture that came about by accident rather than design, the family culture rarely provides the tools for dealing with quarrels. Family newsletters are a way of teaching family members the values needed keep the family business in the family. These include:•Family members have a responsibility to something greater than themselves.•Compromise, including understanding the other’s point of view, is key.•Membership in a family business comes with benefits but also with the need for occasional sacrifices.•Elders are responsible for passing along key values and attitudes to the next generation.The newsletters are templates: For a high-functioning, resilient family, use them to fill in your own family examples, stories, parables and other factors that will strengthen your own family culture. After all, “culture” is “the way we do things,” and creating a positive family culture is among the best gifts you can give your family.Mitzi Perdue’s mission is to gives practical advice on how family businesses can develop a culture that supports keeping the family business in the family. Her I’ve-lived-it experience comes from membership in two long-lasting family enterprises. Her family of origin began in 1890 with the Henderson Estate Company, forerunner of the Sheraton Hotels which her father co-founded. Perdue Farms (she’s Frank Perdue’s widow) began in 1920.The secret for the longevity of both families is: neither the Hendersons nor the Perdues left their family’s legacy to chance. Happy, high-functioning business families rarely happen by accident; they happen by design. Using the right knowledge, tools, values, and resources, Mitzi’s book will help your family do just that.