« L'équilibre, il est là : entre le contrôle et le lâcher-prise. »
“The balance is there: between control and letting go.”
What deserves to be preserved is rarely the same as what once made a family successful.
This Note draws on a conversation with Sébastien Damery, eighth-generation shareholder of one of the family groups behind Peugeot and coordinator of the Family Council. It is placed in dialogue with observations from Guillermo Salazar, founder of Exaudi Family Business Consulting, Fernanda Jaramillo, Partner at Lansberg Gersick Advisors, and Liliana Carbone, G2 owner and family advisor.
216 years. Eight generations. Near the end of a one-hour conversation, Sébastien Damery said a single sentence.
« L'équilibre, il est là : entre le contrôle et le lâcher-prise. »
(The balance is there: between control and letting go.)
It was not framed as a warning or a principle. It came almost in passing, at the end of the conversation, as something he simply knew. It names, in a single phrase, the tension every long-lived system has to hold: how much to control, and how much to release.
A few weeks earlier, in a very different context, Guillermo Salazar had said something that moves the same line.
“Continuidad es que lo que tenemos siga funcionando, y esa continuidad quizás pasa porque la propiedad no esté en nuestras manos.”
(Continuity is that what we have keeps working. And that continuity may happen precisely because ownership is no longer in our hands.)
Guillermo Salazar, Founder, Exaudi Family Business Consulting
Conversations about transmission often frame the question as a choice: preserve what exists, or transform it.
These two voices, from very different systems, seem to point somewhere else. An activity, a structure, even ownership itself, can change without what gives the system its meaning disappearing along with it.
Past success is not always the best guide to the future. Ownership is not continuity. What is actually transmitted seems to reside elsewhere: in intention, in values, in the way people stay connected to what was built.
What the field makes visible is a distinction many families take years to learn: distinguishing between what once carried meaning and meaning itself.
When that distinction is missing, every change feels like betrayal. When it becomes visible, change becomes imaginable.
Sébastien names it from inside a 216-year-old industrial family. Guillermo names it from advisory work with very different systems. The same logic runs through both.
This may be where a more mature understanding of continuity begins. Not by freezing what once worked, but by learning to tell it apart from what deserves to last.
Presence
“Je ne suis finalement pas la fin de l'histoire, je ne suis pas le début de l'histoire.”
(I am, in the end, neither the end of the story nor its beginning.)
Sébastien Damery, Eighth-Generation Shareholder, Peugeot Family Enterprise
“La empresa es un reflejo de la familia.”
(The enterprise is a reflection of the family.)
Liliana Carbone, G2 Owner and Family Advisor
Presence appears when a family can orient itself more clearly within its own story. Sébastien places himself in the middle of a lineage, neither its beginning nor its end. Liliana's image of the enterprise as a reflection of the family turns the business into a mirror: it reveals what the family carries, not only what it intends. What becomes visible is not threat, but distinction: between form and meaning, position and identity, what changes and what remains.
Love
“Ce n'est pas moi, moi, moi, moi, c'est nous.”
(It's not me, me, me, me. It's us.)
Sébastien Damery, Eighth-Generation Shareholder, Peugeot Family Enterprise
“Si tienes claros los valores, el propósito y la visión, todo lo demás es cambiable.”
(If your values, purpose and vision are clear, everything else can change.)
Fernanda Jaramillo, Partner at Lansberg Gersick Advisors
Love appears when connection does not depend on keeping the same form. What travels across generations is not one business activity, but a shared clarity about what matters and a “we” that outlives any single person's turn to carry it. Fidelity begins to mean not repetition, but transmitting what deserves to last.
Safety
“La capacidad de desprenderse de algo que fue exitoso es fundamental.”
(The ability to let go of something that was successful is fundamental.)
Fernanda Jaramillo, Partner at Lansberg Gersick Advisors
Safety appears when a family knows what will not be lost. That inner stability makes room for what needs to change to actually change. The system no longer has to protect every form it has taken; it can protect what matters most. Movement becomes possible, without losing connection.
Before deciding what needs to change, do we really know what we are trying to preserve?
About the Observatory
The PAS Family Enterprise Observatory explores the human dynamics that enable or prevent continuity across generations in family enterprise systems. Through conversations with owners, advisors, NextGen members and researchers, the Observatory investigates the human capacities and relational dynamics that governance structures alone cannot fully address.
What human dynamics enable or prevent continuity across generations in family enterprises?
Natalia Cacciari Garavito