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Flex Your Flexibility

As we age, it is widely accepted that we lose a lot of our flexibility, especially when we look at our physical selves. Stretching is far more important for older folks than it is for kids, and there are good reasons why yoga and pilates are so popular with the grey-haired crowd.

But the kind of flexibility that I want to talk about today has little to do with our physical being, and everything to do with an attitude towards things that happen on a regular basis in our lives. I have not seen a lot written on this subject, so I wanted to throw some of my ideas out there.

Let me start with where this flexibility kick began for me, last year, as I was forming the idea behind my first book, on which I continue to work (update: manuscript just back from its first edit, working on a few modifications). The title of the book is SHIFT your Family Business, and the letters in “shift” are capitalized because they each stand for one of the five steps in my “call to action”.

If you are playing along at home, you have likely already guessed that the F stands for Flexibility.

The goal of the book is to get business families to begin to concentrate more on the family side of things, and slightly less on the business side. After getting Started, finding Help, and Investing time, we come to the chapter about staying Flexible, and in many ways this is the key to success. But some people find it difficult.

Many heads of family businesses attribute a lot of their success to their vision and hard work to achieve that vision, and flexibility is sometimes anathema to them.

But when it comes time to start to plan how you want to set things up for the future of the company and the family, these people will almost surely need to adopt some flexibility to assure a continuity plan that everyone can and will buy into.

The person who has always had it in their head that a certain child will certainly be ready, willing, and able to take over from him, may just end up discovering that that child is not interested, is not competent, is not liked by key non-family employees, or is not able to get their siblings to agree with them.

The family that believes they have it all figured out needs to be ready to adapt when someone unexpectedly get sick or has an accident, and it becomes clear that it is shifting gears and rolling with the punches are important for survival.

I believe that many family business leaders are actually more flexible than they realize in the way that they operate their businesses. What I think many of them could use help with, is to be more flexible in how they look after the family side of things.

The key skill that they usually need to brush up on is communication, which is actually a two-way street. Often when you are at the top, you become accustomed to doing a lot of talking and very little listening, and it is in the listening that you learn.

When you are able to listen, while holding off the need to judge, you can really learn a lot, and some of what you learn may not fit with your preconceived views. This is where the flexibility comes in.

When guiding a family business, and a business family, it is often tempting to try to just lead and expect everyone to follow. But if you adopt a more flexible attitude and truly listen to your key people, you will have more success when it comes time to hand the reins over to the next generation. Things rarely work out exactly as you expect them to.

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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Oh Brother! Siblings in the Family Business

Many of the family issues that business families face come from the relationships between different generations. After a certain number of years, the eventual changes that will be required to move the business from one generation of leadership to the next, just become inevitable.

But in some families, where siblings work together, the intra-generational issues come to the forefront, and become the focal point for long periods of time. When you think about it, two family members from different generations might work together for two or three decades, but two siblings may be working together for four or five.

I thought about this subject this week, when I had lunch with two brothers, who have been working together for as long as I have known them, and that’s about 25 years. I will call them Jack and Ron, and they run a family business unlike any other that I know.

I am not talking about the industry that they are in, but the way their business seems like a true family business, in the way the two brothers have made the company their life’s work, and the way they complement each other in terms of skill sets.

The other thing that sets them apart is the fact that neither of them has any children, so there is no succeeding generation. They started this business without any direct help from their parents, have run it togther for some forty years, but there are no obvious heirs to whom they can pass their assets.

I don’t know any other single-generation sibling partnerships, but these two brothers work really well together, have amassed a number of assets by watching every dollar they spend, and finding great value in a variety of places.

They have numerous real estate holdings all over the city, and they can tell you stories about deadbeat tenants for hours on end.

Jack is five years older than Ron, but I had to ask them who was the older brother. Ron is more of a tinkerer, fixing machines and seemingly making something out of nothing, while Jack is the legal expert, and knows his way around the legal system better than most lawyers. I guess that when you have tenants who don’t pay their rent, you end up learning about the legal system pretty quickly.

But this blog is about family business, and I have known these guys for quite a while, and I felt compelled to write about them because even though they are not your run-of-the-mill multi-generational company, they do exhibit something that I find truly inspiring when I watch them work together.

