Family Business Flashback

Last week I was called upon to do the “good son” thing, and I obliged and brought my mother 6 hours down highway 401 for the funeral of her eldest brother. Meeting up with many cousins that I have lost touch with stirred up long forgotten memories.

The reflections that events bring about are only useful if we take the time to process them, and so thank you for accompanying me on this journey. I will try my best to make this entertaining and educational for you as well, as usual.

The flashback begins in the late 1970’s, when, as a teenager, I began my first summer job, working in the plant of the steel fabrication business that my father founded before I was born. The funeral that I attended last week was for the plant manager, uncle Stu.

My immdediate supervisor that summer was my cousin Mark, from my Dad’s side, and his boss, the plant manager, was my mother’s brother Uncle Stu.

Uncle Stu had initially been a partner with my Dad in the business, but somewhere along the way, during the early days and the struggle to attain profitability, Dad ended up buying out both of his partners.

I was still a kid while this was unfolding, so the details of how things went down are not clear to me, but I can tell you that, decades later, the relationship between these brothers-in-law was never the same.

My mother is a saint to me, and to learn that she was not 100% sold on making the trip to her brother’s funeral says a lot about how their relationship was strained. Going into business with family members can have its drawbacks, especially in the family harmony department.

So during this first week as a teenager in the plant, I soon realized that everyone knew who I was, because my Dad was the big boss. Uncle Stu would walk through the shop at least twice each day, and clearly everyone knew who he was too. His slow, determined gait, coupled with his menacing gaze, were hard to ignore.

Not that Dad’s trips through the plant were easy to miss, but the contrast, in retrospect, was huge. Dad’s pace and style was more “bull in a China shop”, but he was also more likely to stop and talk to someone after catching them doing something right. Of course you never knew if you were getting a compliment or catching hell until he was done.

So here I am, 15 years old, running this huge drill machine, with a whole 5 minutes of training. Everyone knows who I am, I know my cousin Mark and nobody else, except everyone’s bosses, my Uncle Stu and my Dad, who come through every once in a while.

Some seemingly random guy with a beard, a few years older than me (I had just started shaving) stops by to chat with me. I realize a few days later that the guy was my cousin, Uncle Stu’s son, Fred, who I had never seen with a beard until then.

So all these thoughts are going through my head during the funeral, while Fred is eulogizing his Dad, and I am sitting next to Uncle Stu’s youngest sister, my Mom, who is surely reflecting on their shared and complex past.

But the biggest flashback was still to come, after the ceremony, when guests were invited to share a bite to eat and continue sharing memories. Mom had another brother and a sister, both of whom have passed on, who owned neighbouring cottages on a lake, where we often visited them during the summers of my childhood.

Jim, a decade or so older than me, who had married one of my cousins, reminded me that as a youngster, I had confided in him at the cottage by the lake, that “I don’t wanna do what my Dad does”.

I do not remember sharing that thought with him, or anyone else for that matter. But I do remember thinking it, many, many times.

Family business. Plenty of drama for the whole family.

Rest in peace Uncle Stu.

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 Does Father REALLY Know Best?

The expression “Father knows best” probably came before the TV show of the same name. But I could be wrong. I always thought that Yogi Berra was a nickname based on the cartoon character, but now I am pretty sure it was the other way around.

The subject of fatherly advice came to me this week as I listened to a presentation by a guest speaker, a well-known wine maker, at a Toronto client dinner hosted by JC Clark Investments.

I was invited to the dinner by the good folks at JC Clark as their guest despite not yet being a client of theirs. Not only that, I was lucky enough to be seated next to the speaker during dinner, and learned a good deal about the art and science of vinification.

Our speaker talked at length about the way he got where he is today, which was by no means a straight line, and how many times he relied on the same pieces of advice that he had received from his father.

His Dad had counselled him to always learn from the best, and to never be afraid to ask for help. He related a handful of occasions when these principles helped him make key advances in his career.

This also had me flash back to a time about a decade ago, when I was watching the stock market on a daily basis, and therefore also reading publications directed at investors like myself.

My favourite read was Richard Russell’s Dow Theory Letters. He was already well into his 80’s when I discovered him, and I can’t tell you how often he related the story about how he got started in finance.

