People around family businesses everywhere spend lots of time worrying about the rising generation of the family, wondering if they’ll ever be “ready” to take over from their parents.

For those who aren’t content to just “wait their turn”, here are…

“5 Ways the Rising Generation Can Prepare”

1. Get Mentored

A mentor is usually someone older than the mentee, typically by more than a decade and often two or three decades older.
The most important detail for a family business mentor is that they NOT be the parent or any family member who is ultimately their boss.
They can come from within the company or from outside, and share their career experience and life wisdom on an occasional but informal basis

2. Create and Lead a Project

Younger family members often have difficulty carving out their own leadership abilities, separate from those of their parents.
Creating their own project, either within their department or as something new and intrapreneurial, is a way for them to show that they’re able to make something happen on their own.
Ideally, they’ll help conceive the idea, AND lead the necessary steps to do the work and get it to a stage where the project can be deemed an accomplishment of theirs.

3. Work on Sibling Unity

Unless they’re an only child, they’ll need to continue to deal with their sibling relationships for many decades to come.
These relationships should never be taken for granted
It’s important to continually over-communicate what’s going on in the business to those who don’t work there and to do this as “matter-of-factly” as possible, without bragging about one’s accomplishments or complaining about how tough it is to work there.

4.  Build a Network

Joining peer groups and making sure to develop connections in their own age group will pay dividends down the road.
When their turn comes to take the helm, they’ll want to be able to call on their own contacts and people that they trust, and these relationships take time to develop.
It’s never too early to begin to cultivate a network of people on whom you can count

5. Round Themselves Out

Most people enter a business from a certain specialty like accounting, marketing or HR.
It’s great to have a strength on which to build a career, but higher up the organizational ladder, more “generalist” skills are often needed.
It’s always a good idea to work on getting experience in other areas where they aren’t as strong.
Once they get to the top, they’ll need to be able to properly relate to everyone, from every department, from a position of strength.

That’s all for today, I hope you got something useful, see you next time.