Their parents were always very important to them, even though they were not involved in the business. And their parents clearly did a great job in instilling the right attitude in their sons.

There does not seem to be any jealousy between Jack and Ron, any ill will or desire to seem superior in any way. They work together the way any parent would be proud to see their children work together. Maybe if they had children following in their footsteps it would be different.

They have their own challenges due to their situation, though. With no heirs, it will probably be a charitable foundation that ends up owning most of the assets down the road, but that needs to be set up, and many decisions and steps need to be taken to make sure that happens, and will be handled the way they want.

I have no doubt that they will make all their decisions together, without much fuss, since they have been getting along so well together for as long as I have known them.

Getting along with your family, and those that you work with, is pretty much one of the keys to happiness, isn’t it? Too many business families seem to forget this.

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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ADR: Alternative to What?

Working with business families, there are always areas that are ripe for potential conflicts. I know that I have certain traits that lend themselves well to diplomacy, but I had never attended even a single course that was aimed specifically at dispute resolution.

For over a year, I have wanted to fill this void, and during the past couple of weeks, I have immersed myself into the area quite deeply, taking 2 courses, or workshops, each lasting 4 days.

The courses that I took were given by the Stitt-Feld-Handy-Group, out of Toronto. Due to the scheduling and the timing, I enrolled in their workshops in Ottawa, where I took both their ADR Workshop and their Advanced ADR Workshop.

Before leaving for the course, I decided to tell my kids that I would be attending a course on Alternative Dispute Resolution, hoping that they would ask the question, “Alternative to what?” because when I first heard that term years ago, that was my first question. Unfortunately, they did not seem to care enough to ask, and did not even seem thrilled when I answered the question for them.

Of course the expression evolved from the desire to find a way to avoid going to court, so ADR came about as an altenative to the long and costly way of solving disputes through traditional legal channels.

In the realm of family business, the disputes that do make it to the courts are relatively rare, but they do make for great stories, albeit almost always very sad ones, that most families would want to avoid. My grandfather apparently used to say that the worst negotiated solution is better than the best court judgment.

When I say “apparently”, that is because I never really heard these words from him, but I cannot tell you how often my father passed this wisdom on to me. I, in turn, try to pass as much wisdom down to my kids, and I like to think some of it is getting through, even if they often seem disinterested.

One thing that I have learned so far is that ADR is often just an acronym that means mediation in one form or another. The first course started with lots of negotiation exercises, because, as was pointed out to us, a mediation most often is nothing more than a facilitated negotiation.

I thought that was pretty cool, because I love negotiation, and I like to believe that I have some facilitation skills. In fact, towards the end of the second workshop, the exercises became much more than one-on-one plus a mediator, but instead involved co-mediators and multi-party scenarios.

In most family scenarios, coming in as an outsider, the skills that an advisor needs to rely on are facilitation, coaching, and mediation. Facilitation is mostly about running meetings, improving communication, and concentrating on relationships. Coaching is more of a “one-on-one” process, helping people find new perspectives and ways to contribute to the whole. Mediation is not always required, especially where there is no presenting conflict issue, but the skills of mediation are certainly helpful in many large family situations.

What the workshops made me think about also, was that many families do not give enough thought to this related question: “What is the alternative to NOT resolving the dispute?” If there is a dispute, is it better to just let it fester, in the hopes it will go away, or should you at least try to resolve the issue?

Avoiding conflict is not always the best solution, even when it feels like the most obvious and the easiest.

But when looking at the timing component, it is usually better to take a shot at resolving issues when you are not under the gun, because when time becomes one of the constraints, your range of options usually closes down very quickly. In those cases, ADR can be your best choice.

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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L’harmonie et l’héritage vont de paire

Je crois que la plupart des gens qui mènent des entreprises familiales veulent laisser un héritage à leurs enfants et petits-enfants. Mais je crois aussi que la plupart de ceux-ci ne comprennent pas assez bien l’importance que l’harmonie familiale jouera dans le succès du transfert de cet héritage.

