Succession in Family Businesses

This text is a written, lightly edited transcript of the talk above.

Hello, I'm Orhan Erkut. Today I'll share my experience around successionThe transfer of management and ownership in a family business to the next generation — approached not as a moment of 'handover' but as a long development journey that begins with growing the next generation. See in glossary → in family businesses. This experience was gained over roughly 25 years of management consulting, working with family businesses. I have worked in management consulting since 2002, mostly in contact with the decision-makers in family businesses. These are usually the board, the family owner, or the member of the next generation who holds decision-making responsibility. So I can say that, traditionally, I work with the family itself. To date I have worked with dozens of families, and my consulting projects have varied around these family businesses. I am the founder and partner of more than one consulting firm, each serving in a different field. For that reason, I'll try to explain the concepts of succession in family businesses by building on my own experience as much as I can.

As you know, the statistical side of family businesses is told often, especially on succession, because the number of families that manage to pass the business to the next generation is small: about 30 percent. Theoretically, if that 30 percent again has a 30 percent chance of passing to the following generation, that corresponds to roughly 9 percent of the whole. And if roughly 30 percent of those can pass to the next generation, the transition rate to the third generation falls to between 2 and 3 percent. This is partly why the picture reflected in the theoretical statistics looks the way it does.

My experience with succession in family businesses accumulated over the years, across the projects where I worked with family businesses. In fact, you can accompany a similar process at almost every company. Sometimes a succession occurs naturally at the company you work with; it may have just happened, or it may be about to happen. Sometimes consulting is requested from you specifically to make the succession happen. The classic sentences are familiar: "Where shall we prepare our children?", "In which positions shall we have our children work?" So, on top of experiences in which I sometimes served this field and sometimes observed it, it probably took ten years for me to make this subject my concern and to begin reading about it.

The literature, as you know, develops mainly in the West. The academic articles and books you read reveal this pattern: this subject is generally addressed only after a problem has been experienced. Work aimed at preventing the problem from ever occurring — like preventive maintenance in engineering — is quite rare. Because I am someone who tries to solve problems with a systematic approach by nature, settling on a correct model that I could pursue and bring down to the field of course took years once I began to take up this subject.

The company you work with is a consultant's luck. Because as a consultant you enter that company and chart a path based on your findings. The path you chart is not always easy to follow. Why do I call it luck? Because it isn't always possible for the company you work with to want to follow what you say and the path you chart, to actually follow it, and to turn it into success. In my own consulting career I moved forward having had such luck; that was important to me. With the courage I found there, I was waiting to start this succession approach — which we later renamed SPALDA AcademyAn academy whose idea was seeded in 2018, whose pilot development began in 2022, and which launched in 2025. It develops the next generation in family businesses not merely as operational managers but as responsible leaders who grasp the whole of the corporate entity. See in glossary → — at the right point and with the right family.

Then one day, the owner of a family business we were working with said something to me like: "Orhan abi, let's go ahead and figure out which positions we'll prepare these kids for." It was a question I was expecting, but the way it was phrased made me a little tense. Because preparing the new generation for a position within a family-owned company is one of the things I consider risky. As a member of the Corporate Governance Association of TürkiyeThe Corporate Governance Association of Türkiye (TKYD), a civil-society organisation working to make corporate governance recognised, developed and implemented through best practices in Türkiye. Orhan Erkut is a member. See in glossary →, I am someone who tries to apply corporate governance principles in all my professional projects. I won't explain what corporate governance principles are in this video; but our aim is to position the new generation — even the current generation — not so much in the company's active execution, but as profiles who understand how the company should be governed, especially in the area of governance, and how to work with professionals, contributing actively at the board level. Now imagine this with a crowded generation: there are many young people behind, and you are raising each one for a business function. As a consultant, with your experience, you can already imagine, at that very moment, the chaos that company will live through a few years later.

That's the point where the thing I call a consultant's luck smiled at me again. I told the owner: "Preparing the young people for a position within the company is not the right approach; it may not even be the right way to put it. I have been preparing a piece of work on this subject for a while. Allow me to develop this model, specific to this family and our company, and then bring it to you." SPALDA's first family academy emerged after this work, and today it is about to complete its third year with the same family. The work we did was genuinely good; I'll explain the details as much as I can in the coming minutes.

