Fewer Family Businesses to be Passed to Next Generation

Fewer Family Businesses to be Passed to Next Generation

Posted On January 31, 2017

I’ve written in this space before about the need for succession planning. The long-term viability of your business may depend on it – particularly for family-owned business that want to maintain family control. But PwC’s annual family business survey found a decreasing number of owners who planned to keep their businesses in the family. Of the survey respondents who foresaw a change in ownership within the next five years – admittedly a small number at 17 percent – only 52 percent were planning to pass their companies down to another family member. That’s the lowest number since 2010, according to… Read More

Categories: Baby Boomers, Entrepreneurship, Generation X, Succession Planning, Work

Effective, Meaningful, Interpersonal Feedback – Not the Hendrix kind

Posted On January 17, 2017

Want to keep your millennial employees happy? The first step might be one that’s rather easy to accomplish, but also easy to overlook: Talk to them. Feedback is important – and not just formal annual or biannual reviews. Not just a cold calculation of production metrics. Not a written evaluation for their file. And for goodness sake, not a challenge to justify their existence like the Bobs in Office Space — “What would you say you do here?” About 40 percent of millennial respondents in a recent survey conducted by Clutch, a Washington D.C.-based B2B research firm, did not find… Read More

Categories: Generation Y / Millennials, Workplace

Recruit through Philanthropy – The Millennials will take Note

Posted On January 6, 2017

Looking to hire a few good millennials? One way to attract them may be by giving them a chance to give back. Many millennials have a philanthropic bent – finding ways to improve the world is important to them. A report from the Case Foundation and Achieve, a research and marketing agency for causes, found that many want and expect their employers to provide tangible outlets for their charitable urges in their professional lives. And that doesn’t mean just signing over a few dollars a month to the United Way. One industry that’s taking this data to heart is the… Read More

Categories: Generation Y / Millennials

Enough Already: The Celebrity Deaths of 2016 and Gen X Mortality

Posted On January 2, 2017

Carrie Fisher. Prince. David Bowie. Muhammad Ali. Florence Henderson. They were all icons of a Generation Xer’s youth. The female lead in the biggest movie franchise ever. Two musicians who left lasting legacies in rock and pop. The greatest boxer in the world. The TV mom after which so many other TV moms were modeled. They all died in 2016, along with many other familiar names to most Gen-Xers – George Michael, John Glenn, Gene Wilder, Alan Rickman, Alan Thicke, Pat Summitt, Gary Shandling, Glenn Frey. The sudden deaths of Michael and Fisher within the last month – and the subsequent… Read More

Categories: Generation X