Quand je regarde le mot “héritage” dans mon Petit Larousse, je trouve, juste en dessous d’un petit dessin d’un hérisson: “1. Ensemble des biens acquis ou transmis par voie de succession. 2. Ce que l’on tient de ses parents, des générations précédentes.”

Je suis présentement en train d’écrire mon premier livre sur le sujet des familles en affaires, et j’arrive vers la fin. En même temps, je travaille aussi sur mon nouveau site web, pour clarifier mon offre comme conseiller pour ces familles. Avec toutes les pensées qui me passent par la tête sur ces sujet dernièrement, cette semaine j’ai vécu ce qu’on appelle en anglais un “A-Ha Moment”, où, tout d’un coup, je venais de réaliser quelque chose pour la première fois.

Dans mon livre, je passe beaucoup de temps sur l’importance de la communication dans une famille, sur les conversations qui sont parfois difficiles, mais qui sont absolument nécessaires pour que chaque personne dans la famille se sent incluse dans ce qui se passe.

Dans le dévelopement de mon site web, ma conseillière m’a forcé à travailler sur mes valeurs personnelles, afin que je démontre bien qui je suis, et ce que je trouve le plus important pour que mes clients potentiels comprennent ma personalité, et peuvent comprendre comment je travaillerai avec eux.

Sur la question de ce que les familles cherchent, le mot “héritage” revenait souvent. Je suis convaincu que la grande majorité des gens dans la génération senior dans une famille en affaires veulent laisser un bel héritage à leurs successeurs.

Sur la question de ce que j’offre à ces familles, et des besoins et lacunes parmi ces familles, je revenait souvent sur le mot “harmonie”. Je suis également convaincu que dans une grande partie de ces familles, le niveau d’harmonie parmi les gens n’est pas assez élevé pour supporter l’héritage à long terme.

Voilà, mon “A-Ha”. Pour avoir un héritage qui durera, il est absolument nécessaire que l’harmonie familiale soit assez forte pour supporter l‘héritage.

J’adore les analogies, et j’essaye de trouver quelque chose qu’on peut visualiser pour mieux expliquer mon point. Jusqu’à date, la meilleure que j’ai trouvée est celle d’une tente de camping.

Quand on traverse un parc de camping, on voit beaucoup de tentes, mais ce qu’on voit est seulement le tissu des tentes. Ce qu’on voit, le tissu, l’extérieur, pour moi, c’est comme l’héritage.

Mais imaginez pour un moment comment le parc paraîtrait si quelqu’un enlevait les supports intérieurs qui font que les tentes se tiennent debout. Ou si on enlevait les ancrages qui sont très pratiques quand le vent se met à souffler.

Le système de support, les tiges de métal ou en fibre de verre que nous devons assembler et connecter, est essentiel au bon fonctionnement de la tente. Les ancrages sont aussi quelque chose qu’on ne devrait pas oublier.

Pour moi, tout ces éléments sont comme l’harmonie familiale.

Si on ne prend pas le temps, et si on ne fait pas l’effort de bien monter le système de support, la tente ne servira pas à grand chose.

Ceux qui se concentrent sur la grosseur de leur héritage, et qui négligent l’harmonie dans leur famille, risquent d’avoir des résultats décevants. Si vous ne faites pas les efforts requis sur le côté familial, les biens et l’argent que vous avez accummulés risquent de s’éparpiller assez rapidement après votre décès.

Votre héritage dépandrera sur le support que votre harmonie familiale pourra offrir comme appui.

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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Folksy Steve and the Gentleman Farmer

It really is interesting sometimes to notice how different people react differently to certain words. There are two words that I always like to have handy when I am asked about my feelings towards something or someone, because they have that ambiguous aspect to them, allowing them to sound like a compliment, even though I may not really have such a positive feeling about the subject.

These two words are “interesting” and “special”. On the surface, they sound positive, and are most frequently used in a positive manner. The next time someone offers you a glass of homemade wine and asks you what you think, I offer you the answer “interesting!” as a reply that allows you to sound like a fan even if you are not.

On that note, I also know many “special” people, but that doesn’t mean that I want to spend lots of time with all of them, just as I may pass on a second glass of your wine.