His father, he repeated often, told him to go work for the banks. When he asked “why?” his Dad replied, “Because that’s where the money is”. This man then spent over 6 decades of his career based on some early key fatherly advice.

These days I have been putting some of my father’s advice into practice, and interestingly enough, there are some similarities with his words of wisdom and those of the speaker’s dad.

I recall when we went from being a steel fabricator that sent almost all of its finished products out to others to be hot-dip glavanized, to Dad’s ambitious move to design and build our own in-house galvanizing facility.

Steel fabrication is something he knew well, having apprenticed in that in Austria as a teenager. But setting up a plant around a huge tank to melt zinc (to over 800 degrees) to then dip the finished pieces of steel into a bath of liquid zinc was quite another endeavour.

One of his first moves was to join the American Hot Dip Galvanizers Association, an organization that connected him to many experts who knew the field much better than him, and he in turn learned from some of the best.

This idea of collaborating, getting help from others and in turn sharing knowledge with a larger group was something that came naturally to him.

I have followed that path myself over recent years. Just because I had worked in my own family’s business, did that automatically make me qualified to consult to other families in business? Some people do just that, but for me it was not nearly enough.

I have joined the Family Firm Institute, the Purposeful Planning Institute, the Canadian Association of Family Enterprise, and of course the Institute of Family Enterprise Advisors. In addition, I have taken courses in conflict resolution, coaching, and Bowen family systems theory.

Dad’s advice has been serving me well recently.

You may not have noticed that the men in the stories above were all following their fathers’ advice in situations where Dad had nothing personal to gain from their sons’ actions.

Unfortunately, in business families, there are still too many occasions where Dads (and Moms) give their children advice, but in many ways that advice is self-serving.

“Go find something you love to do” and “come and work for me, you will love it” may sound similar to the person speaking, but to the listener there is a huge difference.

Yes, huge.

 

 

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Tell it to the Judge (Part 2 of 2)

Last week my intention was to write a single blog about this subject, but then things didn’t go as planned, because there was just too much “stuff” I needed to cover to do the topic justice.

So I cut things off at a point where I was hitting my self-imposed word limit (around 700) and figured that sleeping on the subject for another 6 days would truly inspire me to wrap things up in a fantastic crescendo finish. We shall see.

At the end of part 1, Tell it to the Judge (Part 1 of 2) we had begun to look at how parents are judged.

My argument was that the only people who are truly in a position to judge the parenting abilities of anyone, are their “subjects”, i.e. the children that they raised.

In the same way that my sisters and I are the best possible judges of the parenting abilities of our mother and father, my parenting abilities can only really be properly judge by my children

Assuming you buy into my argument (thanks!), let’s look at some of the issues this also brings up. The first one is the timing. When are they actually in a position to judge?

An infant will judge Mommy and Daddy by how quickly they change a soiled diaper or give them a bottle when they are hungry. Many years later in life, they may judge their parents by what has been left to them in the parents’ last will and testament.

That potentially leaves a LOT of time in between, and there are many points where their opinions of their parents can and will change.

Many people agree that the teenage years are the most challenging for parents, and so asking teens to judge and evaluate their parents could lead to some interesting responses.

A lot of adults will look back at the time when they were teens as a period when they did not appreciate their parents enough. It takes a certain amount of maturity to fully get the fact that discipline imposed by parents pays off in the long run.

By the time you hit the point where you realize that you need to worry more about your parents than they do about you, you are certainly mature enough to judge the job that they did raising you.

So what is this fascination that I have with judgement of parents all about? Allow me to try to sum it up. I believe that the “job” of parents is to take parenting seriously, and to make rasing their children a top priority in their lives.

As an advisor to business families, I get to meet with many people who have made running and growing their business a higher priority than parenting. I also believe that many of the people who have put business above family will eventually regret it.

The book I wrote in 2014, SHIFT your Family Business, had this as its secondary title: “Stop working IN your family business, Start working ON your business family. It is kind of my “go to” message.

The good news is that it is never too late to make that shift. But it does require courage. Running a business also takes courage, but sometimes it is easier to be courageous in the cutthroat world of business than amongst your family.

I don’t know why that is, but I just feel like I see it too often for it not to be true.

It also takes courage to ask your children to give you feedback on your parenting. I know that most parents will never ask their kids this type of question, and I suppose some people would call me crazy for even suggesting it.

