"From Tractor to Trustee: Preparing the Family and Business for Sunny Days and Stormy Nights"
NY Farmnet
July 23, 2025
For today:
Working with family is often wrought with conflict, complexity and consternation. This workshop will examine strategies that can have a beneficial impact on your business and relationships. We will spend a quick 15 minutes on each of the following: governance, communication, innovation, conflict, succession, offering several actionable steps to walk away with.
The Smith Family Business Initiative is dedicated to supporting and strengthening the network of owners, leaders, and alumni that work in, with or for a family business.
Founded in 2014 from a generous gift from John and Dyan Smith, the Smith Family Business Initiative provides education, networking, and new knowledge for family business owners, successors, and students from across the globe.
Long term cohort of trusted, capable and mission-aligned family business leaders
Facilitated discussions on topics that create most value to the members
Customized education based on your needs as they evolve
• How big business deals with succession planning
• How major organizations handle changes at the top among family members
• Why governing bodies are so critical when it comes to managing family business
• Strategies to repair rifts and mend working relationships
• What owners should consider when handing over the business to their children
• How family businesses have successfully expanded into different ventures
• How interfamily communication can influence business outcomes
We will spend a quick 10 - 15 minutes on each of the following:
• Conflict
• Innovation
• Succession
• Governance
• Communication
If we do this right, we will be offering and/or collecting 2 -3 actionable steps and resources to leave today with.
Using one word only, how would you describe a family farm?
• Presence of family
• Owners dream to keep in family
• Overlap of
– Family
– Ownership
– Employment
• Unique sources of competitive advantage
• Business ownership is combined with managerial control in the hands of business principals.
• Principals are related by kinship or marriage.
• Family members provide capital of the business.
• Family members include business principals, who also do the farm work.
• Business ownership and managerial control are transferred between the generations with passage of time.
• Family lives on the farm.
Manyreasonswhybusinessesdon’tcontinuefromonegenerationtothenext
• Saleofthebusiness
• Lossoffamilyinterest
• Unpredictablechallenges
• Industrychanges
• Missedopportunities
• Mismanagement
• Successionproblems
• Familyconflict
• Familynormschallengebusiness norms(moreonnextslide)
Source: Miller & Le Breton-Miller 2005
• 50% had no estate plan
• 71% had no named successor
• Only 20% HAD spoken to a banker
• Only 30% HAD spoken to an accountant
• Only 28% HAD spoken to an attorney
• 30% had not discussed their plan with their family
Source: Duffy, Baker, & Lamberti, (2000)
Source: Iowa Farm and Rural Life Poll — 2024 Report
• Clear goals and communication
• Transfer strategies
• Assessing financial strength
• Understanding tax issues
• Wills, trusts & estate planning issues
• Life insurance, power of attorney & health care issues
Source: Family Farms: Tips for Working Together
Values conflict
• Politics
• Religion
• Ethics
• Norms
• Other deeply held beliefs
Task conflict
• Work assignments
• Roles
• Resources
• Policies
• Procedures
Identity / relationship conflict
• Personality
• Style
• Birth order
• Race
• Gender
Over-emphasis on structure among consultants and the law
Joe’s Axiom: Solve structural problems with structural solutions and solve relational problems with relational solutions. Doing the opposite inevitably makes problems worse.
• Give up rehashing past arguments or trying to insist other people see things your way. Instead, try to focus on moving forward with the relationship.
• Spend some time thinking about the least you can accept in the relationship. Are you willing to see each other during limited times or in controlled circumstances?
• If you are interested in repairing the rift, reach out periodically to attempt to build a bridge. Situations change over time and anger often dissipates. It’s worth checking in with your family member to see if he or she is ready to engage.
• Think about setting boundaries. If you are going to reengage with an estranged family member, it is helpful to spell out specific terms that will allow some sort of relationship. For example, an adult daughter might tell her mother, “You are welcome to visit, but you cannot criticize my parenting choices.”
Action steps
1. Complete a Family Diagram
2. READ: Fault Lines (Karl Pillemer)
3. Take eCornell course: Managing Family Relationships
Resources
• eCornell Keynote: A Family Divided (https://ecornell.cornell.edu/keynotes/overview/ K111924/)
• Bowen Center for the Study of the Family (https://www.thebowencenter.org/)
• Continuity FBC (https://continuityfbc.com/)
• Leadership Coaching Inc. (https://www.leadershipcoachinginc.com/johnengels)
Exploitation: Incremental innovation
• Rolling suitcase
• Power windows
• Pour spouts/caps
• Cherry Coke, etc.
Exploration: Revolutionary /disruptive innovation
• Autonomous Vehicles
• AI Robots: Chat Bots and visual assistants
• Immersive Experience: from virtual reality (VR) to Augmented Reality (AR)
• Blockchain
• 3-D Printing
Often not by incremental change... but by revolutionary change involving simultaneous shifts in strategy, structure, and culture.