Institutionalization: A Culture of Kept Promises

The consulting industry uses the succession-rate figures I just mentioned a bit like a weapon: "If you don't institutionalize, you'll have problems passing to the next generation; therefore, to pass to the next generation, you must institutionalize." But what does institutionalization mean? This needs to be defined correctly.

One of the areas where I produce significant work is senior executive recruitment. So, naturally, I have been conducting job interviews for more than 20 years. When candidates express themselves about a position, they frequently use the phrase "a corporate company." It is one of my areas of interest: in almost every interview I ask, "What do you mean by a corporate company?" and try to understand. The definitions they give generally point to companies with an established order: structures where the rules are clear, the duties are clear, what will be done is clear. But when you question more deeply, you see that the concept of institutionalization is actually a search for an agreement that leads to commitment, to one's word, to a sense of mutual trust. The professional is looking for a corporate company; well, doesn't the company called corporate — the one that keeps its word — also look for an employee who keeps his word? It does. When you look at the definition from here, you understand more clearly the part about mutual commitments and mutual promises being made.

I call this "a culture of kept promises," and I want to underline that it is mutual. Institutionalization is not writing a procedures manual or drawing up a job description; it means both sides fulfilling the promises they make to each other. If the grocer doesn't water down the milk and his customer pays off the tab on time; if the general manager keeps the promises he made to the board; if the employee keeps to his hours and the company pays his salary on time; if the company pays its supplier on time and the supplier ships the raw material on time, then we can speak of an infrastructure in which mutual promises and commitments are fulfilled. That is why I try to describe this concept as a culture of kept promises.

My desire to define institutionalization in such detail comes from this: a block of mutual promises and commitments clarifies your perception of the future and lets you do this work better. Succession is also work oriented toward the future, and it has two sides: the one who will hand over and the one who will take over. Bringing this institutionalization logic to life between them as well, turning them into parties who accept the same subject, will also ensure that the process itself becomes institutionalized.

We can translate the idea that institutionalization is essentially about keeping promises into the systems within a company, through a management consultant's eyes, like this: if the kept promises are between two people, they are easy to track; but if you want to track the promises that larger teams make to one another, you need to write down who committed what to whom. The quality concept we call standardization, the process concept by which you try to see how work is carried out, the governance concept by which you make these trackable — all these terms you often hear in business are fed from the same root.

Succession also needs institutionalization, because in this process there are promises the two generations must make to each other. The philosophy behind founding SPALDA, and the most fundamental point at which we promise a solution through SPALDA, is exactly here. Considering the age gap between them, it is not easy for two generations to reach agreement at the same table, especially with a business focus. For this reason, they need to enter this process with a solution that lets each remain in their own world while meeting on common ground. You need to be able to bring them to the same table, to get them to agree and decide on what is needed for succession, and to have them make mutual commitments. SPALDA's central solution point is exactly this.

Two Generations, One Table

We are talking about two generations, and there is an age gap between them. Outside of business, anyone with a child knows: those who are parents today struggle to communicate with adolescents or young people in their twenties — due to the generation gap, technology, and different habits. You don't have to be in the business world to see this. And if, on top of that, you want to solve a specific matter such as the continuity of the family and the continuity of a business, the need for communication carries the task to an even harder point. This is where a solution must be produced; because if there is no communication between the generations, if you cannot bring them to the same table, you really struggle to build the infrastructure required for succession.

The current generation wants the next generation to follow a path similar to the decisions it made and the road it took, especially regarding the company it founded or grew. I can say this from my experience; you can feel it from their actions and demands. But this is very clear, both in the research and in my experience: the skill set the generation that acquires the asset — that brings the company to success — must have is not the same as the skill set needed to carry a formed asset, a grown company, into the future. Therefore, the current generation's expectation that the next generation apply its own risk perception, its own understanding of work hours, and similar expectations exactly as they are, is one of the important reasons that prevents the two sides from coming to that common table. First, both generations need to understand that the skill sets required to found the business, acquire the asset, and sustain the asset are different. I think this is one of the important starting points.

