Putting Two Leaders in Place Can a company succeed with two captains? For many family businesses, the answer is yes.

Tne family business; two capable adult children in it. What's a parent to do when the time comes to retire?

That was the problem Marshall Paisner grappled with a few years ago when he thought about succession planning for ScrubaDub, a Boston auto wash chain he started in 1966. "Choosing one child over another is certain to hurt the one who has been passed over," he said to himself and others. "And they're both good at their jobs." Furthermore, he knew his sons, Bob and Dan, would ultimately have to live with the decision.

So he turned the problem over to them. "I told them they had a year to come to a decision they could live with on how to structure the company when I was no longer actively participating," Paisner says. "They had a sum of money to draw on if they needed outside counsel to help them."