Director of the University of St. Thomas Family Business Center Jon Keimig wrote a column for the Star Tribune offering advice on how to strengthen a family business.
From the column: Family values are a key differentiator between family businesses and their non-family counterparts. And when used well, a key advantage. Family values create alignment for generations of family members to drive decisions around governance, strategy, culture, hiring and family commitment.
Before a family can use values to strengthen the business, it must first identify its collective values. One way to do this is at a family meeting. Members can discuss values in the current and previous two generations and make a list of agreed-upon guiding values that define who the owning family has been, is currently and how it wants to operate going forward.