Both generations have certain fears and anxieties. The current generation is often not yet aware of this subject and its importance; it doesn't know exactly when it should start raising the young, because there are no widely accepted, clear standards yet. It fears being caught unprepared; for the reasons I just explained, it behaves controllingly. Sometimes it doesn't know how to transfer its experience. It also has anxieties about the next generation: "Will they understand the complexity of the business? Will they take ownership as much as I do? Will they be interested? Should I grant freedom, or should I not let go of discipline?" So, much like the mistakes a first-time parent can make while raising a child, in this process too they are open to making certain mistakes amid uncertainty.

The next generation also has its own issues. For instance, it experiences an identity crisis, because it has been perceived as "the bossThe person holding the highest decision-making authority in a business — anyone who founds, buys or inherits it. The title can pass from generation to generation. See in glossary →'s child." It carries the thought that, no matter how successful it becomes, proving itself may never be possible. It asks, "Who am I, what is my interest?" Because it was born into the asset, its risk perception is different; it has a fear of failure. It will inherit a successful family and business; it also lives with the fear of "What happens if I fail?" It has its own judgments about the current generation: many find the current generation's ways of doing business old-fashioned, seeing them as "old school." It asks, "Look at the age we've reached; with what technology, with what focus are they trying to pull me into this business?" It thinks they are unaware of the agenda and current developments. Or it asks, "I have this much money; why do I still have to work?" There needs to be a mechanism that can turn all these thoughts into that communication environment and common table.

The literature, as I explained earlier, is built on successions in which problems were experienced. Sometimes when passing to the second, sometimes to the third generation, the family has grown, the numbers have increased; the lawyer, the advisor, and the family come together and try to solve the problem that has arisen. There are many such examples in the literature. Our aim, however, is to address the problem before it is experienced and to build an awareness that prevents it from ever occurring. One of the important things we try to do with SPALDA is exactly this.

The Methods Families Try Today

Even if the current generation looks at some matters mistakenly, and even if it sets expectations shaped by the way it was raised in its effort to do the right thing — what does it do today? Which practices does it try? Let's take a look.

One: it brings the child to work in a summer-internship logic, because that is how it learned, too. In the old expression, "learning at the bench." A mechanism used so the young person's ear fills with how the work is done.

Two: entrusting the child to a trusted professional — something that finds an echo in our culture in the approach "the meat is yours, the bones are mine." They hand the young person over to a professional whose advisory work they used for years, or with whose way of doing business within the company they are satisfied. But, for example, the general manager of one of Türkiye's largest holdings told me this over a meal, about the child entrusted to him: "We spend the day in such a way that, on the way home in the evening, I give the young person this advice: tell your mother 'they wrapped me in cotton wool,' and tell your father 'they worked me to the bone.'" Especially in cases where that professional has interest-based relationships with family members, there is a risk that this entrustment won't go as intended; real examples show this.

Three: making use of independent board members. Each of these people is very valuable, and they are professionals; but there is the risk of the young person adopting the style of a single person. We can count the inability to diversify as a risk here.

Four: wanting the young person to work at companies not belonging to the family. This too, like the others, is a perfectly fine and worthwhile method to try; but on its own it is not enough. Gaining experience in an organizationHere, 'organization' is used in a broad, encompassing sense: beyond companies, it covers legal entities such as associations, public institutions and non-governmental organizations, as well as the decision-making and governance structures of a company and family (family council, ownership group, board of directors, next-generation board). See in glossary → not belonging to the family gives the young person the chance to understand how the work is done at other companies. But this is something you can do after entering working life. Whereas, for reasons I'll explain shortly, this is a process you should start earlier. To avoid missing the train, you may struggle to give this experience at other companies to a young person who has just graduated from high school and is studying at university.

Five: the in-class trainings global consulting firms offer to educate the new generation. In the literature there is a rule called 70-20-10: 70 percent application, 20 percent mentorship, 10 percent theory. Five-day, ten-day, one- or two-week classroom trainings of course impart certain perspectives; they also let the new generations of families meet one another and develop networks. There are institutions in the United Kingdom whose names stand out in this field, such as Regent University; globally there is a very large organization, such as the Family Business Network, that works around the new generations of family businesses. These mainly solve the networking need. What the programs more focused on the young people's development are is something to look at separately; this is the plane on which SPALDA Academy concentrates.