I like to think that I am doing a good job as a parent, but if I never ask my kids what they think, how will I know?

Why should I care? Because I take my job as a parent seriously. And their feedback can help me do it better. But do I have the courage to ask them? Stay tuned to this space for the answer.

 

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Tell it to the Judge (Part 1 of 2)

Lately the subject of “judging” has been recurring in my life and thoughts, and therefore also in my blogs. Since there are so many ways to look at judges and judgement, my view is that discussion of this subject will always be worthwhile.

Three weeks ago, we looked at being “judicious” versus being “judgemental” in the blog Judgement, Not Judgement. A couple of weeks prior, I related the wonderful experience of serving as a judge in the Family Enterprise Case Competition, in Vermont, a Global Hub? What the FECC?

There will also be an upcoming blog about a court case, featuring a real judge. I actually went and sat in the courtroom at a murder trial for a day, a few months ago. It was a case of patricide that made national headlines, and I am looking forward to sharing that experience with readers.

This week’s post is about who gets to judge, and in what context. Pope Francis, before getting involved in the US Presidential campaign, was becoming known for saying the phrase “Who am I to judge?” when asked about various people in various circumstances.

Some people were not happy with this seeming abdication of the “responsibility” to pass judgement on what is right and what is wrong, but I think that he may be on to something.

So if even someone as high up the totem pole as the Pope is able to withhold judgement, who does get to judge?

As is so often the case, it is all about the context. One of my favourite mantras is “Give me context”. This is where our friends the economists would substitute, “It depends”.

So let’s leave behind the warm and fuzzy “listen without judgement”, “who am I to judge”, and “stop being so judgemental” and move to what is ultimately THE context that I take closest to heart, that of a business family.

In Parenting and Family Business Leadership, we looked at how people play the dual roles of business leader and parent. Today I want to extend that concept to how these separate roles are judged as being fulfilled successfully or not.

The easier place to begin is with the business. It seems pretty simple to judge the performance of a business, because there are a multitude of quantitative factors that everyone and anyone can easily see.

Is the business profitable, is it growing, are its customers satisfied? How many people does it employ, how many locations does it have, how many countries do they do business in. The list is literally endless.

So it is relatively easy to judge a business, but does that mean it is just as easy to judge the business leader? I think not. Now it can get trickier, because when you want to look at the personal leadership qualities of the person leading the business, the things that people consider become much more qualitative in nature.

Let’s jump over to the family side before we run out of racetrack. The dual roles of business leader and parent are difficult to balance, most people will agree with that.

But how do we judge the role of the parent? As a parent, when I observe other parents dealing with their children, it is sometimes hard NOT to judge them, at least internally, and compare how they handle a situation with how we would have done so.

Ultimately, the best judges of anyone’s parenting abilities are their children.

That is the biggest, deepest thought that has struck me recently, and I haven’t seen it, read it, or heard it anywhere.

If, and it is a big “if”, parenting is something that you wish to do well, the only true judges that matter in your evaluation are your own children. Their judgement is the only one that can ever matter.

Of course this now gets us into so many other questions, especially around the timing and methods of getting their evaluation and judgement of us, their parents.

We will pick this up again next week. Meanwhile, hug your kids and try to stay on their good side.

 

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Brainstorming your Family Legacy

The word “legacy” can conjure up a variety of thoughts and opinions, because everyone has their own take on what it is, as well as what it should be.  When you add “family” to it, and raise the subject of “family legacy”, there is even more disparity in the responses evoked.

I recently took part in a training program at the Canadian Institute for Conflict Resolution, during which we took turns leading a group brainstorming exercise. Given free reign to use the subject of our choice, I decided to pose the question “what is family legacy?” to see what I might learn from my small group.

As someone who thinks about (and talks about) this subject on a regular basis, I thought it would be interesting to hear what a group of strangers, most of whom did not come from a business family, might have to offer on the topic.

They were all between 25 and 55, most worked for the government (this was in Ottawa), and I am reasonably certain that none of them came from what one might term a “legacy family”.

The exercise was a success, insofar as I filled up five sheets of flipcharts and stuck them to the wall, with around 40 different words that came up from the group.

When brainstorming, one of the main rules is that there is no debating what is a good or bad suggestion, it’s just an open “brain dump” where what one person blurts out will hopefully tweak something in the brain of another, and spur even more ideas.

