214. The secrets to outperforming in family-owned businesses
Aug 16, 2024
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Eduardo Asaf, Acha Leke, and Francesco Malatesta from McKinsey tackle the secrets behind family-owned businesses. They reveal how these companies often outperform their non-family counterparts and contribute significantly to GDP and employment. The trio discusses key strategies for success, such as capital allocation and purpose-driven governance. They highlight the unique characteristics of the top-performing family businesses, focusing on long-term planning and talent management, which can lead to substantial value creation over the next decade.
Family-owned businesses contribute significantly to global GDP and employment, highlighting their importance in economic growth and job creation.
The most successful family businesses excel in diversification and reinvestment strategies, achieving substantial revenue from non-core activities while maintaining a long-term focus.
Deep dives
The Economic Significance of Family Businesses
Family-owned companies are crucial to the global economy, contributing about 70% of global GDP and 60% of worldwide employment. In the United States alone, family businesses account for 60% of jobs and 80% of new job creation. The prevalence of family businesses is even higher in emerging markets, with 75% of the top 500 companies in India being family-owned and similar statistics in other regions like the UAE and Saudi Arabia. This analysis emphasizes the necessity of understanding family businesses, which are not only dominant players in many economies but also critical for job creation and economic growth.
Performance Metrics of Family vs. Non-Family Businesses
Research indicates that family-owned businesses outperform their non-family counterparts when looking at economic profit and value creation. Family businesses typically show a 17% performance advantage in economic profit, which illustrates their effectiveness in capital management. Further decomposing this performance into capital turnover and operating margin reveals that mid-sized family firms often excel as investors, while larger family firms typically become better operators over time. This transition reflects a noteworthy evolution as they learn to balance investment opportunities with operational efficiency, ultimately contributing to long-term outperformance.
The Importance of Purpose and Long-Term Perspective
The best-performing family businesses prioritize a clear purpose beyond merely generating shareholder value, fostering a strong organizational culture that resonates across all levels. They often reinvest earnings into growth rather than prioritizing immediate dividends, maintaining a long-term outlook crucial for sustained success. This focus on purpose, represented through tangible outcomes like job creation and community impact, becomes embedded in their operational ethos, influencing decision-making and employee engagement. Such businesses exemplify the significance of aligning long-term strategic goals with actionable principles that guide everyday operations.
Strategic Actions Leading to Outperformance
A distinct differentiator for outperforming family businesses is their aggressive approach to diversification and capital allocation. These companies often achieve more than 50% of their business revenue from non-core activities, unlike their non-performing counterparts, which rarely reach such levels. They effectively utilize programmatic M&A to optimize growth, merging frequency and size to maximize returns. Furthermore, outperforming family businesses demonstrate a strong ability to reallocate capital swiftly, reflecting a nimble agility that is vital in today’s dynamic markets and ensuring they stay ahead of their peers.
This week, we delve into a McKinsey.com report on family-owned businesses (FOBs) that demonstrates how, by combining four critical mindsets with five strategic actions, FOBs have a chance to quadruple their value in the next decade while maintaining resilience.
Our guests are Eduardo Asaf who is a partner in McKinsey’s Mexico City office, Acha Leke, who is a senior partner in our Johannesburg office, and Francesco Malatesta, who is a partner in our Dubai office.