I grew up around a family business. Long before I had a title, I heard conversations at the dinner table about clients, people, strategy and the occasional crisis. That is one of the great privileges of a family company: the business is not something you join at twenty five. It is something you absorb.
It is also one of the great challenges. When the people you work with are the people you love, every disagreement carries extra weight. After years of working alongside my father at IGMEP, I have come to believe that family businesses succeed or fail on a handful of disciplines.
Separate the role from the relationship
At home, he is my father. At work, he is the General Manager, and I am a partner with my own responsibilities. Those are different relationships and they need different rules.
In practice, this means that business decisions are discussed in business settings, with the same rigor we would apply with any partner. It means that criticism of an idea is not criticism of a person. And it means that family events are protected from becoming board meetings. When the lines blur, both the family and the business suffer.
Earn your place
Inheriting a role is not the same as earning it. The next generation in a family company faces a quiet skepticism from employees, clients and partners, who wonder whether they are there on merit. The only answer to that skepticism is work.
For me, that meant building experience outside the core business, taking on projects with measurable outcomes, and accepting that respect inside the company would come from results, not from my last name. It also meant listening far more than speaking in my early years.
Make values explicit
Founders carry the company's values in their heads and demonstrate them through daily decisions. The next generation often understands those values intuitively, but intuition does not scale to employees and partners who did not grow up at the dinner table.
Writing down what the company stands for, and more importantly what it will not do, is one of the most useful exercises a family business can undertake. It turns implicit culture into something that can be taught, debated and defended.
Start succession early
Succession is not an event. It is a process that should take years, with responsibilities transferred gradually and with the outgoing generation still available to advise. The worst successions happen suddenly, through illness or conflict, with no preparation and no shared understanding of how decisions are made.
Good succession planning answers practical questions in advance. Who decides what? How are disagreements resolved? How are family members who work in the business treated differently from those who do not? What role does the senior generation play after stepping back? These conversations are uncomfortable, which is exactly why they should happen when nothing is urgent.
Bring in outside perspectives
Family businesses benefit enormously from voices outside the family: independent advisors, board members, experienced managers. They challenge assumptions that everyone inside has stopped seeing. They can also mediate when family dynamics make a business discussion difficult.
Generations as an asset
The strongest argument for family businesses is time horizon. A family thinking about the next generation makes different choices than a manager thinking about the next quarter. It invests in relationships that pay off over decades and protects a reputation that carries the family name.
At IGMEP, each generation has added something different. My father brought decades of executive leadership and commercial strategy. Dra. Patrícia de Sá Freire, on our board, brings deep academic expertise in knowledge management. My contribution is focused on data, partnerships and international connections. None of us could have built what we have alone, and none of it would hold together without the trust that comes from shared history.
If you work in a family business, my advice is simple. Protect the family from the business, protect the business from family politics, and treat the transfer of knowledge between generations as the most important project you will ever run.
Cresci em volta de uma empresa familiar, ouvindo à mesa conversas sobre clientes, pessoas e estratégia. Esse é um privilégio e também um desafio: quando você trabalha com quem ama, cada divergência pesa mais.
Separe papel de relação
Em casa, ele é meu pai. No trabalho, é o Gerente Geral. Decisões de negócio são discutidas em ambiente de negócio, com o mesmo rigor de qualquer parceria.
Conquiste seu lugar e explicite valores
Herdar um cargo não é conquistá-lo. O respeito vem de resultados. E escrever o que a empresa defende, e o que ela não fará, transforma cultura implícita em algo que pode ser ensinado.
Sucessão começa cedo
Sucessão é um processo de anos, não um evento. Conselheiros externos ajudam a enxergar o que a família deixou de ver. O maior ativo de uma empresa familiar é o horizonte de tempo: pensar na próxima geração, não no próximo trimestre.