Some of the expected and positive words that came out were:

–         Traditions; Reputation; Loyalty

–         Money; Memories; Trust

–         Supportive; Caring; Community

Of course there were also some negative ideas that surfaced, such as:

–         Dysfunction; Limiting; Stressful

–         Gossip; Meddling; Conflicts

–         Secrets; Façades; Bullshit

A brainstorming exercise is normally just the first step in a longer facilitated process, designed to get people working together, overcome inertia, and put a bunch of the pieces of the puzzle on the table to get going.

The real work comes next, when you take the ideas gathered and start organizing them, debating their merits, and figuring out what you are going to do with that information.

Working with a real family, the follow up question, “what is OUR family legacy?” would have been an obvious next step.

There is a big difference between personal legacy and family legacy, but when the founder of a business family is still around, a large portion of the family legacy naturally comes directly from that person.

In order to create a true family legacy, the key is to start when the founder can still contribute, and in fact OWN the process.

The family needs to capture the major values, traits, and principles of that person and then figure out how to make sure that they are preserved and transferred down to the following generations. If this is done correctly at this point, the succeeding generations will then have the task of maintaining the legacy that has been established.

Of course none of this just happens all by itself.  Someone needs to care enough to first stop and think about it, talk about it, figure out what needs to be done, decide who needs to be involved, and get things moving forward.

In the long run, the family must also figure out how they are going to make decisions together, how they are going to communicate, and how they are going to solve problems together. All of this generally falls under the heading of “family governance”.

If you are the founder, what you do before you go is really all you can do. Once you are gone, it will all be in the hands of others. If you want to leave a family legacy, building the financial assets is just the first part, and some say the easier part.

Keeping the family together after you are gone, wow, that’s the tough part.  It can be done, but like I said above, it won’t happen all by itself.

Essentially, you need to stop working in your family business, and start working on your business family.  Intrigued?  Check out: www.ShiftYourFamilyBusiness.com. It is my #1 book recommendation.  I also like the website.

Need help getting started?  sl@stevelegler.com

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Né pour un moyen pain?

Il existe une expression québécoise, “né pour un petit pain”, qui est assez bien connue, je crois. Mais peut-être que je me trompe.

C’est peut-être tout simplement parce que je me retrouve souvent dans des discussions entourant l’argent et les façons dont les familles le traitent, que je l’entends plus souvent que d’autres.

Ce que je peux vous dire c’est que l’attitude québécoise envers l’argent est effectivement distincte de celle qu’on voit ailleurs au Canada et aux États-Unis.

Venir d’une famille anglophone (mais quand même assez à l’aise en français) me donne une perspective différente que je remarque assez souvent, et que j’aime partager de temps en temps.

J’écris une grande majorité de mes blogues en anglais, puisque je considère que mon marché est “nord-américain”, et parce que je m’exprime beaucoup plus facilement en anglais.

Je suis un gars du West Island, marié à une femme de l’Abitibi, donc nos deux ados sont assez biculturels, en plus d’être bilingues.

Quand je décide d’écrire un blogue en français, c’est souvent quand je veux traiter un sujet entourant notre réalité québécoise, et qui intéressera moins mes lecteurs anglophones.

Cette semaine, j’ai lu un article dans l’Actualité sur Mitch Garber (Mitch Garber: le «dragon» mordu de Montréal) que j’ai trouvé assez intéressant.

Il mentionne que les québécois n’aiment pas parler d’argent, mais que lui, il aime en parler. Il disait aussi qu’il voyait cela un peu comme son devoir, d’habituer le monde d’en parler, puisqu’on en parle ailleurs.

Je suis d’accord avec lui, et je trouve son attitude rafraichissante. Cet automne, il co-présidera la campagne annuelle de Centraide, et son but est de motiver les plus fortunés à augmenter leurs dons et de promouvoir la philanthropie, en général, au Québec.

Voilà une autre partie de notre société distincte en ce qui concerne l’argent.

Les familles fortunées se lancent de plus en plus dans des activités philanthropiques depuis un certain temps, surtout aux États-Unis. Au Canada, ça commence aussi à se développer. Au Québec, il semble qu’on tire encore de l’arrière.