Six: the programs offered by multinational consulting firms. A three-year program I know of takes the young person; in the first year — let's speak of a family from our country — it has them work on certain focuses with its clients in Türkiye. In the second year it sends them to London; because London is a financial center, it gives no choice there. For the third year, depending on the family's line of business, it has the family choose among alternatives. At the end of three years, the young person can come to the company quite well equipped. But this too is interpreted as a process that not every family can access and that, because it begins after university, is a little late.

The current generation's approaches, the methods it applies, and the framework the market offers on this matter are roughly this.

Two Anecdotes

There are two critical anecdotes I want to share.

The first: while chatting with a friend who serves at companies as both an independent board memberA board member who serves without a conflict of interest, contributing independent and objective oversight to decisions. Orhan Erkut has held this role in various companies. See in glossary → and a consultant, he told me about a process that did not please him either. An owner asked him to spend one day with each of his three children and to tell him which one should be chosen, which one carried potential. My friend says, "Actually this wasn't something I approved of"; "We have no chance of seeing this in one day; that day's performance becomes decisive. Even though I said it should be observed over a process and that certain professional assessment methods should be applied, the owner didn't give up his insistence." The process was completed; at the owner's request, my friend chose one of the children. The owner said, "I was of the same opinion as you." Now he probably carries a prejudice about the other two children; I hope he doesn't. But this is a dangerous thing. Rather than assessing a young person's maturity by their performance at a particular moment, the method to be preferred is to proceed by measuring how they respond to a structured expectation over a process; to identify the areas they need and, as you provide support, to see whether they progress there. This is also the method we prefer at SPALDA.

The second: in Scandinavian countries, a study is conducted on adolescent girls and boys to measure foreign-language ability. When the study is first done at ages 12-13, girls are significantly ahead. When the same study is repeated at ages 18-19, this time boys are seen to be far more successful in foreign-language ability. When they investigate the difference, they find its source in computer games: because boys play more games, games are found to be a serious engine for increasing foreign-language command around certain subjects.

What does this mean? I just told you an example where owners assess their children in a single day as "ready or not ready." Whereas what I see very clearly in my individual work is this: the difference between a young person's situation today and their situation three or five years later — never mind that long, even six months or a year later — the difference between that and the impression they create around them, depending on the work you carry out with them, becomes substantial. That is, instead of the concept of "ready or not ready," it is absolutely necessary to advance them through a process that helps them find themselves and discover their interest in this subject. What SPALDA Academy does is exactly this.

How SPALDA Academy Works

I mentioned earlier: the relationship between generations is difficult to begin with. Due to the age and generation gap, it isn't really possible to say that the relationship between parent and child proceeds with the two sides listening to each other healthily and reaching agreement. And when, on top of that, you add the business dimension to this gulf between a family and a young person who is in the age of finding themselves, you can reach a point where agreement is almost impossible.

What do young people expect? They expect flexibility, they expect freedom; they want to discover themselves, to be supported in doing so, and to make their own decisions. And what does the current generation, the parents who own the business, want? They want them to be disciplined, to take ownership of the family and the business, to respect the work, to behave responsibly. In fact, both sides have expectations they set within their own worlds, and this is a good thing. If both sides have expectations, you can seat these two generations at one table to clarify which of these will be put into effect. Of course, by "seating them at the same table," I mean structuring, on their behalf and accompanied by a system, a process that can produce results for both their expectations. This genuinely works; I can say that. What is done at SPALDA Academy is exactly this: without keeping the parties too closely intertwined at the level where they struggle to communicate, within the framework of a system, with common agreement, we advance both along their own paths. This, I think, is one of the most important descriptions of how we do the work.

The first six months are a little critical. Because the first six months coincide with the period in which both the current generation and the young people understand whether they really find a response to their expectations within the system they have entered. The general picture we see at the end of six months is this: within this system, in which they can express their expectations and communicate with the other side, they consent to moving forward. The result we have obtained from the families we have worked with so far shows this clearly.