But the words that I am highlighting today are adjectives that have been ascribed to me and to my father. Let’s start with my Dad, who bought a farm as a pre-retirement project, before moving out there full time.

Over the years, he managed to use many of the skills and habits that he had honed as a businessman, and applied them to areas of his farm. After a few years of working his apple orchard, neighbours started seeking his advice and input on ways to run their operations, even though they had a couple of generations head start.

When he took up beef breeding, he became known as the go-to guy in his area for those who were looking at upgrading their herds. He really became quite accomplished in a field where he did not have much education, but he learned quickly.

So what got him the most upset? It was when people would refer to him as a “Gentleman Farmer”. Now “gentleman” is usually not perceived as an insult, but to him, it was as if people were insinuating that he was not as good as the other farmers, and on that score I will concede that he might have a point. “What would you think of someone who was a ‘gentleman lawyer’ or a ‘gentleman doctor?’” he would say. Good point, Dad.

This past weekend I was taking the last of my five coaching courses, and in a pre-class conversation with one of the instructors, he casually mentioned something about me that I took as a compliment, when he said “We all know folksy Steve, how about today you try…” What he suggested is not important here, but I liked the fact that he referred to me as “folksy”, as it made me think of “friendly, neighbourly, social, and unpretentious”.

When I mentioned “Folksy Steve” to my wife, however, you should have seen the look she gave me. “Folksy? That’s not very nice. Does he think you are some kind of farmer?”

To my wife, there was a clear negative connotation that came to her mind. When I decided to look it up, I found that there is such a definition as well, that is, “sometimes used derogatorily to describe affected simplicity”. OK, dear, there is a negative take on it, but I am pretty sure that was not what he meant.

That actually brings up the interesting link here, and kudos if you picked up on it. In the expression “Gentleman Farmer”, my Dad took offense to the word “gentleman”, but for my wife, the word she likes to use as an insult is “farmer”.

I love them both, but maybe that’s just because I’m folksy.

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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Why is “Why?” So Important?

It seems to me that the world of business is evolving into a kinder gentler way of doing things. Maybe I am wrong, or maybe I am just spending too much time following the right (or wrong?) people on social media, but it really feels like collaboration is becoming not just something that people talk about doing, but what people DO.

These days it has become so easy to find like-minded individuals via the internet, people who seem to “get it” the same way that we do, and with whom we feel we have an instant connection.

It is more than simply finding others who do the same kinds of things as we do, it goes right to the core of WHY they do the same things that we do. That is what branding has become all about, creating the kind of identity that has users not only flock to a brand, but also go out of their way to praise it and defend it.

Where does this come from? I believe that what it boils down to is often the “WHY” behind what they do. In his best-seller “Start with Why”, author Simon Sinek talks about “How great leaders inspire everyone to take action”. Think about it, if you understand the fundamental reasons driving someone to do what they do, and those are the kind of reasons that you identify with and that resonnate with you, aren’t your chances of doing business with them going to increase?

I have heard it put another way, “People don’t buy what you are selling, they buy WHY you are selling it”. There is another book out there titled “People don’t buy what you are selling, they buy what you stand for”, and that is essentially the same thing.

What you stand for, and why are you doing what you do, are basically two ways of saying the same thing. In coaches training, we learn to ask open-ended questions to get people to talk about how they feel, and asking questions that almost guarantee a “Yes” or a “No” answer are discouraged.

In the same way, they teach us not to ask “why” per se, but instead to almost always start with a “What” question. So rather than “why”, they suggest “what is it about that…” or even “what were you feeling”, instead of “why”. Maybe it is because the question “Why” almost sounds too accusatory and confrontational in many circumstances.

When my kids are arguing, sometimes when I try to intervene I will hear “But I was just asking a question”. I normally respond with “well, yes, but ‘why are you always such an idiot’ is also technically ‘just a question’”.

Way back when, in the old days (10+ years ago!), the question of why someone engaged in a particular activity or profession seemed so much less relevant. But with today’s social media, so many people and brands are trying to capitalize on what makes them special and easy to identify with, it almost seems crazy NOT to try to follow along, and show the world why they should identify with you.

