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Family business leaders often feel pressure to “professionalize” their businesses, adopting the structures and behaviors of non-family corporations. However, when they push this too far, they can inadvertently destroy their most distinctive competitive advantages: Trust, long-term commitment, and multigenerational relationships that naturally arise between family-run businesses. What researchers call familiness is frequently underestimated or treated as a weakness to overcome, as if family involvement were a liability rather than a strength.