Les entrepreneurs québécois sont souvent moins intéressés par l’idée de transmettre leur entreprise à leurs enfants, et ceux qui vendent leur compagnie, ne sont pas aussi aptes à créer un bureau de patrimoine familial (family office) pour assurer la continuité de leur richesse.

Je ne suis pas en train de dire que ce qui se fait chez nous est inférieur à ce qu’on voit ailleurs, mais en parlant avec des familles d’ici et d’ailleurs, il y a beaucoup de différences, et ce n’est pas seulement la langue qui change.

Nous pouvons apprendre beaucoup en regardant ce qui se fait dans les autres régions et pays. Au bout de la ligne, chaque famille prendra les décisions que ses membres jugent appropriées.

Éventuellement, avec la mondialisation, les réseaux sociaux, l’immigration, les familles biculturelles, ainsi de suite, des changements viendront, et les différences entre ce qui se fait ici et ailleurs devraient diminuer.

En terminant, j’aimerais clarifier le titre de ce blogue. J’ai choisi “Né pour un moyen pain?” parce que les changements qui viendront ne se feront assurément pas très vite, et nous n’irons pas d’un “petit pain” à un “gros pain” si vite que ça.

Ça pourrait même s’échelonner sur plusieurs générations. Mais pourquoi ne pas commencer avec la vôtre?

 

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Judgement, Not Judgement

Writing a blog post every week forces me to constantly be on the lookout for interesting subject matter, so whenever I notice an interesting choice of words, my first thought is usually “how can I turn this into a good blog?”

Such was the case this past week, which I spent in Ottawa, partaking in the first of the four courses in the Third Party Neutral (TPN) training program, given by the Canadian Institute for Conflict Resolution (CICR).

Because I often deal with various members of a business family, to help them get through some of the sticky issues that they face together, remaining neutral is a huge plus. Even the perception that I am taking sides can quickly work against me.

When a family brings someone in from the outside to help them, it is the outsider’s objectivity that is usually cited as one of the biggest resources that they bring to the table. Unbiased, neutral voices are often not present when everyone who is involved has a lot at stake.

The interesting word choice that piqued my curiosity was taken from a list of the Principles of the Third Party Neutral process, principle 7 (of 9): Judgement, Not Judgement.

My first thought was about spelling, but this couldn’t be about whether we went with “judgement”, with the E, or “judgment”, without.

Dsimissing that, my mind quickly went to work to try to figure out what this was supposed to mean, and it soon became pretty clear, despite the ironic juxtaposition.

I like to think that I have good judgement, but then again, most of us self-identify that way, in the same way that studies show that a large majority of people consider themselves to be better than average drivers.

The first use of the word “judgement” in the TPN Guidelines was clearly a reference to this version of judgement, i.e. using your judgement, thinking before acting, giving things proper consideration before deciding, that kind of stuff.

The second “judgement”, the one that follows “Not”, is the bad kind. Whereas the first one, the good one, the one you are supposed to have and use, makes you think of the quality of being “judicious”, the second one is all about being “judgemental”

While doing my CTI coaching courses a few years back, one of the first things we learned was the importance of listening. We talked about “active listening” and “level 3 listening”, but the biggest take-home message for me was that we needed to master the ability to “Listen without judgement”.

Let’s look at some definitions I found online for “judicious” versus “judgemental”.

Judicious: having, showing, or done with good judgment or sense

Judgemental: having or displaying an excessively critical point of view.

Most business founders who have been successful in building a company have been blessed with the quality of being very judicious.

Unfortunately, sometimes the success that they have achieved leads them to believe that they are also blessed with the gift of knowing what is best for others, and some become judgemental as well.

They don’t necessarily go around and tell everyone what they should be doing. They don’t have time to do that with everyone, so they concentrate on those close to them. You know, the ones that they love; their family.

Therein lies one of the reasons that the founder of the family business is not often the one who sees the need to bring in an objective third party.

You may think that this comment from me comes off as judgemental of business founders, and I would not likely successfully refute that argument.

Being neutral is hard work, especially for humans. The TPN program is all about being the custodian of a Neutral Process, lead by a human who has been trained in guiding that process.

The best way for me to be of service to these families is to check my biases at the door, and I am constantly working on the skills required to do that.

In the coming months I will be doing the TPN 2, 3, and 4 training, and I will be sharing more about this subject going forward.