Also, with more and more free agents out their building their own personal brands, trying to stand out to make a go of a career as an expert in a particular field, there never seems to be a shortage of people out there trying to get you to see why they are the ones that you should rely on, because you really seem to “get it”.

Some of them even write blogs.

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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Pre-Mediated Planning? Sounds Good to Me

Sometimes when you hear a new term it takes a bit of time to let its true meaning sink in. It happened to me this week, but the more that I think about the term, the better I like it.

About six months ago, I joined a group called the Purposeful Planning Institute, in large part because the term “Purposeful” really resonnated with me. If we are going to make plans (usually a good idea) why shouldn’t we do so with a true and well-thought-out purpose?

The PPI holds an annual Rendez-Vous in Colorado every summer, and I have already made plans to attend, because I really love the idea of exchanging stories and ideas with like-minded people. There will surely be at least one blog post as a result of that trip.

But one of the coolest features of the PPI is the weekly conference call every Tuesday at noon. The quality of the speakers is exceptional, and this week we got to hear from Dean Fowler, who has been working with business families for about 30 years. Most of his clients are third- and fourth-generation, because he has consciously chosen to work with successful families.

Fowler’s early career had him working with dysfunctional families, usually in cases where a will and estate plan were contested after the wealthy parents passed away. As he explained in the preamble to his talk, those estate plans did not fail because they were created by bad lawyers, bad accountants, and bad life insurance people. There was something else going on (or NOT going on) among the family members.

Having worked with both dysfunctional and successful families, he was able to see what worked and what did not. I realize that I will not be doing his entire talk justice here, but there were two key take-aways that I got from it.

The first is Pre-Mediated Planning and the second is a Proactive Next Generation. Proactive is a word that took some time to grow on me, and I will surely pick up the subject of the next generation taking on a more active role in a future blog, but the Pre-Mediated Planning was what stood out for me, and what I really want to zero in on today.

By definition, Fowler’s work as a mediator was required because there was a disagreement AFTER the fact. Plans were put into place, the person responsible for the plans passed away, and the successors disagreed with the plans, so a mediator is needed.

Pre-mediated planning, on the other hand, makes sure that the plans are understood BEFORE the person passes away, which allows the plans to be re-worked. Taking the time to explain, assess the reaction, accept some feedback, revise the plans, explain them again, discuss them with the family, etc. will always be time well spent in advance, which will avoid the need for costly, gut-wrenching, family-destroying fights afterwards.

So why don’t more families do this kind of planning? My guess is that the major reason is that so many of the senior generation believe that they know best, and they still view their children as just that, children. Fowler also mentioned that he refers to adult offspring as “former children”, to force the parents to accept that they are now adults, capable of their own independent thoughts without being told what to do by Mommy and Daddy.

Of course the greatest challenge here comes down to communication, as it usually does. You really “gotta wanna” do this, to do it right. It is much easier to do nothing and fight it out after. But that is so much uglier, so sad and so unnecessary too.

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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How to Kill a 20-Year Business Relationship (2 of 2)

Part 2: The Patent, but not the Trade Mark

Last week we looked at how someone else killed a 20-year business relationship in which I was involved. This week, we are going to look at another 20-year deal that is now history, but this time the person to blame is someone I see in my mirror every day.

In the early 1990’s, my father concluded an agreement with a competitor, in which they acquired all of our company’s operating assets. Our family business went from 250 people down to 4, and two of them went by the name Steve Legler.

We were left with real estate and intellectual property (IP). The IP was essentially a few patents and trademarks on some specialized products that we had been producing for some time before the sale of the operations. A large part of the attraction of the agreement for both sides was a licensing agreement in which the acquiring company also became our exclusive licensee.

When two companies enter into a licensing arrangement, they always start off hoping for the best, but one never knows how things will turn out over the long term. Companies get sold, executives move around, and priorities change, so you never really know if that deal is going to work out the way you hoped.

But if deals that don’t go as planned are the rule, then this deal was truly the exception. Our licensee remitted every royalty payment in full and on schedule. We had access to the company’s top people, and they upheld every aspect of the agreement to the letter.

