Author Archives: david.elazari

The Inheritance contains many different dynamics in a family business that displays how a lack of family unity and succession planning can drive the business and family into turmoil and panic. When the father, Askel suddenly dies, the family turns to an estranged Christopher who is one of two siblings in the family. The death of Askel left the company without a leader to a company that is deeply in debt. In comes Christopher who runs his own successful Swedish restaurant, pleaded by his mother to come and run the business. He thought he escaped his family’s irrational ways when he ensconced to Stockholm, but was sucked right back in. At this moment, you can feel that this plan wasn’t going to work for Christopher or the business. Christopher lacked experience in the steel industry and wasn’t truly a suitable successor for the business. He was forced to make uncharacteristic choices for the business, which was firing many employees, including his sister’s husband Ulrick. I wondered why Ulrick wasn’t chosen to run the business. Maybe because Annelise felt he was disloyal? The fact that Christopher left the family business because of stress should have been an indicator that he wasn’t suitable to take over, especially after the business has worsened. The firing of Ulrick didn’t sit well with Christopher’s sister, thus adding more insult to injury. The family is torn apart after this move and ultimately exiles herself from the family.

I felt all the chaos in the family was due to Annelise’s controlling and domineering ways. She slowly destructs Christopher’s marriage and makes him weaker than he’s ever been.  Annelise is basically controlling the business and using Christopher as her own puppet to get what she wants. Even though it wasn’t her intentions on ruining his marriage, she did dislike Maria from the start and made him chose the company over her. In the end she did get what she wanted. Christopher did rescue the company by completing a merger with a French steelmaker. However, what did Christopher gain out of this? He loses all of his humanity after Maria leaves him, which drives him to drown his sorrows with alcohol. He sacrificed everything he had for the business and gained nothing. There was no cohesiveness within the family, which is an important characteristic a family must attain to avoid conflict.

Above all, there was a complete lack of family support and management from the get go. In order for a family business to be successful, there needs to be ordinance and a system set in place, especially when the business is in debt. It should have been Askel’s duty to make sure such a system was already set in stone. In addition, the family unity was torn apart when Christopher fired Ulrick, a decision he had to make, consequently making his sister, who is a part owner, leave the family. As I said before, the problem really started when Anneliese pleaded with Christopher to save the company. This is typically not the way a family business should bring in a successor. An unconventional approach to say the least, it turned out to be a good decision for the business, but not for Christopher in the long run.