, took the helm in 1918, he championed a different strategy for a new era. He sought to replace the Model T — iconic but outdated — with a more modern design geared to high-end and foreign markets, and later embraced compromise with labor amid the suffering of the Great Depression.
Failure to reconcile conflicting narratives can spell ruin for a family business or the waste of a financial legacy, as it nearly did for the Fords. To avoid this fate, families need to think differently about the stories they tell.Conventional wisdom holds that family heritage, like wealth and reputation, “belongs” to the older generation. In this telling, succeeding generations are merely stewards or caretakers.
Older generations often identify closely with the family or the family business, which can actually obstruct key learnings from the past. Eager to protect the family’s reputation, they may downplay scandal or setback rather than learn from it. By contrast, our analysis of 94 family businesses shows that younger generations tend to have more critical distance from the family story.
The founder, they learned, was a gifted yet deeply troubled man. This more nuanced understanding enabled the two generations to have a frank conversation about the issues raised by their ancestor’s life: the obligations of a business to its workers and communities; the consequences of untreated mental illness; and the unfair burden often shouldered by women in wealthy families.