We have sets of three questions that we ask young people and their families who complete their first and second year with the academy. We share the answers with the families we interview, so that they understand what the young people and the current generation think. Of course, we do this within a confidentiality framework; we have no principle of announcing which families we work with. But there are families we think know one another; with permission, we can also apply methods such as bringing together a family already in the system with another family, or one young person with another.

The young people's comments mainly contain this: "If I weren't inside such a system, I couldn't feel this free in front of the current generation; without a structure that grants me this space to find myself, I couldn't build this relationship with the business." And the comment we get from the current generation is this: "Without this system, I couldn't see my child's development in the language I understand and in the way I want to see it." For us, this is a very strong indicator that SPALDA is on its way to reaching its goals. Thus, both sides can move forward satisfied with the outputs and with the path they are on; because here a system is used that can speak the language of both sides.

In politics there is a concept called populism: it is built on proposing simple solutions to complex problems and giving the appearance of quick results. Succession in family businesses is a complex problem, and you cannot solve a complex problem with simple methods, because there are too many variables in the background. When you go with a generic solution, even in two families in the same sector and of the same size, you get different results because of the many differences between them. The process changes depending on many things: the size of the family, the sector it operates in, how many children there are in which generation, the age range of those children and how they should be prepared, the ownership structure within the family and the company, the importance the partners attach to the subject, the goals of the business, the goals of the family, the number of young people, and the expectations of both sides — the models built accordingly change. This is why I say it is a complex system.

From this perspective, the people who form the academy's infrastructure need to have multidisciplinary experience. Having done management consulting, having worked with families and especially with decision-makers, provides a very serious advantage for reading this process correctly. We begin the work with a process in which we understand these variables; according to these differences and expectations, we first determine the program's main goal for that family or that generation. Is the goal to carry out the succession, to develop the young people, to bring one to the fore, or to advance all of them in a standard way at a certain level of knowledge? After we determine where we want to arrive, we then decide with what kind of mechanism we will do it.

I'm the one explaining this; but at SPALDA Academy, as of the end of 2025, around 110 professionals work — each with at least 15 years of experience, specialized in different sectors and business functions. This means: there are many different professionals who enter and exit the main system that is built according to the family's need and the sector the young person needs at that moment. After all, it is not possible to solve such a complex problem with simple methods and a single person. Your approach to such a problem needs to be in a structure that is modular, that can be customized to the family's need, and in which many people can be brought into the main system with a logic of measurable progress. The size of this team grows depending on the areas of expertise, the families we work with, and the volume of business. If you ask me, this number will keep growing; moreover, the scope of the work we do will not remain within Türkiye's borders alone.

The system must produce concrete outputs. Because with an unmeasured system, it is hardly possible for a family or a young person to move forward without making visible their thought that they can improve their own future through this system. For this reason, as the academy advances, the system needs to produce outputs both for the next-generation individuals within it and for the current-generation individuals watching them (within the system we call them sponsors). Measurability is one of the points where SPALDA Academy brings its main solution. Although it is a difficult area, at the end of all the working periods, certain report cards reach both sides. Here I'm talking about the family academy, the product we apply with larger families and in which the whole family participates; I'll talk about different services shortly.

This output also has indirect benefits. For example, cousins or siblings — depending on their ages, sometimes in similar, sometimes in different periods — can reach a plane on which they can compare with one another the scores, reports, and work they produced in the academy program. In one family engagement, one of the young people said to me: "Orhan abi, you know what, the biggest jealousies happen among cousins who grow up together." Until that moment I had never thought of it that way, but the theory has a correct side. Cousins who grow up together — because they are within the same order of wealth and have reached many of the things they want — think that both developed under equal conditions and that the same environment produced the same kind of profiles. But once working life begins, different performances can emerge; then situations can arise in which the less successful one envies the successful one. In a process within the academy where peers can observe one another and results are made measurable and visible, we can also reach an indirect benefit: the profiles whose outputs are better and who clearly demonstrate their own development process command respect in the eyes of the other family members and can make themselves accepted.

