At BFF we have seen many models of transitioning between generations. One of them has been called the ‘10-year Shift’ because the senior and next generations co-exist in leadership for a decade or more.
Here’s a snippet from a conversation with Denise Paré-Julien, an expert family advisor:
“Many years ago I was working with a family where the father was in his mid-60s and his daughters were in their mid-30s. And the two daughters were waiting impatiently for their father to leave the business and to hand over leadership to them, and it was so obvious to me that that wasn’t going to happen. And then I realized, this is where the 10-year Shift comes in.
Some entrepreneurs, be it women or men, want to stay in their business because it’s their life. They are not willing to leave. So how does the family live with multiple generations in the business? How do people work together in a multi-generational setting for decades? How do they share power and authority?
It’s important to be in touch with the events that marked the entrepreneur’s life and that made them who they are today. What were the events that marked that person’s life? We’re all really a sum of a lot of experiences and events. This has to be kept in mind when speaking or dealing with them.”
To see the full video with Denise Paré-Julien, BFF subscribers can log in and watch ‘Understanding Life Cycles’.
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