Avoid feuds in family business succession

When Maurice Hennessy visited Kenya in April 2018 to celebrate 200 years of their flagship product Hennessy VSOP, I had the privilege of having dinner with him, his nephew, Roch Hennessy, and 20 other Kenyans.

As a teetotaller, my interest was not the Cognac. I wanted to understand why some family businesses succeed in managing inevitable inter-generation succession while others don’t.

Maurice didn’t give a simple answer to this question. However, I gathered from our discussion that sustaining an enterprise into the eighth generation requires a lot of trust and respect for others.