The Longest Game: How Family Businesses Survive, Evolve, And Endure Across Generations
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In this Good to Great Podcast episode, hosts Masrur Rahman and Jeremy Simonetto sit down with George Hartel, the outsider who helped turn a sixty-year-old Thai institution, GQ Apparel, into a number one online menswear brand, and Professor Thomas Clauss of Witten/Herdecke University, a leading authority on family enterprise, to ask why the companies built to think in generations so often stumble at the handover. Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations, the saying goes. Hartel reveals what it takes to reinvent a business steeped in tradition, while Clauss maps why families resist change and how the best build something enkelfähig, fit for the grandchildren.
Tune in to hear about:
Why family firms can be the fastest movers in a market, not the slowest
The "two permissions" every outside leader needs before they can change a thing
How one bounded-trust decision unlocked GQ's entire transformation
Why "you can do anything, as long as I sign off" is the model that kills succession
The ability vs willingness paradox, and the single lever that flips it
Why psychological safety is the real engine of reinvention
The blueprint the winners follow, and the three traps that sink the rest
What it truly means to build a business that's "fit for the grandchildren"