Questions, comments? sl@stevelegler.com

 

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Stop doing “This” before starting “That”

When I start to run across different versions of the same message in different places, I know that I have come up with a compelling blog topic. I will share a few examples of what has me currently thinking about this, before attempting to frame the subject along family business lines.

A while back, I heard someone explaining that before you can “fill up” with some good, new stuff (for example: habits, ideas, positive energy…), you first need to “empty out” some bad, old stuff, in order to make space, otherwise the new, desired things, would not have room. There may have been a visual analogy involving a pitcher of water.

This idea seems inherently logical to me, but maybe more so now that I am on the other side of 50, with graying hair, and hopefully some well-earned wisdom. The younger me was more inclined to always believe that “more is better”.

It also reminded me of something I was exposed to a couple of years ago while undergoing some professional and personal development, in a couple of coaching programs.

During one of the 3-Day CTI coaching courses, there was an exercise during which we needed to come up with one thing that we were committing to “Say No” to, and another that we were committing to “Say Yes” to.

The idea of stopping one habit and then replacing it with another is not new by any means, but here was another way of expressing it.

Months later, I took a coaching certification program, in team sports coaching, more specifically junior curling, during which participants were once again asked, “what do you need to STOP doing” and “what do you need to START doing” when coaching your team.

These three examples share more similarities than differences, and while they are not “truisms”, since you can certainly come up with exceptions to them, they do offer some useful ideas, assuming that your life is not already perfect, and that there is some room for improvement, somewhere.

Let’s think of some family business situations where this could apply.

The simplest place for me to begin is by glancing at my bookshelf, where there are several copies of the book SHIFT your Family Business. The secondary title of the book is “Stop working IN your family Business, Start working ON your business Family”.

It is my favourite book, because I wrote it, and I used to explain that the secondary title brings into focus two distinct questions: 1, the working “IN” your business versus working “ON” it, along with 2, the old “Family Business” versus “Business Family” question, asking which of the two entities is more important.

But by writing this blog, I just discovered that there is indeed a third element highlighted, that of “stopping” one activity so that you can begin “starting” another.

I always try to appreciate serendipity when it smacks me in the face like this, even though part of me wonders why this never registered with me before. Seems the “stop this” before “starting that” idea has been with me longer than I realized.

Allow me to suggest a few areas where some business families that I have known and worked with might look to apply this lesson:

  • Stop demanding that other family members change; Start making positive changes yourself, to model the desired behaviour.
  • Stop blaming others for things that have happened in the past; Start leading a collaborative positive effort to make things better in the future.
  • Stop doing all of the work yourself while lamenting the lack of qualified help; Start training and delegating to the people below you.
  • Stop assuming that you understand everyone else’s viewpoint; Start asking for their views (and then LISTEN to what they say)
  • Stop doing the same things over and over while expecting a different result; Start looking at things from “outside the box”, by finally having some of the conversations that you have been avoiding. (You KNOW what they are).

Most of these are very simple concepts, but that doesn’t make them easy to do. Feel free to share your feedback or questions with me at sl@stevelegler.com.

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Vermont, a Global Hub? What the FECC?

Burlington Vermont is not a place most people think about when globalization is the subject. But once a year, that all changes, and people involved in Family Business congregate there in January for a one-of-a-kind experience.

The Global Family Enterprise Case Competition (FECC) just wrapped up this weekend, and the fourth annual edition was better than ever. The folks at the Grossman School of Business at the University of Vermont can truly call their event “Global”.

I had the privilege of serving on the judging committee at this competition for the third year in a row, and as always, it was an enriching experience. So how global is it?

Well on Thursday I served on a panel with another Montrealer, but he happens to hail from Mexico (as did a couple of the Undergraduate teams participating). That same panel featured a woman from Switzerland, who was born in Czechoslovakia (which is now 2 countries!)

There were 24 student teams competing, with 16 in the Undergraduate section and 8 in the Graduate portion, and these teams hailed from 10 different countries, but if that weren’t enough, the students themselves came from even more diverse geographic and cultural backgrounds.

I don’t have vital stats for all of the participants, but from just the eight teams that I saw, here are a few examples:

A team from Sweden featured at least 2 competitors who were German, which they clearly used to their advantage on the case of the Juchheim company, which, suprisingly (or not) was about a Japanese family enterprise.

