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Starting Family Discussions Late – 5 Considerations

It’s Never Too Late to Begin

While visiting relatives stateside recently, the matriarch of a local family enterprise passed away.

My cousin’s kids were childhood friends of several grandchildren of the recently departed, whose many businesses around town are part of the family’s widespread holdings and operations.

I hear similar stories frequently, including the unfortunate familiar refrain around how unprepared the family seemed to be.

Fortunately, it’s never too late to begin working on the family communication aspects of the larger family wealth continuity puzzle.

Starting Family Discussions Late – 5 Considerations

A Typical Well-Known Family Example

I’ll share some considerations I’d have if I were called into such a family at this stage, say, after Grandma’s funeral.

She was in her 80’s, one of two maternal figures in this family, the wife of one of two brothers who lead these businesses for decades. 

The business had been started by their father, i.e. “Generation 1” (G1).

The two G2 brothers produced 7 G3’s, many working in various businesses alongside some of their G4 offspring. 

The many G4’s are already giving birth to G5.

All over town, everyone knows this family and considers its members to be part of the “lucky sperm club”.

But most of them have no clue about what they own, what they can expect, or what comes next.

Many are probably hoping Grandma’s passing will be the catalyst to finally getting some answers.

  • Who Owns What?

One key question that will determine much of what ensues is “who owns what?”, from a legal standpoint.

My work is concentrated in the “family circle”, but it cannot be done in a vacuum, and the actual legal ownership of the assets is something I’d want to know before going too much further.

There’s a good chance that whatever documents and agreements are in place were done long ago and so this question, while simple on the surface, may not have a clear and ready answer.

  • Who Knows What?

I’ve already noted how this family has expanded over the decades, from what used to be one household, and then three, to where there are now a couple of dozen family units who are key stakeholders.

There’s a high likelihood that many family members heading those households are very much in the dark, and also craving some clarity of what lies ahead for them.

Often in these situations, some G3’s have more information than others, depending on their role and seniority.

This “information asymmetry” typically creates potential for mistrust and jealousy between family branches as things unfold.

The sooner everyone in G3 can be brought up to speed, the better chance of smooth sailing ahead.

  • Can They Work Together?

With many intertwined entities operating in this family enterprise’s sphere, questions about the potential for all family members to continue to operate together, rise to the top.

Keep in mind, these are siblings, cousins, and second-cousins, most of whom didn’t grow up in the same home, from several different family branches.

This is far from a “no-brainer”, and time needs to be taken to assess the compatibility question. 

A fact about this situation playing in their favour is that there are a number of business entities here, as opposed to one, monolithic company, so separating things could be simplified.

  • What’s Carved in Stone?

Back to the ownership question, is every detail carved in stone via structured entities (think trusts, etc.) or is there some flexibility around what can happen next?

Unfortunately, family members are often forced to be business partners with others with whom they’d never enter into such an arrangement, if they had a choice in the matter.

Flexibility around what can be changed is way better than rigidity in this case, but this needs to be looked at soon.

  • How Can I Best Help This Family?

There are surely already several professionals surrounding this family who are well placed to help clarify what’s next from a legal ownership perspective, based on the agreements mentioned above.

When there’s a complex web of families involved, it may be helpful to bring in someone who’s trained and comfortable dealing with the “family dynamics” angle too.

One outside expert alone won’t be able to untangle this alone, because of all the moving parts.

If the current professionals are overwhelmed, as they likely will be, they should bring in qualified outside resources to handle these human aspects of what lies ahead for this family.

We do exist!

 

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On Clergy and Family Meetings

Someone Who Knows “How to Be” with a Family

This blog has been a long time coming.

When speaking with people about my back story, I often bring up my grandmother’s career suggestion to me, but I’m pretty sure I’ve only written about it here once, and that was almost five years ago.

See: Limits to your Sphere of Influence

Over the years, I’ve come across other connections between my work with families and that of the clergy, and most of them have been left in the recesses of my mind.

But a recent Zoom call with a new LinkedIn connection brought this to the forefront once again, so here goes.

“A Priest and a Rabbi Walk into a Family Meeting”

It wasn’t easy to find the proper title for this post, and the sub-head above that sounds like the set-up to a joke was near the top, but was a bit too long.

Let’s begin with my maternal grandmother, who lived with our family for much of my childhood, and what she saw in me.