Starting Early

Another important subject is starting early; this is a very, very important matter. At SPALDA Academy, we are moving toward building an academy that young people can be included in the moment they graduate from high school. Because we see that it is not at all easy to awaken awareness of this process and to establish processes for observing development after they graduate from university. The fundamental reason I said "it gets late" while describing some traditional and existing practices earlier is also this. The young person who comes after university has chosen a profession, has come close to working full time, and now arrives hungry for a role. You can't say to that person, "Wait, let me take a look — which business function are you interested in?" Moreover, because they enter the organization as the boss's child and a next-generation shareholder, an expectation forms around them that they should run the business well and be successful. That is, you haven't granted them a discovery process. When I say "late," this is what I mean.

Another very important piece of work for me is currently ongoing at the R&D stage at SPALDA Academy. Our main goal is to pull this age back to four years before high-school graduation — according to today's education system, to the period when high school begins, that is, to the point where secondary education ends. Because we think that an awareness begun from here on will have other advantages. Don't think this work is carried out only around choosing a business function and the young person's interests. At the same time, much is whispered to the young person about what is what within the focus of that family and that business as a whole, and about how they should interpret things. Moreover, this is not experienced at an intensity that would cause them to neglect school; we're talking about their correctly perceiving the business through programs suited to that period.

Because what we are talking about here is not only the business, either. Business is a whole that seeks profit, with clear inputs and outputs, from which you must generate income, done in different sectors. But this is a much more complex structure. Why? Because there are relationships within the business: there is family, there are daughters-in-law and sons-in-law, there are fathers, there are children. The young people are within a fairly complex family relationship. And within this family relationship — remember the definition of institutionalization — mechanisms in which those promises can be kept need to be created. I know that many families hold meetings, in certain periods, where they discuss how the family will look at the business; some call it a "family assembly," some a "family council." These organizations, held both to keep the family together and to inform it about the business, show that there is an important side beyond the business side of the work. It is hardly possible to instill these awarenesses in a young person after they graduate from university; and leaving it to the natural flow isn't quite right either. Because the children of especially busy working parents, growing up at home, do not remember the business and business discussions fondly; in their minds, the business is largely associated, with a prejudice, with the busy working parent's detachment from the child. This is important for us. So taking the young person into such a system at an early age is one of the important matters.

SPALDA's Services

I mentioned the diversity of families earlier. We launched at the start of 2025, but there were families we had been working with inside the system from about two years before that. In the meetings I held with many families and owners I knew from my own network — what I call a "stress test" — I had seen that needs can differ. At first I had thought of the family academy as the main backbone of this work; but then an owner turned to me and said: "Orhan, you want to advance the whole family on this subject. But we are two siblings, and we're not very crowded either. I think differently, my sibling thinks differently. Now, just because my sibling isn't taking such a program, should my children also be unable to enter such a program?" At that moment I began to take steps to turn this into a program applicable to the family of a single partner within the ownership structure, and we shifted the main focus here: there are concepts called stewardshipIn a family business, a conscious shareholder who carries the responsibility of ownership — even without running the business day to day — safeguards the institution's continuity, and does not shy away from saying what they believe to be right. (Also: responsible ownership / stewardship.) See in glossary → or responsible ownership in the literature, with very clear equivalents in the West and in Japan; responsible ownership. These are concepts defined with certain codes in foreign countries. What does it mean? However large your share is, have the potential to have a say in how the company you hold a share in is governed and where it is going, and don't refrain from it. Regardless of being active managers, the young people also need to focus on this point. For this reason, I can say that we feel very comfortable about developing a product aimed at that single family.

When we look at SPALDA's service portfolio, there are expansions in the framework between the day we started and today. First, the next-generation academy I call the family academy is one of the important pieces. Beyond that, there is a program we call the leadership-transfer program; we have split it in two: a program for those handing over and a program for those taking over. By "those taking over," I mean, for example, the work we do with leaders in their thirties who have taken over management from the family and are trying to establish a new management approach in the company by blending their own values and understanding with the previous generation's accumulation. There is a family-governance program: especially in crowded families, the work we do on the family side about the family assembly I described earlier, how the business will be transferred to the family, and what kind of development program the family should follow to ensure its own continuity. The one that interests me most and is increasingly requested of me is the handing-over leader's life design. We named it that, but in essence it is retirement; they don't quite like the word "retirement," because many in the current generation are focused on "I won't retire." These are the programs we provide, with certain methodologies, to leaders who need to design their next life starting today, and it stands out as an interesting program. This is how I've spoken today; whether, a year from now, when I shoot another video, I'll come with different products, I don't exactly know. But some things that didn't exist a year ago are now active within SPALDA's services.

