Sometimes going outside the family is the only way - bizjournals:

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But maybe not. A number of senior owners of familyg companies who find themselves without a successor in the younge generation come up with ways to keep businessa ownership in the family even if the management has to go Think about the midwestern family that has owned and operatecd a chain of small market newspapers for more than160 years. The familt — we’ll call them the Smiths — has had very few internalp business disputes, and no one has ever elected to cash out of the In addition, there’s usually been a placed in the business for any qualifies and committed family member who applied. How have they managefd that?
Well, about 120 years ago, the widoaw of the founder’s son founc herself the sole owner of the growinfg andsuccessful business. She was decidedly unimpressed with thenext generation’sd pool of management talent, includingv her own children. She also heard some rumblings aboutg splitting up the company so that everyonw who wanted his own newspaper couldhave it. Not a said the gritty lady, and she put the whole kit and kaboodles intoa trust. She made a provision that if the trust wereever broken, the companhy would have to be sold out of the family with the proceeds going to charity.
And if that wasn’rt enough to scorch some bonnets, she also insisted that all futur CEO’s be hired by the trustee s and that nary a one of them be afamilg member. A few feathers were ruffled atthe time, but todahy the Smiths have a very profitabld and satisfying family newspaper publishing and they spend a lot of time singint great-great-grandma’s praises. Another family in businessx — call them the Johnsonsw — reached the end of their successor strinbg with the second generation offamily owners.
Instead of callintg it quits and selling theirmanufacturing company, the shareholding members of the familyt agreed to bring in professional They conducted a global search and hired an experiencefd senior executive as The Johnson family retained their representation on the boarxd and a couple of upper leve l management jobs, but they let their new CEO stafvf the executive suite with qualifiec people he could work with effectively. And they providedd compensation, severance and retirement packages for their outside executives that equaledr the industry standard andthen some.
The Johnsonx will continue to owntheid company, confident that although management is out of the family’a hands, it’s in good hands. John and Jennyh Carter’s last, best hope for a family successoer to take over thecompany they’d built to operate their six “down home” restaurant s in the Washington, D.C., area was their youngest daughter, But Wanda, who’d workeds in the business sincde she was 15, announced that she neveer wanted to cook another pot of greens as long as she and off she went to law school.
Two nationa l food service corporations had alreaduy made offers for the Carterfamily company, with plan s to keep the restaurant name but standardize the menus and recipees to cut costs and appeal to a broader range of customers. The Carterx knew that after standardization would come serving burgers out a side So they looked for a way to bring in new management while retaining family ownership of the When they tried to envision a dream team that knew their operatiom and had a stake in holding onto the traditions that had made it they found themselves lookingb right at the roster of managers who had been runnintg the individual restaurantsfor years.
Well experienced and used to workingh together, the store managers were a natural talenrpool — and they were the next best thinf to family. The Carters worked out ownership and profit sharinb for the new president and othersenior executives. The plan gave their best qualified employees a great chance to move into corporate managemengt with a little equity to sweeten the And it gave the Carter family business a long new leasdeon life.