Note that my career had been laid out for me from a young age by my father, who had started a business before I was born, and was waiting for a male heir, which he finally got on the third and final try.

Oma, for her part, told me a few times that she thought I should become a priest.

My response was to laugh this off as preposterous. Little did I know what lay ahead for me.

On Clergy and Family Meetings

Using Trained, Neutral Outsiders for Support

As I began to work with families, concentrating on the “family circle” and facilitating discussions among various family members, I was constantly searching for ways to learn how to do this work better.

I recall seeing a video on the website of the then Business Families Foundation, featuring none other than John A. Davis, of Three-Circle   Model fame, in which he shared the following:

        “This is the work that used to be done by priests and rabbis”

I began to wonder if my grandmother had me pegged better than my Dad did!

The idea of having someone from outside the family, who could be neutral and who was trained in “how to be” even more than “what to do”, made lots of sense to me.

Learning Bowen Family Systems Theory

Long time readers know that I’ve been a student of Murray Bowen’s Family Systems Theory (BFST) for years, and I even wrote a book about that learning journey.

See Interdependent Wealth

It was during the two years that I was part of the Postgraduate program at the Bowen Center at Georgetown that this clergy angle really hit me.

Those who study BFST come from a few different fields, notably social workers and therapists of various kinds.

The people like me, who mostly work with families around wealth transitions, made up well under 10 % of the students during my time there.

One of the larger subgroups comprised the many ministers, rabbis, chaplains and pastors of all sorts.

Perhaps my late grandmother had seen something in me after all…

The Power of LinkedIn (When Used Right)

I’ve sung the praises of LinkedIn for years, and while not perfect, it stands head and shoulders above every other social media platform for professional interactions and relationship building.

A young man who just entered this field reached out to connect with me recently, and I instantly accepted his request.

He’s a CPA, and just joined an accounting firm to work with their potential family office clients. This is unremarkable so far, but please hang on.

He shared a note with me mentioning that he used to be a church pastor, before becoming an accountant.

Hmmmm, I thought, isn’t that interesting.

On Clergy and Family Meetings

Being “In the Room” During Anxious Times

We set up a Zoom call to satisfy my curiosity about his unusual career trajectory, and some of what he shared with me drives home an important point.

First off, kudos to the accounting firm for recognizing that this man has some useful traits and experience that will certainly come in handy.

My new friend related stories from earlier in his career, when he was a hospital chaplain, which clearly illustrates a point I’ve since shared with many people in discussion.

He talked about being called into a hospital room with a dying man surrounded by his family.

How to BE > What to DO

If you can be comfortable (and comforting!) in situations like that, I think you’ll do just fine running a family meeting.

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Working with Exceptional Families – Redux

Coming at this Again from a New Angle

There are some aspects of the work that I do with families that are difficult to grasp for many people, including some of my loyal readers.

In conversation, I typically note that I work in a niche within a niche, and have been known to add another level of niche as well.

This week I want to delve into this idea a bit more in writing, even though I did touch on it relatively recently (last year) in Serving Exceptional Families – Proceed Slowly.

Let’s begin by digging a bit deeper into the key word, “exceptional” a bit more, because it sits at the crux of the matter.

In the True Sense of the Word

My good friend Mr. Google is helpful as always, this time bringing me to vocabulary.com, which served up for “exceptional”, among many others, the following:

  • Surpassing what is common, or usual, or expected
  • Syn: Uncommon: not common or ordinarily encountered
  • Syn: Extraordinary: highly unusual or exceptional or remarkable 

My idea in sharing these definitions is to help accentuate just how much of a niche a lot of the in depth work really is.

Working with Exceptional Families - Redux

Universal Applicability of Many Concepts

Of course most of the general concepts I write about here do in fact apply to families and the challenges of having every member remain on good terms with one another.

I had a tag line on the back of my business card years ago that read “Helping families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want.”

The first half of that, about the harmony, is admittedly pretty universal, as just about every family would be all for improving the ways that each family member relates harmoniously with all the others.

It’s the second part, about the legacy, that is less common, especially insofar as finding families who are willing to bring someone in (and pay them) to help with this part.

There needs to be a certain level of financial wealth, as well as complexity, and of course a desire to maintain family ownership, at least through the next generational transition.

Working with Exceptional Families - Redux

 

Challenges of “Democratizing” This Work

Over the years I’ve heard many colleagues mention a desire to “democratize” this work, and offer it to families who are not part of the “1%”.