This process is characterized by periods of stability with continuous incremental change punctuated by major reorientations, usually led by new senior management teams – aka the rising generation.
Most managers are accomplished at supporting incremental innovation, but not radical innovation.
A hackathon celebrates “hacking” in its most positive context: using minimal resources and maximum brain power to create outside-the-box solutions (“hacks”).
2025 / 2026 Hackathons: • Food
Digital AG
AI
Talent 2.0
Health Tech
Animal Health
Action steps Resources
1. Attend Grow NY
– Nov. 12-13, 2025 Canandaigua, NYhttps://www.grow-ny.com/
2. Participate or volunteer at a Hack-aThon
– Ami Stewart (ams345@cornell.edu)
3. Create your own Next Gen Business Pitch Competition
• Entrepreneurship @ Cornell
• SCORE - https://www.score.org/findmentor
– Connect with a retired executive
• Upstate Venture Connect - https://uvc.org/
– Mentors Network
• An outcome
• A process
• Inevitable
• An opportunity
• An event
• Not my problem
• Complicated
1.START NOW!
Succession planning is important at every stage of the business
2.INVOLVE OTHERS…
Family
Stakeholders
Professionals
Action steps
1. Find / create a Peer Group
2. Define objectives
– Personal
– Family
– Farm
Resources
• Ag Transitions
(https://agtransitions.umn.edu/)
• Family business centers:
– Cornell University(http://business.cornell.edu/familybusiness)
– St. John Fischer University (https://www.sjf.edu/schools/school-ofbusiness/family-business/)
– Stride (https://stridefba.com/)
• Farmnet!
O M F G
• The family (and business) is growing
• An upcoming transition
• To determine the business of the business VERSUS the business of the family
• Keep everyone on the same page
• Stave off entitlement
• Board of directors
• Family council
• Family office
• Constitution
• Shareholder agreements Little “g” governance
• Board of advisors
• Coffee talks
• Family stories and traditions
• Lunchtime conversations
• “Hey, mom or dad, what would you think if I…?”
• “I am taking this class and my professor required me to do this assignment…”
Q: Does your family have the following…?
Source: 2025 Cornell Rising
Owner Room
Board Room
Family Room
Management Room
• Different decision rights, members and “currency”
• Decisions are made in the right places with the right inputs
• ‘A place to land’ for transitions
Shareholders’roleisto:
• Define owner mission/vision/values
• Set highest-level business goals
• Define key shareholder policies
TheBoard’sjobisto:
• Represent the interests of the owners
• Advise management on strategic and operating issues
• Assist in continuity planning
Management’sjobisto:
• Operate the business day to day
• Achieve strategic goals and business plan
• Be accountable to CEO
Thefamilyroomisfor:
• The family to discuss and decide on matters of importance to the family
• The family to build relationships and have fun
Action steps Resources
1. Governance inventory
– Which rooms exist?
– Which rooms are needed?
– Who is in each room?
– Who is making the decisions?
2. Take the eCornell course - Implementing Family Governance Systems
• The Family Business Handbook (HBR)
– Josh Barn and Rob Lachenauer
• The Farm Whisperer
– Dave Specht
"Everyone is very happy. Or maybe just no one has the courage to say anything."
One Word
“If there is one piece of advice we would give to all family firms dealing with succession, it is: COMMUNICATE.”
Chrisman, Chua & Sharma
• Conducted in partnership with the Smith Family Business Initiative at Cornell University, Family Enterprise USA, and The Roberts Group, 164 current students shared their perspectives on their family’s business.
• For the second consecutive year, legacy was the word most associated with family business.
• Agriculture (12%), construction and real estate (24%), and manufacturing (15%) remain the primary industries for family business, followed by retail (10%), healthcare (5%), and hospitality (5%). Nearly half (46%) of these family businesses do most of their business locally, yet 33% do business on a national or international scale.
Source: 2025 Cornell
Q: If you had the courage to ask your parents/grandparents any question about the family business, what would it be?
Source: 2025 Cornell Rising Gen
In fact, I would call lack of candor the biggest dirty little secret in business.
What a huge problem it is. Lack of candor basically blocks smart ideas, fast action, and good people contributing all the stuff they’ve got. It’s a killer.
When you’ve got candor—and you’ll never completely get it, mind you—everything just operates faster and better.
Now, when I say “lack of candor” here, I’m not talking about malevolent dishonesty. I am talking about how too many people—too often—instinctively don’t express themselves with frankness.
Action steps Resources
1. If you had the courage to ask your parents (or grandparents) any question, what would it be?
2. Picture Your Legacy activity
3. Take eCornell Course: Stewarding Family Wealth and Values
• Purdue Institute for Family Business (https://ag.purdue.edu/department/agecon/ fambiz/index.html)
• Inspired Questions for Farmers (http://www.inspired-questions.com/)
• 21/64 (https://2164.net/)
Thank you.
Dann Van Der Vliet
Smith Family Business Initiative
