The question
Quarrystone quarries and cuts limestone in Indiana and sells it through two distribution yards. It’s owned by three generations of one family. The chair, now 74, wanted to retire, and the family had spent two years failing to agree on what came next. Some wanted to sell, some wanted a family CEO, and a few just wanted the arguments to stop.
What we found
We interviewed all eleven family shareholders on their own, plus the management team. Three things changed the conversation.
No family member wanted the CEO role within the next five years, including the two people others assumed did. The quarries earned about 19% on the capital tied up in them, while the distribution yards earned 3%. And a regional distributor had already approached the company about buying the yards.
The one page
The page proposed hiring an outside CEO with a clear five-year brief, keeping the quarries in the family, and selling the yards. It also set out a family council that would meet twice a year, separate from the board, so family questions had somewhere to go that wasn’t the boardroom.
What happened
The board approved the plan unanimously at its next meeting, the first unanimous vote on a major decision in six years. The new CEO started eight months later. The yards were sold the following spring, and the proceeds paid down debt and funded a new cutting line at the main quarry.
We stayed for the first 30 days to write the CEO brief with the family and brief the search firm.
"Unanimous" refers to the vote of all seven board members, including the four family directors.