I get it, and of course when anyone mentions this idea, many heads begin to nod in agreement. But there are a few challenges to this.

The first challenge is that this typically involves a lot of work, that the family members need to buy into. That’s because they all need to actually commit to doing this work themselves.

You see, while you can (and should) hire people to come and help the family with the work, the family members need to play a very active role.

And of course, most families, even if they are willing to do the work, are not in a position to hire someone qualified and experienced to properly guide them.

“What About Your Family?”

I was recently on a call with a new colleague who had the idea of doing this work with more “regular” families, and I tried to explain these challenges.

He then asked me about me and my own family. 

It was after sleeping on that question that I decided to revisit this question.

My family isn’t exceptional enough for this. My family of origin might have been, but after our liquidity event over 30 years ago, it eventually became clear that we weren’t going this route.

The family I married into also had some potential elements in place, but their liquidity event also made it clear that this wasn’t for them either.

In fact, very few of the families I’ve ever met are good candidates for full blown family governance and continuity planning.

And that’s not a bad thing.

Examples from the Other Extreme

While being labelled an exceptional family is usually a compliment, it’s obvioously not always the case.

I’ve had the misfortune of working with some families that were exceptionally dysfunctional too.

Some members of such families have also proven to be exceptionally narcissistic, exceptionally delusional, have exceptionally high self-regard, and I could go on.

There are of course many families who could use the kind of help I love to provide. Finding the exceptional ones who tick all the boxes is hard work. 

Could yours be one?

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The Many ‘Ships of Working with Family

The Many ‘Ships of Working with Family

Lots of Ways to Look at Managing Assets Together

The inspirations for these weekly missives come from a variety of sources, because writing 52 blogs every year necessitates a wide universe of catalysts.

Some members of my family have accused me of having an “addiction” to Twitter, and I suppose that sometimes it might seem that way, although I believe it’s very much under control (spoken like a true addict, I acknowledge).

And so you might have already guessed that Twitter is the source for the idea behind this week’s post.

Hat tip to Ryan Foland, who tweeted out a post a few month’s back that caught my attention, which stated “PartnerSHIPS are delicate, navigate wisely”, along with a cartoonish image of a captain at the wheel of a boat.

I emailed his tweet to myself, adding “relationships and leadership” to cement the idea for this piece, and put it into my “blog ideas” folder.

Since my “beat” is families who own and manage assets together, I want to explore those “ships” along with a couple of others I since added to the pile.

 

OwnerSHIP

The simplest one to start with is ownership, since it is the fact that people actually own something together sits at the root of the challenges that they face, as well as the opportunities.

It’s much simpler when you own something all by yourself, since you alone can make every necessary decision without even informing anyone else.

The families I work with all own things together, or there is a strong intention for them to co-own assets together in the future.

It’s this “co-ownership” that holds most of the challenges.

PartnerSHIP

That co-ownership brings us to the next ship, which is the partnership. Every partnership has its own advantages and disadvantages, of course, and being a partner in anything with family members just adds to the excitement, for lack of a better word.

When I speak about the work I do, I often make an analogy to leverage used in investing; if you borrow money so that you can make a larger investment, you can make more money, provided of course that you do make money. If you lose money, you also lose more money.

Being in any partnership with family members is wonderful when things go well, but when they go poorly, there’s more a stake to lose as well.

 

LeaderSHIP

In order for any ownership partnership to go well, some form of strong leadership is also required.

I used the term “some form” on purpose there, to highlight the fact that leadership doesn’t always look the same, especially in the case of families.

As a family goes from the first generation (G1) to the second (G2), there’s typically a shift from an autocratic style to something more democratic. 

Ideally, there’s strong leadership of the business aspects, keeping that area strong, as well as some strong leaders of the family as well.

Those roles often reside in the same person in G1, but by G2, and certainly if they get to G3, more than one person will play key leadership roles, even if they’re not “official”.

See The Unsung Role of Family Champions

 

StewardSHIP

One type of leadership attitude and style that’s sometimes adopted is stewardship. Definitions of stewardship include words like “supervising” and “taking care of” something, and often include adjectives like “responsible” and “careful”.

There are worse attitudes a family can take, and stewardship continues to be a style to which many families aspire. 

It does have its drawbacks as well though, such as how it can leave rising generation family members unfulfilled and can see family assets dissipate over time.