Reluctant Heirs, Unwilling Families

Having come this far, I want to open another heading that may find an echo in many families: reluctant heirs or unwilling families. These are situations I encounter in my meetings and in the introductory meetings I hold with families. Sometimes in perception, sometimes in reality, they say that this process is not suitable for them, or that it is suitable for them but the whole family refrains from entering it. If the family consists of more than one person and all of them think this subject is unnecessary, there isn't much to discuss here; you need to be glad to have met and part ways. Because some families may not have a goal such as making future plans, and this is something to be greatly respected. In the past I had a meeting with a large chandelier manufacturer. We sat down, we were talking; then I learned that he has no children, no agenda to hand over the business, and no concern about retirement or growing the business. Because this matter is somewhat fed by anxieties, it draws more interest from families who are concerned about transfer to the next generation and the child's correct preparation, and who are in search of it.

If one of the partners is willing and the others are not, we can have searches such as family workshops, meeting and conversing with the other partner to explain what this is, or working only with the visionary and willing side of the family.

There are also situations in which the young person is unwilling. Here two questions arise: is the young person genuinely unwilling, or is the parent defining them as unwilling? For this too, you need to communicate and get acquainted. Unwillingness also has two states. First, young people who don't want to build their own future through this business: those without work motivation, who say, "I'm already inside this much wealth; why would I still need to work?" Their interest may be something else; for example, they may turn to art, or want to build a collection on top of the assets; they don't want to take on the responsibility of growing the business. Second, young people who aren't interested in the work the family does, who can't imagine a working life in that field. This is sometimes because it really is a field they can't imagine, and sometimes because they don't fully know the components of the business. In some cases, we have seen that the views of those experiencing each of these reservations can change. But let's underline: we're talking about a system that will produce results with willing people.

What Do I Recommend?

Today I tried to gather many of the subjects on my mind about succession in family businesses. Assuming I'm asked a question like "So what do you recommend?", let me compile it.

First, starting early; beginning to think about this work early. If you have anxieties and don't know how to do this work, it's important to research, to make it your concern, and to begin the search. In this process you need to open up communication: if you're the current generation, both with the next generation and with the professionals working as experts in this field.

Second, you need to be able to bring the two generations to the same table within the framework of the institutionalization definition I described earlier. You need to structure a process in which you can put both sides' expectations on the table.

Third, you should stay away from generic solutions — that is, the ready-made solutions you think everyone applies. You should also use traditional methods in the right dose and not pin everything on them. What do I mean? I'm talking about not using generic solutions of the sort, "which young person has turned out well, which child is at a level that can save our future?" — like the consultant example I described earlier who allotted one day each to three young people, "let this consultant come and take a look at our young people too." Because, as I detailed, every family's culture, expectations, and needs differ from one another.

On the SPALDA Academy side, our future vision is to take this work beyond Türkiye. We have certain moves on this and requests coming from parties we are in contact with; but because of cultural differences and the stages of correctly determining the solution partners you'll set out with, the process doesn't progress that fast. Considering that we have been applying this product in the field for three years and that, even though we're successful with the families we work with, we have a goal of reaching more families, we've left the process there a bit to its own flow. But I can say that I have a goal of seeing this company's future applicable in the global arena, in companies in different countries. Because even if cultures differ, the focus is the same: to bring the next generation to the head of the business in a ready state. The existence of organizations carrying out networking activities toward a common purpose — such as the Family Business Network or Regent University I mentioned earlier — also pushes us to do work showing that common solution paths can function in other countries.

I find it important to touch in this video on an article I wrote on LinkedIn as well. Malcolm Gladwell has a book called "Outliers." This book is one my wife gave me years ago, presented as proof that an important subject within it would be useful to my work and to families' work. Its first chapter, as those who've read it know, begins with the account of a study on hockey players in Canada. The common point is this: 70, even 80 percent of the successful players who reach the national-team level are born in January, February, and March. Because sports clubs hold tryouts by inviting young people in the active-license period that, in every branch, covers January 1 to December 31. Considering that tryouts are held at a young age and that successful athletes turned to that sport at a young age, children born in January, February, and March enter these tryouts with a serious mental and physical advantage over those born in October, November, and December. This lets them stand out markedly in the sport at that age.

