The briefing might say: “We are looking for a Managing Director with industry experience, transformation capabilities, strong leadership and a results-driven approach.”
Fine. But in a family business, that is often only part of the assignment. The other part is rarely written down. Recruiting an external executive into a family business is not simply about finding someone capable of doing the job. It is about finding someone capable of doing it within a system where business, ownership, family, history and the future all share the same boardroom.
And that is where the headhunter’s real work begins.
The organisation chart tells you who is in charge. Reality tells you how decisions are made.
In a non-family company, understanding reporting lines will usually give you a reasonably accurate picture of where authority sits. In a family business, things can be rather more interesting. The CEO may have full operational responsibility while certain decisions still require a conversation with the founder, a shareholder no longer involved in day-to-day management or a member of the next generation.
That is not necessarily a problem. Indeed, it is part of the nature of many family businesses and can be one of their strengths. The problem arises when nobody explains it and the candidate is recruited on the assumption that the organisation chart and the real map of influence are the same thing.
Before beginning a search, therefore, it is not enough to know whom the new executive will report to. We need to understand how decisions are really made, the role played by individual family members and how much genuine autonomy the person we are looking for will have.
“We want to professionalise the company”
It is a familiar sentence in executive-search briefings. And probably one of those that deserves the most follow-up questions.
What exactly does professionalisation mean? Introducing processes and management systems? Building a genuine management committee? Delegating decisions previously made by the founder? Preparing succession? Separating ownership from management? Or bringing in external expertise whilst leaving the existing decision-making model largely untouched?
This is not semantics. Each answer describes a different candidate.
The issue is becoming increasingly relevant. Recent KPMG research amongst US family enterprises points to an interesting development: whilst 91% of respondents have confidence in the next generation as owners and board members, only 36% expect family members to hold most senior leadership positions over the next decade.
It is a US sample and should not automatically be extrapolated to Spain. Nevertheless, it highlights an issue we are increasingly encountering: preserving family ownership does not necessarily mean keeping all management roles within the family.
Another finding is particularly significant for those of us working in executive search: attracting high-quality external talent was identified as the leading workforce challenge by 39% of respondents.
The opportunity for headhunting is obvious. So is the difficulty.
A very good executive can still be the wrong candidate
An executive coming from a multinational may bring methodology, processes, industry expertise and formidable execution skills and still fail in a family business.
Not because they are a poorer executive.
They may fail because nobody explained that a decision which looked impeccable on a spreadsheet could be unacceptable when viewed through the history, values or relationships of the owning family. Or because they interpreted as autonomy something the owners understood as conditional delegation. Or because they arrived with a mandate to transform an organisation which actually wanted to evolve without changing certain things.
That distinction matters.
Our experience of these searches leads us to pay particular attention to issues that rarely fit neatly into a Job Description:
- The genuine autonomy of the role, rather than simply what the organisation chart suggests.
- Who really influences decisions, and who has the final say when there is disagreement.
- The founder’s current role and, crucially, the role they are prepared to play once the new executive arrives.
- The expectations of the next generation, even when they do not yet occupy executive positions.
- The owners’ genuine appetite for change, particularly when it affects people, culture or long-established ways of working.
- The unwritten boundaries: those things that appear open to change but are, in reality, part of the company’s identity.
- Unresolved conflicts or conversations that the incoming executive may inherit without having played any part in creating them.
Very often, that is the real job description.
We need to assess the candidate. But we also need to “interview” the company.
In a conventional search, we spend a great deal of time thinking about the questions we will ask candidates. In a family business, some of the most important questions need to be asked of the client.
Assessing the candidate is only half the job. The other half is understanding the organisation well enough to describe it to that candidate without window dressing.
Recent analysis from the Family Firm Institute examines some of the biases that can affect leadership selection in family businesses. Lineage, seniority, familiarity and family expectations can outweigh the capabilities the company will actually require for its next stage.
The principle is particularly relevant: before discussing who should lead the company, it is worth defining what the company will need in its next chapter.
