“When it's best not to resolve family discord,” by Lloyd E. Shefsky, Family Business Magazine, November/December 2014
Sometimes it is better to do nothing about a difficult family business relationship because the costs of taking action likely outweigh any benefits.
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Wide range of challenging relationships.
Typically, the most difficult challenges involve a minority of family member. In such cases, it may be advisable to defer, possibly in perpetuity, addressing the most challenging relationships (such as long-time estrangement). That's because trying to improve the most difficult situation might be a distraction, slowing progress on other, more approachable fronts while an inordinate share of financial and emotional resources is expended on unsolvable problems.
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Ticking time bombs.
Divergent expectations about roles, succession, money, and a whole host of other family business issues can lead to simmering tensions that flare without warning. While it's tempting to bring such issues into the open, the blowouts that typically follow can have pervasive negative effects on the broader family and business.
• Turnarounds.
When negative operating results seem to be in imminent turnaround, it may pay to delay attempts at fixing family relationship issues. For one, tending to the “open sores” of family relationships might retard the pace of business improvement or diminish its trajectory, given the required diversion of resources and the potential for increased short-term discord. And the higher returns — such as earnings or morale — associated with successful turnaround results might enable you to “buy” interpersonal peace through increased dividends, redemptions or other means.
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