So what went wrong? Well for one thing, they never really grew the market for the product, and we always felt like there was some unexploited potential that they could have tapped, to grow the market in other territories.

They did bring in a distributor who worked the marketing end of things and grew the market somewhat. When their distributor was acquired by another manufacturer, who had more global reach, it seemed like they would be a better fit for my dream of greater market growth for the product line.

So when our original deal came to a crossroads with the expiry of a patent, I made the hasty decision to make a deal with the company that I had hoped would finally see this product reach its true potential, and I offered them a Trade Mark licence.

Here we are only two years later, and I am left with nothing for my troubles. Things did not work out as planned, as the new licensee did not get off to a good start, trying to do things “their way”, with little or no input from me. Eventually some other internal issues had our product line fall way down the list of priorities for their firm, and I am now on the outside looking in.

I had a bird in the hand for over 20 years. I thought that there were more birds in the bush, and I wanted them.

Now I feel like the guy who got bored with his wife and left her for a prettier, sexier version, just because he thought that that would make him happier. Now the new one dumped me, and I would love to go back to my wife.

I am pretty sure that if I did this to my wife, she would not take me back. I only hope that my former business relationship has a higher likelihood of being salvaged.

I know that it won’t be easy, because I know that if the shoe was on the other foot, I would have to think long and hard about a reconciliation.

But I have to try, and writing this blog has helped me get started.

Moral: Sometimes “you don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone”.

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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How to Kill a 20-Year Business Relationship (1 of 2)

Part 1: The Snowman, but not the Iceman

Look at the business relationships that you have, and I bet that that those you have been in for 20 years can be counted on one hand.

I have had a couple of such relationships come to an end recently, and I think there are some good teaching points that we can all learn from my stories.

We will start with the easier one, easier because the person who killed the realtionship was the other guy, not me. Next week, I will fess up to a huge mea culpa, and explain that I now understand the proverb about the bird in the hand, because I screwed up by imagining more birds in the bush.

Let’s start with the snowman.

Snow is just part of the reality of every winter where I live. In my suburban neighbourhood, every house has a double garage and a driveway that is simply too long to shovel. Most of my neighbours pay a few hundred bucks every winter, to one of a half dozen or so contractors, who each have several tractors with huge snowblowers, just to be able to get their cars in and out of their garage and onto the city streets.

We have lived in our current house since 2001, and before that, we lived in the next town over. As such, we had used the same snow removal contractor for about 20 years. Notice the past tense, we “had used”. Up until a few months ago, I would have said that we “have used” the same contractor, but something happened to change that.

Just before Christmas, we headed to our cottage for a week, and for the first time we left our house without a housesitter. Given the weather that occured over the seven days we were away, not having anyone in the house turned out to be a problem.

The precipitation included a mix of snow, wind, freezing rain, more snow, more wind, and more rain. The result, upon our return, was a nice frozen ramp of ice in front of my garage door. A snowdrift became an ice drift, and this ice drift was clearly a problem, because it was a couple of feet high right in front of the door.

I recognized the problem, and concluded that although I was clearly the one who had to live with it, a large part of the blame for the problem lay clearly in the lap of my snow removal contractor, who had not properly cleared the snow before it turned to ice.

When I tried to explain this over the phone, my explanation fell on deaf ears. They blamed me for not having cleared the snow from the first few feet in front of the door, which normally we would have done if we were around.

“Sorry, we remove snow, not ice. It is ice now, and it is your fault, so you have to solve it” was essentially the woman’s refrain when I called. I asked to speak to the owner, she said she would call him, and I said “please ask him to call me.”

When the same lady called me back, I knew that it was over. I checked with some neighbours and now use the same contractor as most of the others on my street.

Why did the owner not call me himself? In twenty years I always paid my bill early and in full, and I have called once or twice to ask when they were going to clear my driveway. Did I not warrant a phone call, so that he could hear my side of the story, about the accummulated snow that they had not removed?

Oh well, I think that the snowman blew it, but he still has plenty of other clients, and likely won’t miss my business.

Next week, look for Part 2: The Patent, but not the Trade Mark.

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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