31/08/2026
Do families really move forward in a straight line?
I love One Hundred Years of Solitude. With García Márquez’s novel back in the conversation across Latin America, I have been thinking again about the Buendía family and the way its patterns return from one generation to the next.
I see something similar in my work with business families. A family may believe it is facing a new problem: difficulty engaging the next generation, postponing succession, disagreements about values, or gaps in preparation. Yet part of what is happening may have been present in the family for years.
The circumstances change. The underlying pattern often does not.
This is why I ask families:
What matters to us as a family?
What do we want to preserve?
What do we need to change?
Which stories from our past are still shaping our decisions?
Every family has forms of capital that do not appear on a financial statement: its relationships, culture, identity, capacity to learn, reputation, and shared sense of purpose. Together, they influence whether a family can remain connected across generations.
Perhaps that is one of the lessons of García Márquez’s novel. When a family does not understand its own patterns, the next generation may find itself living a new version of an old story.
Invisible Capital: What Sustains Enterprising Families Across Generations will be published in October and is now available for pre-order through the link in my bio.
