Family Businesses: Their Strengths and Weaknesses. How Does Your Business Measure Up?
By Stephen BRAY, Prinicpal, 'The Family Business School'

People involved in a family business often wonder how their company measures up against others. In general, how do family businesses compare to typical ones in terms of strengths and weaknesses?

Family Therapy: How Clinicians May Introduce It Into The Workplace
By Stephen BRAY, Principal, 'The Family Business School'

This article is also available as a .PDF, right click here and download it.

Family Business: The Oldest Family Businesses In The World
Compiled by: 'The Family Business School'

The family business is one of the most enduring institutions in human history. As Professor William O’Hara wrote in his book, Centuries of Success: “Before the multinational corporation, there was family business. Before the Industrial Revolution, there was family business. Before the enlightenment of Greece and the empire of Rome, there was family business.”

Making a Family Business Work
By Stephen BRAY, Principal, 'The Family Business School'

Blake Cooper, president of the Atlanta-based Copper Music Company, likes to tell the story of the elegant wooden Victrola that stands proudly in the showroom of the company's 10,000-square meter facility.

A few weeks ago I hadn't heard of 'The Human Givens' but then Michael Mallows of Social Effectiveness Training sent me an e-mail drawing my attention to it. I was very pleased to learn of this approach since it is very much in accord with my own views, and what we are setting out to achieve with 'The Family Business School'.

Caution: Extra Long Video

The Human Givens approach says that each of us has both essential physical and emotional needs, and if healthy all the resources within to meet them, no matter our race, background or culture.

These needs and abilities are what make us human. They have evolved over eons and are incorporated into our anatomy, which in part determines how we relate to the world. This is why they are referred to as 'Givens'.

Open Courseware, and Open Access Education are a means of obtaining training materials from accredited universities and other sources on-line.

Many universities and colleges routinely publish their courseware under a Creative Commons Licence. This license permits you to share, distribute and transmit the work, and also to remix it providing that you use it for non-commercial purposes.

The works being distributed are not shoddy works produced as bait to entice you to study with specific institutions. They are the exact course materials that enrolled students use for their studies.

This means that students in Ghana, Vietnam, or Timbuktu, via Internet access, may download course materials from institutions such as Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Tufts, Notre Dame, and a host of other colleges operating Open Courseware policies.

In addition to university courses some training providers also provide free materials on-line. There are directories listing such providers so you are able to sample materials prior to committing to a career, or course of action.

Open Access Education, and particularly Open Courseware is not without controversy. Many academics think that in some way an electronic document carries less weight than one printed in an academic journal. This concern is shared by the publishers of traditional paper journals who naturally worry that the dissemination of free information electronically will result in people un-subscribing from print journals.

Fortunately not all publishers are so narrow minded. The Directory Of Open Access Journals cites hundreds of journals with articles freely available in PDF format. Open access journals are published in a number of languages including English, Spanish and Portuguese. They cover a range of topics.

The Family Business School will make available Open Courseware where we are satisfied that these may stand alone in providing relevant and useful information to our visitors. Some course materials, however, are specifically designed for face-to-face dissemination in a supervised settings, or form a part of on-line tutored material, and therefore will not be released as Open Courseware.

Jamais Cascio, Ethical Futurist

The Family Business School Principal, Stephen Bray, has long held that the key to the future rests with small firms, and their financiers, rather than governments and global corporations. In 1999 in conjunction with Britain's Barclays Bank Plc. Bray, and fellow thinkers Amanda Knight and Tracy George, helped Barclays engage in an unusual dialogue between family business owners and their bankers.

Barclays Business Community was the result and the success of its activities are a matter of record, although Barclays eventually killed the project, perhaps because in effect, the project amounted to a customer users' group.

Strategic Planning: Rich Schefren, Johnny Rotten And Keith Levene.
A report from 'The Family Business School'

John Lydon and Keith Levene appeared on the Tom Snyder's American T.V. show in 1980. John Lydon was popularly known as Johnny Rotten, his alter ego from his days as a musician with the punk band 'The Sex Pistols'. Keith Levene was a early member of 'The Clash' another punk band. By the time these clips were recorded 'The Sex Pistols' had disintegrated and Lydon and Levene had formed a company in the U.K. called Public Image Ltd.