The leadership, vision and entrepreneurial talent of the founding generation of a family business may be very different than that needed in subsequent generations; and installing a successor who is a copy of the founder may result in the failure of the business to change with an evolving market environment or the growing needs of a larger business.

For example, the business may now have more need of leaders who develop collaborative relationships than those who get things done by themselves, or of strategists who find new opportunities as the size of the family grows.

“Respect the past while keeping an eye on the future.” This important family-business axiom, together with a phrase I read twenty years ago in “Breaking Point and Beyond: Mastering the Future Today by George Land and Beth Jarman—“allow yourself to be pulled by the future”–are potent strategies for expansion and growth.