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In today’s rapidly evolving world, family enterprises face an unprecedented challenge: developing the next generation of leaders while navigating change that moves faster than ever before. This perfect storm demands more than traditional approaches—it requires both fresh thinking and wisdom about what has worked, knowing when to lean into time-tested methods and when to innovate boldly.
Earlier this year, in a white paper for Family Enterprise USA, our colleague Megan Helzner wrote about engaging the next-generation in the family business and enterprise, and, more specifically, discussed what Merrill Lynch has coined “The Great Wealth Transfer,” explaining that over the next 20 years, more than $80 trillion in assets will shift from Boomers to subsequent generations. Given the unprecedented amount of assets that will shift, engagement during this transition requires a systemic approach to effectively transferring family culture and values, ownership, control, and management of the enterprise while leveraging both family members (in and outside of the enterprise), non-family leaders, and external advisors to promote the health and longevity of the enterprise.
FEUSA’s 2025 Family Business Survey found that “70.9% of family businesses had majority ownership from first and second generations of family members, and 30.8% have passed ‘Full or Controlling Ownership’ on to the next generation. In addition, 81% of family businesses have been in operation for 20 years or more, results showed.”
Are You Preparing the Next Gen for What’s Coming? This Whitepaper Says How. Explore strategies every family-owned business needs as leadership and wealth shift faster than ever.
About CFAR
CFAR is proud to deliver our management consulting services to clients, with a commitment to unleashing potential and maximizing impact. We have, for more than three decades, provided guidance and expertise to tackle the thorniest issues—ones often rooted in a misalignment between important organizational goals and individual beliefs about what it will take to achieve them. We come to our work as curious problem-solvers. Our heritage as the Wharton School’s only multi-disciplinary, applied research center lives on in our continued dedication to advising leaders on complex organizational issues where both people and performance matter.
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The need for fact-based reporting of issues important to family owned businesses and protecting a lifetime of savings has never been greater. Now more than ever, successful families and family owned businesses are under fire. That's why Family Enterprise USA is passionately working to increase the awareness of issues important to family owned businesses built on hard work, while continuing to strengthen our presence on Capitol Hill. The issues we fight for or against with Congress in Washington DC include high income tax rates, possible elimination of valuation discounts, increase in capital gains tax, enactment of a wealth tax, and the continued burden of the gift tax, estate tax and generation skipping tax.
Family Enterprise USA promotes generationally owned family business creation, growth, viability, and sustainability by advocating for family businesses and their lifetime of savings with Congress in Washington DC. Since 2007, Family Enterprise USA has represented and celebrated all sizes, professions and industries of family-owned enterprises and multi-generational employers. It is a bi-partisan 501.c3 organization. Family foundations can donate.
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