How “Artifacts” Can Help a Family Business Define Its Legacy

But he also saw how expectations around continuity often looked very different from generation to generation.

“That’s where I think this interest in legacy came from,” says Allen, a clinical professor at Kellogg and executive director of the Ward Center for Family Enterprises. “It’s in recognizing that anytime you have a generational transition in a business, you’ve got different viewpoints on what each feel is important. Developing a legacy that both grounds the company in the past and provides a clear direction for the future can be tricky.”

One of the central ways family businesses define their legacies is through artifacts: verbal, physical, relational, and emotional messages that convey meaning between generations. These artifacts could include stories about important moments in the business’s history, physical landmarks, or objects that signify relational or emotional experiences.

Take, for example, a parent conveying the sadness or loss they felt at the passing of a beloved grandparent, or the strong connection they experienced working with a parent to respond to a business crisis. Sharing these experiences can create relational and emotional connections to prior generations even when next-generation members did not know these family members personally.

Many artifacts are more than one of these. A cherished family gathering place is physical, social, and emotional. The framed dollar bill on the wall of a family-owned restaurant is a physical artifact of the restaurant’s founding that also evokes stories of the grit and determination behind how that dollar was earned—and speaks to the success of the business in the present.

Allen offers guidance on how family enterprises can use artifacts to help them transmit their legacy across generations.

Make artifacts a cross-generational discussion

The first step in transmitting a company’s legacy across generations is agreeing on what that legacy is, and what parts of it are worth preserving.

But this may not be as simple as it seems. The generations involved may have different priorities. Older generations tend to value identity, moral obligation, emotional attachment, and a desire to leave something behind for their heirs, while younger generations recognize these priorities, but tend to be less concerned with the older generations’ legacy, as they are seeking their own.

Often, the process of creating a legacy happens organically, but Allen believes it works best when it’s done with intention—with both generations actively thinking about what they want their legacy to be.

Allen describes a fourth-generation, family-owned food-manufacturing company he worked with recently. The younger generation was interested in taking over the business while committing to a sustainability-focused approach to growth that prioritized supporting healthier, more accessible food, improving lives and communities, and contributing to environmental renewal and climate action.

“The fourth generation worked with the fifth generation to evolve the company’s strategy of implementing and improving sustainable business practices,” Allen says. “The fifth generation could wholeheartedly engage in the business once they could clearly see themselves—and their core values—in what the business was doing.”

The company, a physical artifact representing the hard work and diligence of the family over decades, took on new meaning as a vehicle for promoting sustainability. This emphasis on sustainability, then, became a new, emotional artifact bridging multiple generations.

“The younger generation asked what legacy the older generation wanted, and the older generation asked what’s important for you going forward,” Allen says. “Together, they adjusted how they defined legacy to accommodate both the past and the future.”

Find the emotional connection

While most firms tout their core values in slogans or catchphrases, family businesses have an added responsibility to connect emotionally with both customers and internal stakeholders.

“Saying ‘We’re all about integrity’ is fine,” says Allen, “but what the heck does that mean?” When you say, “We’re all about integrity … and here’s a story that defines integrity for our family business,” that story becomes a legacy artifact that can illustrate and inspire.”

For example, Allen recently advised a family hotel business in Latin America that was actively collecting stories that defined their values. One story was about a housekeeper who found a very valuable wedding ring when cleaning a room. The housekeeper took the ring to their manager and the owner contacted the guest to return the ring before the guest even realized it was gone.

“That story has more meaning than just telling employees that they need to act with integrity,” says Allen, “because it now is something that can be emotionally absorbed and then applied in other situations. As an employee, if I’ve heard that story, I can ask what it means for me and my job. Because it’s an actual event, it is easier to internalize it and apply it.”

Leave room for interpretation

When choosing artifacts, family enterprise leaders should try to hit a sweet spot: specific enough that they speak to family history and values, but general enough to provide a compass for employees across the firm as it evolves.

“We don’t want to use artifacts that are so specific that they hold you back, that they keep the next generation from moving forward, or become uninspiring,” Allen says.

Allen describes another company in Latin America, this one whose manufacturing facility experienced a devastating flood several decades ago, where mud reached two meters high and destroyed all of the machinery inside. Although it nearly brought the firm to ruin, the family took out loans, cleaned up the factory, and started afresh.

After the cleanup, the family retained a flood-damaged wall panel from old factory and left it unrepaired as a reminder of the company’s resilience. The flood-damaged wall, he notes, is not about how to rebuild a factory after a flood.

“Now every employee and family member that visits the factory can see the water line on the wall,” Allen says. “Even if they weren’t there in the 1960s or ‘70s, there is a physical artifact tied to the emotional artifact of the story of the company’s resilience. The story is about how they overcame adversity. That’s generalizable even if the family moves into a new area of business.”