These burdened shelves, however, largely lack insightful volumes for family business owners on the subject of effectively guiding one’s firm into the next generation. Although several useful titles exist, unearthing them often requires a fair amount of effort. The reasons of business book publishers for neglecting this market are difficult to fathom in light of the fact that, according to Family Business Review, 80 percent to 90 percent of all the businesses in the United States are family owned. These firms generate nearly $6 trillion of our $10.5 trillion economy and employ over half our workforce.

While they grab fewer headlines than their large-cap corporate cousins, these businesses face profound and increasingly serious issues. Two out of five family businesses will change hands in the next four years; 55 percent will see a leadership change within a decade. The transfer of family businesses to the second generation (four-fifths of U.S. family businesses are currently controlled by their founders) obliges their patriarchs and matriarchs to appraise not only their business assets and strategies, but also their family values and relationships.

Perhaps the challenges confronting every family business as it wrestles with succession are too unique for effective distillation into a business self-help tome. Indeed, building a thriving business may come to seem easy by comparison with the task of passing it on successfully. According to Family Business magazine, barely 10 percent of family businesses survive to the third generation, and only 4 percent struggle on to the fourth.