See Striving for the “All and Nothing” Inheritance

RelationSHIP

I saved relationship for last because I think of this one a bit differently. This one sort of serves as the foundation for all of the others in my mind, because if relationships between family members start to go sour, all of the other “ships” suffer as a result.

Relationships are precious and need to be tended to consciously, because their quality affects everything else the family does together.

Communication is so important and I always lean towards more communication than less, because a vacuum of communication typically causes more issues and harms more relationships than when there’s plenty of it.

All these SHIPS are delicate, so please navigate wisely!

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How Bricolage Applies to Family Governance

Words from Another Language Can Illuminate Ideas

Over the years since I’ve been sharing my thoughts in this space, there’ve been occasions when I’ve used translations from other languages (mostly French) to make a point.

We’re going back there again this week, because a certain word that I learned in my childhood, while attending primary school in French, just keeps coming up in different ways, and one of those ways actually relates to the work that I do with families.

The word is “bricolage”, which was something we typically did on Friday afternoons as part of the “arts plastiques” component of our curriculum.

For the first five decades of my life, that was what that word meant to me, but then suddenly, sometime in the past few years, I heard it used in English.  Hunh?

A Whole New Meaning for “Arts and Crafts”

If someone had asked me to explain bricolage, my quick answer would’ve been “arts and crafts”, because that still makes the most sense to me, as a translation of that childhood activity.

But now it means a whole bunch of other things too. My good friend Mr. Google helped me uncover a few:

  • Bricolage is a term used in several disciplines, among them the visual arts, to refer to the construction or creation of a work from a diverse range of things 
  • Bricolage is the skill of using whatever is at hand and recombining them to create something new.
  • Bricolage is defined as “making do by applying combinations of the resources at hand to new problems and opportunities.”

(Bold as per originals; italics added)

Switching Over to Doing Improv

Last year in Doing Improv While Developing Family Governance I noted that the idea of “improvising” your family governance when translated from French could be confusing, as some of it runs counter to the way I typically suggest families handle it.

My idea is to kind of “make it up as you go” and as you need to, but that you should definitely NOT try to do it on your own.

And so it is with a bricolage approach to creating family governance. The family members need to do the work, but not by themselves.

Family Members Must Get Their Hands Dirty

Any agreements, guidelines, or documents that a family creates to define the way they’re going to govern the members of the family, must be co-created by the family members themselves. 

Assuming, of course, that you want them to abide by them.

This work cannot be delegated and still be expected to be worth the paper it’s printed on.

It can, though, be cobbled together as needed, incrementally, over time.

Kind of like an arts and crafts, or do-it-yourself project, like doing bricolage. Only the do-it-yourself part doesn’t have to be (and shouldn’t be) done by yourself.

You should engage someone independent, from the outside, to guide the process.

A Bricolage Guide or Assistant’s Roles

If you think about what this person would do, their roles would include the following:

Organize:

This hired guide is tasked with organizing the work that needs to be done, which includes staying in contact with family members on a regular basis, both one-on-one and in groups.

Keeping the momentum going is a big part of the role, and adjusting the cadence to the speed of the family members is not as easy as it might seem.

Co-Lead:

While there’s a leadership component to the role, it is not always “solo leadership”, but often requires teaming up with at least one family member, who co-leads and plays a key role as well, rallying the family members in ways the outsider cannot.

See Sustaining Family Ownership Through Generations

Motivate / Coach:

Another key part of the job is to motivate and coach each of the family members to be as involved as necessary and to find their rightful place in the process. 

Treating each person as an individual is an art in itself, and gaining everyone’s trust takes time and effort.

Draft / Circulate Drafts:

When a family takes on this work of defining how they are going to be together, it usually makes sense to write things down, and creating some form of “Family Charter”. 

Getting agreement on wording is not always easy or linear. 

Some of my colleagues do the drafting of the documents, while others prefer to play a role in circulating the drafts and making sure everyone provides input.

There’s no wrong way to do it; keeping things moving forward is the key.

Clean Up the Mess:

Every bricolage project gets messy at times, and part of the role includes cleaning up messes along the way.

Ideally most of the big ones will be prevented by having someone from outside the family play this role too.

And don’t forget, the process is even more important than the finished product. Because it’s never truly finished.

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Do Family Businesses Really Fail by the 3rd Generation?

