Family businesses are often seen as cautious and traditional, focused on stability and reluctant to take big risks. That reputation may seem at odds with growing a business during uncertain times, when conditions change quickly and there’s pressure to nimbly adapt strategies and investments.
Yet recent data suggests that for many firms, the family approach hasn’t held them back. About one in four family businesses reported double-digit growth in the past year, even against the backdrop of recent uncertainty, according to PwC’s 2025 Global Family Business Survey, conducted with Kellogg’s Ward Center for Family Enterprises. In doing so, these firms not only outperformed expectations but, in many cases, outgrew nonfamily businesses.
How did these firms do it? Matt Allen, professor of family enterprise at Kellogg, says the family firms growing fastest take a long-term view, move fast when they need to, and stick to their values through tough times.
Those same principles, he adds, can help any company grow in difficult economic conditions. Allen offers advice on how nonfamily businesses can look to family firms for inspiration.
Think beyond the next quarter
Leaders of public companies tend to prioritize delivering quarterly results for shareholders, with less concern for what happens beyond their own tenure at the top. By contrast, many leaders of family firms take a longer-term perspective and are less likely to make knee-jerk reactions to short-term economic fluctuations. In turbulent times, this steadiness can help a company respond more deliberately—and avoid flailing.
“You may think, oh, a long-term perspective means you’re going to be a little more conservative, you’re going to move slowly,” Allen says. “But at times when everything’s so uncertain, having a longer-term plan means you’re more anchored. Turbulence hits, and you stay the course.”
That longer view helps family firms stay disciplined when others might chase quick wins. Allen experienced that short-term pressure firsthand at a large public firm before he entered academia. As each quarter closed, if sales were behind, pressure mounted to “stuff the channel”—offering deep discounts to vendors so shipments could be counted as sales. The tactic lifted results in the short term but hurt performance in the next quarter, forcing the company to play catch-up again.
Family businesses, by contrast, keep a longer calendar. Their continuity in leadership, with families often running the business across generations, helps them stay true to their values over time—reducing the temptation to stuff the channel or chase temporary wins that might hurt the company over the long term. The PwC survey found that those family businesses experiencing double-digit growth were more focused on the long term than their slower-growing counterparts.
“This culture change toward longer-term thinking beyond family business can be accomplished through creative compensation tied to longer-term executive and company performance,” Allen says. “For example, how important are relationships with customers, suppliers, or the community? What is the long-term cost of sacrificing those relationships for short-term financial gains?”
Including nonfinancial performance metrics encourages leaders to balance decisions across a portfolio of important outcomes.
“Truly changing mindsets requires expanding what is valued in the organization beyond financial performance.”
Take your time with technology
One advantage of this longer-term outlook is that it allows family firms to make significant but patient investments in technology. While family firms are often seen as conservative or slow to adopt new tools, Allen says the opposite is true for the firms posting stronger growth.
One example is artificial intelligence. Allen notes that while AI and other new technologies offer long-term potential to improve performance and growth, they also demand serious investment.
“You can’t just say, ‘Oh, we’re going to adopt AI’. There’s a learning curve, and there’s a cost to integrate it and build it in,” he says.
This more-deliberate approach may be paying off for family businesses. According to the survey, nearly half of family firms report that generative AI has boosted revenue and profitability, compared with roughly 30 percent for nonfamily firms.
Other companies can learn from this by recognizing that new technology takes work and investment to make it pay off. When the outlook is uncertain, investing in technology becomes more important, not less.
“For organizations, taking a long-term approach to technology means being patient with technological changes,” Allen says. “This patient approach results in firms being more likely to see true transformation rather than superficial gains. Dabbling in potential technological advancements or taking a wait-and-see approach is unlikely to lead to growth.”
Let values guide your growth
Another pattern among the family companies reporting stronger growth is that their purpose and values are clearly defined and communicated. Making these principles explicit helps avoid the knee-jerk reactions that can take place in turbulent times.
“Having values is one level,” Allen says. “Communicating those values within the company—and having those values known and understood—is a level above.”
Family firms make their values easy to grasp by using specific stories. Such stories help express and reinforce a company’s purpose. Other businesses can adopt the same approach. The point is to give people a shared sense of direction when things are uncertain.
“The difference here is knowing what the values are versus understanding what the values mean,” Allen says. “It’s one thing to say, “we care about the customer,” but that statement doesn’t have meaning if leaders, managers, and employees don’t know what that looks like in day-to-day practice.”
Allen describes how a nonfamily service company put that approach into action by providing customer-facing line employees with a discretionary monthly budget to spend on customer-appreciation initiatives including discounts, lunch or a coffee, birthday gifts—even an “I’m sorry” gift for customers who had had a bad experience. The initiative’s impact on making customer appreciation an actionable value went far beyond the relatively modest cost.
A focus on expressing company values has the added effect of enhancing a firm’s reputation. For family businesses, this process is often deeply personal.
“They’re embedded in the communities in which they operate,” Allen says. “They may employ several generations from the same family. They care deeply about their staff, not because the employees provide profit, but because they feel like family.”
This can lead them to make different calls in tough moments, such as holding back from layoffs or heavily cost-cutting. Allen points to L.L. Bean, the retailer, as an example. The company still runs much of its distribution from remote northern Maine, a place a profit-driven business might have left long ago because it is less cost-effective than other locations.
In turbulent times, employees who feel supported are more willing to pull together when the business needs them. “We’ll take maybe a lower return this quarter in exchange for that increased loyalty,” Allen says. “Nonfamily firms can learn to do the same by broadening their measures of success.”
Reduce bureaucracy wherever possible
Simpler ownership and governance structures allow family businesses to move quickly and avoid getting bogged down in bureaucracy when conditions are uncertain. This “structural agility,” as Allen describes it, is a decided advantage of family firms. Adopting freedom to make decisions with fewer layers of approval can make the process nimbler for nonfamily businesses as well.
“Because I’m privately owned, I’m not beholden to a whole bunch of random shareholders,” Allen says. “I don’t have to go through the bureaucracy of a big complex public company.”
That agility tends to work best at a certain scale. The PwC survey found that many of the firms reporting stronger growth were mid-sized—a “sweet spot” where businesses are nimble enough to adapt quickly, but have the resources and capital to seize opportunities, without the bureaucracy that can slow larger companies.
Nonfamily firms can learn from this by reducing layers of approval so they can respond at speed when conditions change.
“To benefit from organizational agility, it is essential that businesses, whether family-run or not, focus on preparing leaders who can think and act strategically, not just maintain what was accomplished by their predecessors.”