Family businesses are infamous for nepotism and infighting à la Succession, especially when it’s time to appoint a new CEO. To be sure, that’s the reality for many. But when a research team set out to help family firms improve their leadership transitions, it found that large family businesses had much better succession practices than their nonfamily counterparts did—and they outperformed on several measures after new appointees took the reins. “This completely upended our expectations,” says global talent adviser Claudio Fernández-Aráoz, a member of the research team.
A version of this article appeared in the January–February 2024 issue of Harvard Business Review.