Although this discussion arises in the context of family succession, the principle is equally relevant when looking outside the family. The right executive to preserve and consolidate a company may be very different from the one required to internationalise it, digitalise it, integrate acquisitions or move from a founder-dependent model towards a professionally managed organisation.
That means the headhunter also needs to ask:
- Who really has the final say?
- Which decisions can this executive make without consulting the family?
- What happens when they make a professionally sound decision that makes the owners uncomfortable?
- What does the founder want to change?
- And what, deep down, do they hope will never change?
- Does the family genuinely want to delegate, or does it want someone to execute better whilst preserving the existing decision-making system?
- How will a disagreement between the new executive and a family member be resolved?
- How will success be measured two or three years from now?
The answers to those questions can fundamentally change a search.
Succession does not necessarily mean substitution
There is another issue that sometimes remains outside the briefing: what happens to the person who was there before.
A founder can formally step down as Managing Director and remain an extraordinarily influential figure. That need not be negative. Their knowledge, relationships, understanding of the business and legitimacy within the organisation can remain enormously valuable assets.
The important thing is to define the new playing field.
Will they become Chair? A board member? Will they retain particular customer relationships? Will they participate in strategic decisions? Will they keep an office in the company? Can they give instructions directly to the management team? What happens when they disagree with the new CEO?
These are not administrative details. They are part of the design of the role.
Recent thinking on family-business succession emphasises precisely the importance of not leaving these conversations until transition becomes unavoidable. Preparing early helps clarify responsibilities, preserve knowledge and avoid forcing the incoming executive to discover the unwritten rules only after joining.
Cultural fit means something more here
In recruitment we constantly talk about cultural fit. In a family business, the concept needs another layer.
We are not looking for someone who simply “fits in” and reproduces what already exists. An external executive is often being recruited precisely because the organisation needs to evolve. We therefore need somebody capable of respecting what has made the company successful without becoming trapped by it.
That balance between legacy and transformation is probably one of the least straightforward competencies to identify in a conventional interview.
It requires enough sensitivity to understand that behind some apparently commercial decisions lie decades of personal and family history. But it also requires enough independence and judgement to say what needs to be said when the future of the company demands an uncomfortable decision.
For a headhunter, identifying that combination of diplomacy, independence, relational intelligence and executive ability can be every bit as important as examining the results a candidate has delivered over the previous ten years.
The briefing ends. The search begins.
Perhaps that is one of the greatest differences between finding an executive for a family business and doing so for another type of organisation.
The briefing gives us the role, responsibilities, objectives, competencies and required experience. All of that is essential.
But then we have to understand what has not been written down.
The relationships. The balances. The history. The expectations. The red lines. The true meaning of “autonomy”. The space that will — or will not — be left by the previous leader. And, above all, what the family wants to preserve whilst asking the new executive to change the business.
Because in family-business headhunting, finding someone capable of doing the job is not enough.
We need to find someone capable of doing the job that actually exists.
And that does not always appear in the briefing.
Sources
- AMKALIS Search & Consulting — own experience. Experience gained through Executive Search assignments and interaction with owners, boards and senior management teams.
- KPMG — “Family-Owned, but Not Family-Run: U.S. Family Enterprises Expect Sizable Shift Away from Internal Leadership Over Next Decade, KPMG Finds”. 27 August 2026.
https://kpmg.com/us/en/media/news/family-owned-but-not-family-run-us-family-enterprises-expect-sizable-shift-away-from-internal-leadership-over-next-decade-kpmg-finds.html - Family Firm Institute — Nupur Pavan Bang, “When Family Businesses Misjudge CEO Successions. And How to Fix It”. 19 August 2026.
https://digital.ffi.org/editions/when-family-businesses-misjudge-ceo-successions-and-how-to-fix-it/ - Family Business Magazine — Ian Koplin, “Solidifying Your Succession Strategy”. 15 September 2026.
https://www.familybusinessmagazine.com/succession/solidifying-your-succession-strategy/
