Peter Jaskiewicz saw his family’s business fail. Now he’s helping others

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After watching the dissolution of his family’s centuries-old business, Peter Jaskiewicz decided to devote his career to helping other enterprising families avoid the same outcome.

“I saw that many other people had failed who were doing very good work because what they had built could fall apart quickly,” he says, noting that the same “lack of succession planning and complicated family dynamics” that ended his family’s business activities are common stumbling blocks for others as well.

Jaskiewicz is now the founding director of the Family Enterprise Legacy Institute (FELI). He’s also a full professor of family enterprise at the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management and co-author of the book Enabling Next Generation Legacies: 35 Questions That Next Generation Members in Enterprising Families Ask.

His scholarship is internationally known through his lecturing, his editorial position with the journal Family Business Review and his writing for the Wall Street Journal and Harvard Business Review.

We spoke with Jaskiewicz about his family business in Europe, why he came to Canada and what his research is revealing today.

What is your own family’s story?

“My family had businesses over several generations in Poland. We were building and renovating churches, then later had a business selling candles to churches. My father and mother left Poland in the early 1980s.

“My uncle Tadeusz Jaskiewicz started a successful music-school business in Norway and eventually became a major seller of church organs. A number of family members were involved in the business, but when my uncle passed suddenly, no one was prepared to be a successor, so the business eventually liquidated. This caused major conflict in our family.”

What impact did this experience have on your career?

“During my business studies, I met a lot of people who had similar experiences. It made me decide to focus my doctoral research on family business, as well as co-found the European Family Business Center (EFBC) at the European Business School near Wiesbaden, Germany, with Sabine Rau and Torsten Pieper in 2005.

“I’ve since devoted my career to this field. Family businesses are the backbone of our society.

Six out of 10 family enterprises in Canada will be passed on to the next generation in the next decade.

Peter Jaskiewicz

“Family offices also play an important part. Every family office is unique: there’s so much diversity, there’s very little benchmarking, and it’s not normal for family offices to have a lot of information about other family offices. Family offices have traditionally focused on services that manage financial wealth, but I would argue that families’ social, human and cultural capital are even more important. When they need to adapt for the future in an increasingly complex world, we’ve seen that families who have more social, human and cultural capital will often be fine.”

What brought you to Canada?

“I left the EFBC for the University of Alberta in 2008. At the time, there were a number of good people working there, supported by several Canadian families, and it was an opportunity to learn. Later, I was offered a position [as CIBC Distinguished Professor in Entrepreneurship and Family Business] at the John Molson School of Business at Concordia University by one of the most prominent people in the field, Pramodita Sharma, as she was leaving [to take a position at the University of Vermont].

“Fast-forward another four-and-a-half years, and I had some good conversations with the dean at the Telfer School of Management. The university already had strong roots in the area of entrepreneurship. I moved to Ottawa and founded FELI.“

What does FELI do?

“We’re here to work with and for enterprising families. They have tremendous responsibility to use their wealth in a productive way and in a responsible manner.

When they need to adapt for the future in an increasingly complex world, we've seen that families who have more social, human and cultural capital will often be fine.

Peter Jaskiewicz

“We offer regular courses at the Telfer School of Management and tailored programs for individual families. We are developing a certificate program in responsible ownership for next gens, which we are looking at offering with partners like Family Enterprise Canada (FEC). We have been testing content from this program, such as during a recent session at the FEC Family Business Symposium, and globally with the Family Business Network.”

What is the focus of your research?

“We are focusing on being a thought leader, to address common and future problems and develop best practices to address them. We want to provide a safe place for families to learn and speak openly. We follow what we label the Hippocratic Oath to families; if we cannot do good, we will remove ourselves. We also want to help people think and reflect and make better decisions.

“Our particular focus is on the next generation. We are at a time when six out of 10 family enterprises in Canada will be passed on to the next generation in the next decade, but families are not always prepared for it. This is obviously a big danger not only to families and individuals, but also to our society.”

How does your book Enabling Next Generation Legacies relate to this?

“The book builds upon discussions with over 100 families. The next generation asks very different questions than their parents; the book lists their top 35 questions, with 35 answers and 35 families providing commentary about how they dealt with it. We’ve been happy to hear from families, advisors and academics around the world that they are using the book to help spark conversations with the next gen.”

How do you view the landscape for Canadian enterprising families and family offices today?

“We are at a major transition point, and I think there’s increasing awareness that there are challenges ahead and that there is a need for planning. It’s not hard to find a good lawyer or financial manager; it’s more difficult to focus on the ‘soft’ side, to be able to discuss emotional topics and understand each other’s different viewpoints, to be able to stick together when things get tough. But these aspects are critical.

“This is what our institute is doing – training, teaching and creating best practices from research so families can not only manage their transition but also ensure that there is responsible decision-making to build success in the next generation ahead.”

Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.

More from Canadian Family Offices

• Beware of deal-killers: Six common due-diligence pitfalls
• Next gens uninterested in taking over the business? This may help
• ‘Please fix my kid’: Parents regret being too easy on their children

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