This post is a part of Bite Sized Wisdom series.

In a family business, having too many family members in the same company, working with each other can be disastrous. For example, if your family owns a factory, then the first kid handles marketing, the second handles finance, and the third handles operations. There’s a sizeable risk on conflict between family members on how the business should be run.

Potential solutions to this problem is to institute just 1 person in the family as the chief of the business, and the others handles other business / acts as advisors. Or if it’s possible, to have your family business divided into several business units with autonomy that doesn’t impact each other too much. For example, the first kid handles logistics business, the second handles factory business, etc.

In the end, a business needs to be professionally run and enabled to be able to grow. Hiring professionals to run the family business is an important thing, to bring in external knowledge, to bring in expertise, and to stop stagnation in the business.