Taking a Fresh Look at an Old Saying

This week we’re dealing with a subject that gets talked about a LOT by many of the people who work with family businesses, and that’s the adage that family businesses often fail, usually by their third generation.

Personally, I’ve always avoided this topic, because whenever I speak to anyone from an enterprising family, they never ask about these “statistics” and even when they do hear them they usually believe that their family will prove to be the exception.

But I guess it’s probably high time that I at least address this question, so that we can unpack it a bit and see what can be learned.

I’ll Tell You What You Can Do with Your “Shirtsleeves”

Everyone who works in the field of family business and family wealth is familiar with the old proverb “Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations”.

And we’ve all heard that there are similar versions in every language and culture around the globe.

And, I’m pretty sure most of us are sick of hearing about it.

Of course, that hasn’t stopped many of the people who advise such families from trotting out that stuff at every opportunity, because, well, it works!

But what I mean when I say “it works” has much more to do with the fact that it works for solution providers, for whom this point of view helps them to sell their “solutions”.

A “solution” is easier to sell when you can point to a clear “problem”.

We’re Looking at the Wrong Question

The image I chose to accompany this blog comes from an ice storm that hit my region almost 25 years ago, in January 1998. (Image has since been removed! Ooops)

The tower that collapsed was one of dozens that could not stand the weight of the ice that had accumulated on the electric wires they carried.

The business my Dad had founded and for which I worked happened to have manufactured thousands of towers like these over the three decades we operated.

After that storm, people who knew we had been in that business would ask my Dad, “How come those towers collapsed?”.

His reply was always this: “You’re asking the wrong question; you should be asking ‘how did so many of the towers stay up’”.

Accentuate the Positive

I hope that my analogy is obvious enough, but just in case, allow me to share my point more explicitly.

While the ice storm that damaged so many of those towers was a “once in a century” type of occurrence, the challenges of keeping a family business (or any business for that matter) going for decades are a constant uphill battle.

In fact, I’d venture to say that family companies actually fare better than non-family businesses in general.

Do I have any stats or studies to back that up? Well, no, I don’t. 

But the “studies” that were done decades ago on FamBiz were not exactly done with the most scientific rigour either. 

That hasn’t stopped those who benefit from them from trotting them out at every occasion, however.

The Wealth 3.0 Version

I’ve felt this way since I entered this field a decade ago, and thankfully now some higher profile colleagues are leading the way to change the narrative around this subject.

I first heard the term “Wealth 3.0” at the RendezVous of the Purposeful Planning Institute (PPI) in 2019, from Dr. Jim Grubman in his closing keynote.

Since then, Grubman has continued to share his thinking via the Ultra High Net Worth Institute. See Wealth 3.0 and the Ten Domains of Family Wealth for much more background.

The crux of that viewpoint lies in the fact that creating structural “solutions” for the business is wrongheaded, whereas focusing on the human capital of the family is what we should be supporting families with.

More recent research has shown that concentrating on the family, rather than any enterprise they happen to create, makes more sense.

Because so many of the experts have traditionally been hired by the companies, though, it’s not surprising that the focus has been misplaced.

The more recent emphasis on the family is welcome and overdue, but not yet firmly implanted in the field of professionals who serve them.

Progress, Not Perfection

Progress continues to be made, however, and we need to be satisfied with making that continue, rather than lamenting that we are not yet at the “perfect” state of the industry.

See “From Multidisciplinary Field to Interdisciplinary Ecosystem” from a few weeks ago for more on this.

We need to continue to make this progress, one advisor and one family at a time.

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Sustaining Family Ownership Through Generations

The Essential Element Required

It can sometimes be difficult to explain the work I do to those who don’t happen to belong to a family that runs a business or owns assets together.

There are at least three interdependent sub-systems at work, between the family, the enterprise (businesses/wealth/assets), and the ownership group.

Just about every enterprise is in constant contact with outside experts for a variety of services from the outset.

But the family and the ownership typically take on more of a “behind-the-scenes” role and get much less attention.

The family circle happens to be where I do most of my work, and I’ve been developing a bigger appreciation for its overlap with the ownership group lately.

Focusing on “family ownership” and how important it is for the future of the enterprise is the focus of this week’s post.

For those in the know, you won’t be surprised that we’ll be talking about the essential role of a family champion.

Their Nebulous and Misunderstood Role

I first wrote about the concept of family champions back in 2019, in The Unsung Role of Family Champions.

