The hospitality and travel concourse hadn’t anticipated going outside the family at the time Chairman Marilyn Carlson Nelson stepped down as CEO, so in that place were in no degree Plan B candidates

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Family-run businesses usually have the benefit of a clearly defined chain prepare: When Mom or Dad retires, their child assumes the top job after existence groomed for it for years. But which happens when the next-in-line clearly isn’t right for the role?

That was the dilemma faced in 2006 by the Carlson Companies, the Minnetonka (Minn.)-based operator of T.G.I. Friday’s restaurants and Radisson hotels that had been run by the Carlson family since its beginnings as the Gold Bond Stamp Co. in the 1930s. In 2006, third-generation Chief Executive Marilyn Carlson Nelson was embroiled in a dispute with her son and heir apparent, Curtis. According to Nelson, Curtis was "imminently qualified to be a contributor but for a difference of reasons shouldn’t be entrusted with the final, carry into practice role taken in the character of CEO." She removed him from his role as chief operating magistrate—effectively ending his hopes for the meridian post.

Nelson decided her follower would be someone outside of her family. But outside of any internal competition for the CEO spot in advance—after all, everyone had assumed the job was locked up—there was a dearth of obvious candidates. So through the support of Carlson’s board, Nelson hired an external firm to lead the search process, that would consider candidates both interior and outside the crew.

The foremost step was to set down a job description that established what qualities and qualifications would exist in the greatest degree important in a successor. That meant meeting separately with Carlson family members and with sitting executives to get balanced input on what competencies were most needed in the company’s next main executive. A consensus esteem emerged: Carlson needed someone with a global mentality, someone who was comfortable working in a large variety of industries.

That posed a challenge for most inner candidates, says Nelson. "We had wonderful candidates but they tended to exist from each of the silos, whether it’s the restaurant business, the hotel dealing," or other areas of operation for Carlson, such as travel and marketing. "When we interviewed them, we realized that they would need a broader exposure," she adds.

External candidates had a contrasted disadvantage: They had no experience dealing with Nelson or other family members, who would continue to exercise some amount of control throughout the peculiar meeting of friends.

After a set period, the Carlson board reached agreement on one candidate who represented a happy balance. Hubert Joly, who had step quickly the company’s Carlson Wagonlit Travel unit since 2004, also had several high-profile executive roles under his belt: at consultant McKinsey, new media specialist Vivendi Universal (VIV.PA), and at Electronic Data Systems, now a Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) subsidiary. "He had exposure to all of our brands for the cause that he sat in on our incorporated executive meetings, but he was enough removed that he brought fresh eyes, and he brought width of view of experience," says Nelson. In addition, Joly was a French burgher, which the search team felt would help the social meeting’s efforts to position itself on the global stage.

Since he assumed his new role in March, Joly has exceeded expectations, according to Nelson. "I’m grateful we went through such a professional process in articles of agreement of job description, in terms of a lot of executive thinking around the competencies [needed] with a view to the future [pullulation of the company]," she says. "The world that I came into as CEO 10 years ago is very different than the world that he’s coming into 10 years later."