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Achieving Consensus in Business
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The Achieving Consensus Story: While this is not a profile, Wayne Messick, the Publisher of Family Business Strategies shares his insights gained in over twenty-five years of working intimately with family businesses.
Here he talks compellingly of the need for authentic, constructive conversation within the walls of the family business.
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There are armies of professionals who work with family businesses.
There are accountants, lawyers, financial planners, mediators and business and family counselors. And there are web site designers, Internet strategists, marketing and management consultants as well as business, career, and executive coaches.
The successful ones seem to have one thing in common.
They take the time to understand the owner’s and the family’s problems and concerns on every level, not just from their own professional perspective, in order to help make decisions that will directly impact the success or failure of the enterprise.
Since these problems affect each member of the family differently, the professionals must be trained to help establish an environment where everyone participates in developing the solution.
Let’s take a look at the sort of family business configuration one typically sees to get a feel for the complexities involved.
There are three generations of the family involved in this typical (whatever that means) family-owned company.
The "old man" is retired and living in Florida, and calls in once a day for an update. Dad’s sister owns a large percentage of the company, but has never been involved.
His "boys," 45, 42 and their cousin, who is 38, run the place – with their dad’s suggestions. The long-time bookkeeper and a key veteran manager keep dad in the loop.
The "boys" have seven sisters between them and there are six "kids" involved in the company.
These kids, young men and women between 18 and 29, are the offspring of the second generation. Oh yes, there is one son-in-law, age 40, who is the only person on board with a Masters Degree in Business.
The successful family business affects each of these people (and others too numerous to mention) emotionally, as well as intellectually and financially.
Individual objectives, skills, interests, histories, and agendas conspire to complicate matters to the point where nothing is "just business" - it’s always tinted with something personal.
This is typical situation, but it still creates problems so difficult that they can sink even the most stable of family businesses.
They all live, eat, and breathe the excitement, challenge and frustration of their business in an atmosphere where internal forces often overshadow external ones (the business environment in which they operate) making decisions of all kinds hot beds of controversy.
There are three interlocking issues that occur in combinations with each other that cause successful companies to stagnate and collapse, or become the stepping-stones upon which great futures are built.
It’s a lot more complicated than it looks!
This family is made up of three groups, the senior generation, the successors, and the heirs (the folks who are expecting to inherit their share someday).
Each of the groups, and the individuals within them, have different goals.
To successfully help businesses grow, whether it is with their Internet strategy, their management growth, or succession plan, the #1 challenge of the business, and those who seek to serve them, is to understand the goals and objectives of each group.
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