Andrew Keyt, President of the United States chapter of Family Business Network, discusses the importance of family cohesion for family business success. He notes that unified families with shared goals can succeed in any business. However, many families focus too much on the business and neglect family health. Successful family businesses engage in strategic planning and have both financial and non-financial goals. They also establish effective boards. Keyt also comments that unresolved conflicts between generations often repeat as cutoffs or other learned behaviors that can negatively impact the family business.

1. Family Business Network President Andrew Keyt:
Interview on Family Cohesion and Cutoffs
Jules Nagle / October 7, 2013
Recently, I was lucky to have met one of the field’s thought leaders. Andrew Keyt, the President
of the United States chapter of Family Business Network instructed a class at Stetson’s Family
Enterprise Center. Mr. Keyt spoke about the importance of family cohesion and strategy as a
stimulant to business success. He later gave ENTevolution the following exclusive blog
interview.
Andrew Keyt, President of Family Business Network – United States Chapter
Mr. Keyt, you have a pretty extensive span of family enterprise involvement. What
sparked your interest in family enterprise?
I’ve always been interested in understanding how families work. I can trace this back to church
youth group in high school when we had a psychologist come in and talk about the impact of
birth order on family dynamics. Later, after I explored following in my father and grandfather’s
footsteps as an attorney, I decided that the law wasn’t for me. So after some soul searching I
decided that I wanted my career to focus on strengthening families. My first idea was to work
with businesses to create programs that helped their employees create stronger families. While I
was networking and asking people about the potential of doing this work, I met the 3 top people
in chicago at the time who were working with family businesses. They were all extremely
generous with their time and gave me input and advice on how I could become a family
business consultant. One of those individuals was John Ward who many see as one of the
founders of the field. John took me under his wing in many ways and I owe a lot to his guidance.
How does family cohesion enhance the success of a family business?
The essence of the idea of family cohesion is that if the family is working well and they have a
unified sense of goals and objectives, and they are building a healthy family, then they will work
to also build a healthy relationship with the business. If a family is unified they can be in any
business and not just the business they are in today. The trap that many families fall into is that
they put all of their focus on the business which can erode the health of the family over time.
How do families know when to sacrifice?
There isn’t a black and white answer to this question. Over time, with practice, a family can build
its understanding of the health of both the family and business, and they can learn when the
focus needs to be on the family and when the focus needs to be on the business. There is an

2. inherent challenge in families around focus on individual needs versus family needs. If we can
understand that in most cases we can do more and be more if we act as a family unit rather
than a group of individuals, then we can start to buy in to a larger mission and vision. And visa
versa, we need to realize that in order to have a strong group – we need to nurture the growth
and development of each individual. Its a bit of a conundrum, but families who work at it can
develop their sense of when they need to sacrifice for the family, business, or the individuals.
What types of things are linked to a successful family business?
I would say having a successful family business has a dedicated family that is working for goals
beyond money. A successful family business is actively working to build family health, and make
conscious choices about what values we want to operate by, what businesses we want to be in
and how much risk we want to take. A successful family business has both financial and non-
financial goals. We do know that families that are successful over time actively engage in family
meetings, strategic planning, and building effective boards. These are all processes that help to
build both family and business health.
Can you talk a little bit about how cutoffs and other learned behaviors translate into
the family business?
In any family we hand down patterns, both good and bad, through the generations. Sometimes
these are patterns of conflict, communication, ways of relating to each other. Cutoffs are one of
the patterns that tend to repeat themselves. In general, unresolved conflicts in one generation
tend to replicate in some way in the next generation. Most families aren’t conscious that their
family patterns are often largely tied to family patterns from the past. Thus without
consciousness, these patterns repeat.
Originally posted on entevolution.com on October 7, 2013.
About ENTevolution*
Started in September 2013, ENTevolution seeks to be your aggregate news source for all things
Family Enterprise. We’re a small team of college writers who recognize the importance of family
in the world of business. We want to deliver you all things family and business related.
*ENTevolution was a college project started by Jules Nagle and is no longer consistently
updated.