Recently, I had the wonderful occasion of spending a day with a number of people who play such a role in their families, even if they weren’t all sure that they “qualified” for such status.

I led the opening discussion, where I shared the origin of the term and just how essential having at least one such family member has been for all of the families featured in Dennis Jaffe’s study of 100 family enterprises that had endured for at least 100 years. 

See Jaffe’s book Borrowed from Our Grandchildren

But just because Jaffe and Joshua Nacht, one of his researchers, came up with the term, that doesn’t mean it’s well understood, even by those who play this role in their enterprising family.

Will Every Family Eventually Reach Its Limit?

While certain family members often play a starring role as the CEO and perhaps others are some kind of rainmaker, the family champion is typically much more low-key, and out of the limelight.

Few families are able to maintain family ownership over generations, often because they lack someone motivated and interested in doing the work of keeping the family focused and organized ahead of important transitions.

Eventually the family often grows bigger than the enterprises that are meant to support the people, and choices need to be made.

While these choices occur infrequently, the idea of discussing whether or not continued ownership by the whole family still makes sense is usually a scary notion that is not easily put on the table.

But when it is raised, you can bet that the family champion played an important role in setting the stage for it.

Forever Asking the Key Question

A family that owns an enterprise together will likely assume that it can and will and should remain that way, and for a certain period of time, which may be measured in decades and even generations, it’s often true.

At some point, though, most families need to ask themselves if that is still going to be the case after the next generational transition.

Hopefully, once they get to the point where hard choices need to be made, they’ll be able to figure out how to make the necessary changes in a way that leaves the family intact.

The result could be to prune the family tree or maybe sell the enterprise and have a liquidity event. See Pruning the FamBiz Ownership Tree and Huge Liquidity Events – Great News, Right?

For someone like me, who considers himself a family specialist, my thoughts are always “family first”, and many families I know also adopt this attitude. 

There are exceptions, those who put the success of their business first, which sometimes has me shaking my head. I typically do not work with such families.

Who Is Looking Out for the Family?

So much focus is put on the business that the family owns, so it’s not that surprising that the family and the ownership areas sometimes get lost in the shuffle.

The business stuff happens at a much faster pace (see Varying Time Factors in Each of the Three Circles) and those who work in that area are put on the spot on a daily basis.

Meanwhile, though, there needs to be someone who is thinking about and talking about the family’s role in all of this, and who makes sure that the family and its ownership of the enterprise also get the attention they deserve.

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Getting your MBA to Lead your FamBiz? 5 Things to Consider

A Road Well Travelled.

The idea of going to do your MBA in order to then come back and work in (and possibly lead) your family business has been around for a long time.

It has been repeated often with varying degrees of success over the past few decades, in many places, and probably in every industry, somewhere on the planet.

It can be the perfect next step to give an aspiring leader the extra tools, confidence, and respect from fellow employees that they’ll need to take that next step in moving up the ranks and eventually taking over.

And sometimes, well, not so much.

This week I want to look at 5 things that you should consider before taking that leap.

 

Learning and Growth, or Just the Letters, Please

Whenever anyone is making a big decision, like going back to school for an advanced degree in anything, I always encourage them to think the decision through, and especially make sure that they’re doing it for the right reason.

If all you really want are the letters “MBA” after your name, that probably won’t be enough to sustain you on your journey.

If, however, you are looking to learn and grow as a person and as a leader, then your chances of success, during your studies and long after, will rise markedly.

But please be honest with yourself during this reflection.

 

Is This the Missing Link?

Even if you do realize that you need some more learning and growth in order to increase your chances of success, is the MBA route truly what’s missing for you to advance to where you want to get?

In many cases the answer is still YES, but there are lots of other educational opportunities that may be more suitable to you, depending on what strengths and education you already have, what industry you are in, and what type of role you hope to grow into.

 

What Role Likely Awaits You?

And that brings us to the role you are looking to occupy. 

Since we are looking very long term here, you need to think about not only the next role you hope to grow into, but also any subsequent ones.

You may see roles that interest you now, and it may seem clear that they seem tailor-made for you (and you may be right).

But please, before making a big decision like going back to school, make sure that you have a number of discussions with other family members who are above you in the business hierarchy before you make any commitments.

 

Podunk State Vs. Harvard/Stanford/Wharton

Assuming you’ve thought through it all, discussed it with all important stakeholders, and are ready to take the leap. You need to figure out where to set your sights.

