|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
Doing It Right
The Four Deadly Sins: This section is designed to help you think about yourself as CEO and leader. You’ll find links to critical issues and tools, but there are more questions than answers in this section. It’s gut-check time. Use this section to sensitize yourself to the personal issues and perspectives that dampen the impact your skills and knowledge could otherwise produce. An honest look in the mirror can serve as a guide for you to use in setting your priorities for rummaging through the tools section of this learning system. In order to succeed in challenging times, people often are called to rise above themselves. The same is true for most business leaders working to position themselves for success in the 21st century business environment. While these issues disrupt all businesses, this discussion is framed in terms of a family business context, because here the issues are most striking. However, while the issues may be most visible in family-owned businesses, the deadly sins are everywhere. There are four sins, in particular, that will get special attention in this section and which will weave their way through the body of this learning system. They are:
These issues surface over and over again, affecting daily decisions in countless family businesses. They surface in any number of ways. They are referred to as sins here because they stem from incidents of human failing. If you don’t face up to them and resolve them constructively, they will hurt your enterprise. They may or may not ruin your business, but they will limit your effectiveness and ultimately your profitability. They are difficult, but not impossible, to resolve. Failures to address these issues weigh privately on people---on some level they do register the resulting dangers, but their fear leads them to choose not to act. I won’t attempt to identify all instances in which these sins occur, for they truly are legion. I’ll give you plenty of examples and if you are honest with yourself you will be able to recognize them, especially if they are limiting your company’s efforts to succeed. There are many reasons why these issues plague family businesses, and why they are so tough to resolve. These issues are understandable, given the circumstances under which enterprises develop and in the face of the challenges that mold the thinking of many people who build family businesses. While the reasons behind them may be understandable, these issues are major contributors to business failure. They limit the odds of successful businesses lasting through the first, or at most the second, transition of leadership. They can be deadly, whether they are understandable or not. Let’s take a look. Fear is a real killer of family businesses. It always operates when there are areas of significant threat attached to our choices. There’s a lot at stake. There are a lot of people depending on the success of the enterprise. There seems to be no limit to the things that can induce fear. For family business leaders, there is a special category of threats I think of as “Cans of Worms.” These issues are tough to resolve; they result from problems with family members that relate to the business and can contaminate every aspect of family life, as well as cripple the company’s operations. Nearly every family business I have worked with has had serious issues around expectations, entitlements, succession, and transitions---issues related to the life cycle of the business going forward---which no one wants to discuss openly. Some leaders are afraid that none of the kids will join them in their businesses, after all that’s been done to encourage them to do so. Others are afraid that all of their children will want to come aboard, no matter how consistently they’ve been encouraged to do something else. There are fears that the company won’t be able to support all of the family’s dependants in the next generation without growing exponentially. Others fear that their businesses will grow beyond their (and their successors’ and managers’) capabilities to manage them successfully. Many people in charge today are afraid that their successors’ big ideas will sink the company. There are fears that newcomers will chuck the old guard out, because they won’t be able to adapt to new business practices. Still others are afraid that the mix of family and business issues---for all the people involved, whether they are involved in the day-to-day operations or not---will cause the whole place to blow up. Too often, extended family members (in-laws, cousins, even ex-spouses) nurture feelings of entitlement, resulting from their own expectations about what the purpose of the business should be. Should the business continue to reinvest the profits into the business or pay some of it out---to them? Should professional management be installed to help the company grow, or should those positions go to family members? These unspoken dilemmas act like undertows in the family business. They are dangerously powerful, sensed and feared, but unseen. They are constantly eroding the ground under the surface. All these fears create burdensome stress. This stress adds weight to yet another fear---the fear that you are not as in control of things as you imagined you would be, and feel that you should be. Unresolved fears multiply and expand over time. These are realistic fears representing just a few of the most obvious issues people passionately differ on, given their different points of view. It is easy to handle these issues badly. Handling them badly is equivalent to opening a can of worms that can’t be closed again---a Pandora’s box of woes. However, not dealing with them directly not only delays inevitable crises, but also generates pressure that intensifies the explosions when they finally do occur. And, out waiting them is not a successful strategy; they won’t just go away if ignored long and diligently enough. The good news? There are effective ways to deal directly with these realistic fears.
|