Posted: August 13th, 2015

Interview a Family Business Leader

Interview a Family Business Leader

Order Description

Throughout the term you have been studying a variety of best practices for family businesses. Now, we want to see how family businesses utilize these best practices. For this application, you will interview a CEO/President of a family business that is in the second or greater generation.

Prepare questions on a dozen best practices or other issues in family business that you have learned about in your readings. You will want to design your questions to get the most interaction out of the interview. Develop your questions as open-ended question that encourage the person you are interviewing to give details (do not push for details as many people do not feel comfortable releasing curtain information). Although you are only required to have 12 questions, I strongly encourage you to develop questions that promote follow-up questions. Be prepared to give some explanations on what you are asking about, as you may find that the person you are interviewing does not know what you are talking about or has heard of it in different terms. A prime example is the Family Charter/Constitution. Anticipate follow-up questions to help clarify points that come up during the interview.

Arrange to interview a CEO or President of a family business.

Check out the company’s website and any recent articles about the company.

In the interview, learn a brief history of the company, what they do now, what they are most proud of, what their values are, and which of the best practices you have cited they use or have considered using. How do these best practices work for this company?

Write up your interview.

At the top of your paper, identify the company, who you interview (including title), location of the company, the company’s industry, and what generation the company currently is in. Next, give a brief description of the business that you learned about during the interview. For the interview questions, provide a Q&A section in which you provide the questions and answers from the interview.

When you conclude your write-up, you must analyze and discuss what you learned about how this company does/does not utilize the best practices you have learned. You must also provide suggestions on what best practices the family business should instill or expand upon and why. Cite from your readings throughout the term and provide a Works Cited page. You must use a minimum of 4 sources