Another team, from Texas, featured students with both Latin American and Asian roots, and a team from Spain featured one presenter with a Middle Eastern background.

I could go on, but I think that I have already given you a flavour of what the event is like, and I have probably already used some terms that will have offended some people who are more politically correct than me.

So what is it that makes Family Enterprise such a great field for a global competition? That’s an easy one.

The languages and the culture change from country to country, but the prevalence of family business is pretty well widespread around the world. And not only that, what parents want and hope for when they go into business with their family members is not very different from one location to another.

Furthermore, the issues that come up in family enterprise situations that you can find in one country will invariably show up in just about every other country too.

The good news here is that you can learn a lot about the big issues and how you may want to handle them simply by studying what has gone on elsewhere. You know, learn from other people’s mistakes.

The field of family business as a discipline, to be studied, researched, and taught in schools is still relatively new. The related field of family business advising is also still considered pretty new.

What this means is that the families who are eager to get involved with examining their own situations by opening their eyes and themselves up to what is going on with other families, are still part of what one would term the “early adopters”.

Family Business is not yet seen as “mainstream”, and is not taught as a separate discipline in very many business schools yet.

Likewise, many people like me who call ourselves Family Business Advisors are still looked at as a little bit odd (OK, I confess, you got me there) and we are sometimes met with questions like, “Is that a thing?” when we describe ourselves as such.

Things are changing, slowly but surely, in the right direction. If you have any interest in the field of Family Enterprise education, I invite you to check out the FECC at UVM and get involved in next year’s 5th annual edition. I know that I am already planning a return trip.

 

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Parenting & Family Business Leadership

Many people throughout history have worn both the “family-business-leader” hat and the “parent” hat simultaneously.

A certain percentage of them have excelled in both roles, some have been much better at one than the other, and still others never really mastered either.

Of course there are plenty of areas where the things one does in one area will undoubtedly have an effect on the other, because it is virtually impossible to separate the roles completely.

And just as I noted above, where some people excel at both, others at neither, and many at one at the expense of the other, the same can be said about certain actions that one takes while playing these roles.

There are many trade-offs where it seems clear that working late and missing your kid’s soccer game is a plus for the business and a minus for the family, or the reverse is true if you leave early to make it to the game but don’t finish that important order.

I like to think that the best thing that I can do as a family business advisor is to point out the situations that are in fact a lose/lose, and help families avoid them, and also point out the possible win/win situations, and help families exploit those.

It sounds simple when put that way, but simple and easy are NOT synonyms.

Interestingly, the two examples of the lose/lose variety that arise most often are opposite sides of the same coin, and they have to do with how we treat our kids and value their input.

On the one hand, there are lots of examples of parents who spoil their children with easy, high-paying jobs, with low expectations of performance. This is not great business leadership, nor is it great parenting.

The other side of that coin also occurs rather frequently, and it looks like this: The kids work really hard, are underpaid, are ready to take over the business, but they are never given the reins, because the parents are not ready to let go. Once again, the business suffers, and so does the family.

It all comes down to finding the correct balance, just like Goldilocks. We don’t want the porridge that is too hot because it will burn our tongue, and the cold porridge is just, well, yucky.

So what is the secret to finding that balance? Part of it is simply recognizing that you are playing both the role of the parent and of the family business leader. But that clearly isn’t enough, because as we just saw, you can actually screw up on both simultaneously.

Besides recognizing that you are playing two roles, it is important to think about your perspective, and to compare and contrast that perspective in two major ways.

First, look at the way you are acting in the two roles from a TIME perspective, and think back to when you were the age that your children are at now, and how you were treated and would have wanted to be treated.

Then look ahead to when your children will be at the age you are at now, and consider your relationship with your parents. If that is too extreme, think back ten years, and then ten years ahead.

After doing the time perspective exercise, simply take a moment to reflect on how you see things, and imagine how the other family members see things from their point of view, today. I will guarantee that if you ask them if they see things the same way that you do, you will be in for at least one or two surprises.

The key word in that last sentence is “if”, as in “if you ask them”. In my experience, few family business leaders will actually take the time to ask their children how they see things.

Yes, I know that you are the one running the show, and all your hard work is what got you here. Congratulations.

But do you have the courage to ask your children how they see things? You may be surprised with what you learn.

 

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