From our perspective, this shows the following: in a system someone else has built, a block born in the first three months of the year gains a natural advantage, while those born in the last three months remain disadvantaged. If one day we could sit down and become decision-makers and said, "From now on the active-license period is July 1 to June 30," this decision would affect other people's lives and subsequent generations: this time those born in July, August, and September would gain the natural advantage, while those born in April, May, and June would be disadvantaged. From my perspective, measuring performance according to a system someone else has built can result in a person being unable to use the potential they hold within.

Family businesses and asset owners can use this as a strength when raising their own children: instead of assessing the young as "ready or not ready" with traditional education systems, developing them with education methodologies tailored to them, suited to the person's development, by observing them. They are in a position to do this easily; but it's an area they'll find just as difficult, because it requires effort. I want to bring this to attention. Because individual education, with the technology and data-evaluation capabilities we've reached today, gives us the power to genuinely bring out a young person's potential; you just have to pursue it. Families and asset owners — that is, the companies and the current generation who are the audience of this conversation — are in a position to do this easily. They need to begin seeking, within these systems, not traditional methods but methods suited to the individual and to the child.

Closing

After a nice conversation with the owner of a large company I worked with, we were leaving the office together. It probably hadn't occurred to him during the conversation, so he chose to tell me in the elevator. He told it through an example, but what he expressed was this: "Orhan Bey, this process being long requires patience. I don't think everyone has this patience. Families who truly have this patience will make the difference here." I think it's a very accurate observation. This is no dipping vat; it's not a program where everything changes the moment you dip and pull out. It's a process that requires patience. So a family or current generation that is not concerned about their children's development and the continuity of the family and the business, and that won't show patience in terms of time, can't do much in this area; the odds are slim, let me put it that way. Of course, change can occur over time.

Every strong company provides employment, pays taxes, and benefits the economy. I'm motivated about it like this: if I can steer even just one company out of a thousand toward a correct generational transition — toward ending properly even if the partnership is to end, or toward developing behavior that keeps them at the same table if it is to continue; if I can be a means for capital to gain a gene, a trait, so that it can be transferred to later generations without being divided, with the company and investments growing, and for those behaviors to settle within the family, there's an incredibly great benefit and a motivational side to this. I move forward with this as my focus.

Before coming to this shoot, I called a friend of mine who is on the board in the third generation of the company I'm about to mention, to ask permission to use his name. The Çarşıbaşı company in Kayseri. Their HR manager had contacted me about a year and a half or two years ago, because they had heard of the work I do on this subject; then, by coincidence, I learned that the one making this request was Ufuk Bey, Ufuk Çarşıbaşı. Today I called him to ask whether I could use his name. Because I think where we stand, both as an individual and as SPALDA, will become clear through these sentences. We met, we talked, and we provided support in this process. But this happened not by setting up an academy within the family or through professional consulting processes; it happened by answering their questions. For any family that has a question about doing something right toward succession, I and my company never refrain from guiding them to do the right thing, and from sharing information that should be shared. Because the social benefit I mentioned earlier will bring with it the ability to eliminate a genuinely important problem.

Today I learned something — let me share it for the first time in this video: there, the company is passing to the fourth generation. One child of the fourth generation is 31, one is 25; the 25-year-old has just entered management. Congratulations, and I wish them success from here too. My friend said: "We found a document; the company is 80 years old, and this is an 80-year-old document signed between my father and my uncle. I'll send it to you." Let this video be a point at which I record his promise; when that document arrives, I'll write something about it. In that agreement, decisions were written down — from how meal expenses would be paid to how leaving the partnership would work. Picture the father who founded the business 80 years ago and his sibling like that. Today the third generation reaches me and asks these questions. The indicator that this awareness is fed from that agreement 80 years ago (remember my definition of institutionalization) and is valued as culture in that family today is, for me, a magnificent way of working.

I'd like to end this video by saying that, like many families we work with, families in need of help can also reach us through SPALDA Academy, and that we are ready for this. Thank you.