There’s a huge variability in the quality of the programs out there, their cost, their ease of qualifying, and time commitment and distance.

Assuming that you could qualify everywhere and cost is no object, it may well be worth reaching for the top schools for a better quality experience, as well as interacting with a higher level of other students.

That may not be realistic in most cases, so a detailed evaluation of schools and programs is worth the effort, which in this day and age is so much easier than it was decades ago, thanks to the web and Google.

There are even a number of schools that have specific offerings for those coming from family businesses, which didn’t exist when I was beginning this journey in the ‘80’s.

 

Build Your Network Too

I alluded to this above when noting the “higher level of other students” but no matter where you might end up, do not neglect the opportunity to create a network, not just of friends but of future colleagues on whom you can lean when you will need them.

Schools that emphasize family business education may be preferable for just that reason, as you are more likely to meet and get close to others whose career situation will better resemble yours, and with whom continued contact may be mutually beneficial.

 

Aren’t MBA’s “a Dime a Dozen”?

Doing my MBA was a rewarding experience for me, even though we sold our family business soon after my return.

These days, there are many MBA’s out there, and the experience can still offer a lot.

But think it through before committing.

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Should I Join My Family Business?

A Big Question, Well Worth Considering

Given the number of family businesses out there, you’d think that the question in the title of this post is pretty common.

Unfortunately, it is not asked nearly as often as it should be, at least not out loud.

This is not to point fingers at those who never took the time to properly consider the question, because if I were doing that, the first person I’d need to point at is me!

I write about all sorts of topics relating to family enterprise here, and yet this one, which seems to involve a very important “go / no go” decision, isn’t one I’ve written a lot about.

 

Forced into the Family Business

I did write Forced into the Family Business back in 2018, and if this post interests you, you’ll likely want to read that one as well.

When I re-read it just now, this line jumped out at me:

      “This assumes that both sides are getting what they need out of it.”

That’s worth thinking about in this context, because if it isn’t going to turn into a win-win situation over the short-, medium-, and long-term, then the answer should probably be a firm NO.

You don’t want to end up in a situation where you somehow get stuck in a place that you cannot get out of, and believe me, it happens, probably more often than you realize.

Some people in these positions even have difficulty admitting it to themselves when it occurs.

(If this resonates, check out the book, Trapped in the Family Business, by my friend Michael A. Klein, PsyD).

 

Things to Clarify Before You Enter

Because you don’t want to end up stuck, you need to make sure that you clarify a lot of matters up front, before you commit.

I’m going to assume here that we’re talking about someone who is at least in their mid-20’s and who has already begun their work career with a job elsewhere.

Otherwise, please go and re-read Forced into the Family Business, which clearly lays out my thoughts on going to work in your family business as your first job, right out of school.

None of this is rocket science of course, and if you think about this choice just like you would consider and ask questions about any other job you might want to pursue, with any other company or organization, you’re already off to a good start.

The biggest problems arise when people “leap before they look”.

 

Employees and Ownership

A key consideration that cannot be overlooked is whether the family company has already decided on whether being an owner of the business, now or in the future, is contingent upon working in the business full time. 

Some companies are very firm on this and are well run because of it, and others sometimes end up in a situation where they wish they had imposed this rule. But it certainly isn’t pervasive, and is usually worth considering at some point for many families.

 

Responsibilities and Reporting

Among the key matters to clarify before joining the family business are what you will be responsible for (the “what”) as well as to whom you will be reporting (the “who”).

Make sure you discuss this in advance, and don’t just talk about your first job there, because presumably you will be there for a long time and handling different roles over time is almost surely part of the plan.

It’s also usually better for you to report to someone who is not related to you, inasmuch as that’s possible.

 

Is There Enough Room for Everyone?

Another question to consider is how many other family members are (or will be) also working there.

A situation that can arise is one where there are just too many family members involved and they start stepping on each others’ toes a lot.

Maybe it’s not a good idea to have “everyone” working together, even if you all get along well. Working together may change that, and not in a good way.

 

The Frog in the Boiling Water

Most people have heard the story about the frog who entered the pot when the water was cool and then couldn’t jump out when the water started boiling.

Most such frogs would probably look back and wish they’d asked a few more questions about the water temperature that they could expect going forward.

The time for asking questions and having deep discussions is before agreeing to work in your family business.

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