Monthly goal · January 1970
How African family businesses institutionalise without losing their edge.
A note on the question I'm giving most of my attention to this month — what I'm reading, who I'm talking to, and where the threads are open.
The goal
Publish a short field guide by the end of the month — three case studies, one framework, and a set of honest failure notes.
Most family businesses I meet across Lagos, Nairobi and Accra face the same quiet fork: professionalise and risk losing the founder's instinct, or protect the instinct and never scale past the room.
The month's work is a series of long conversations with second and third-generation operators — the ones who found a third path. What did they keep, what did they let go of, and what would they tell their younger cousins?
I'm publishing notes as they arrive. Nothing polished; the point is to think in public and let the shape of the answer emerge.
The best institutions don't inherit the founder's decisions. They inherit the founder's questions.
Reading
- Peter Drucker — Managing in the Next Society
- Chinua Achebe — The Trouble with Nigeria (again)
- Kenya Hara — Designing Design
Talking to
- Second-generation operators in Lagos and Nairobi
- Two board chairs quietly succession-planning
- A private-office CEO in Accra
Open threads
- How is "founder instinct" actually encoded?
- What survives the second handover, and why?
- When does governance stop being theatre?
If this resonates
I'd like to hear from you.
If you're inside a family business wrestling with this — as the founder, the successor, or the operator in between — send a short note. The reply is personal.