Family-owned businesses have some unique challenges, particularly when preparing for the next generation to take over. The family dynamic between parents, their siblings and their children is very different to the typical business leadership dynamic. Often family members will fall into their childhood behaviours with each other when dealing with business issues. It’s expected behaviour in a family situation but not necessarily appropriate in a business environment!
Running a business requires a professional dynamic to ensure the business runs smoothly and the wider team are fully engaged. Familiarity can be unintentionally detrimental to the business culture. Favouritism or nepotism, whether real or perceived, can be extremely demotivating for the wider team. Too many family-run businesses struggle as a result.
Many family run businesses do not have an agreed strategy with clearly defined roles and responsibilities, behaviours or ways of working – things are done ‘how they’ve always been done’.
Are you keen to break the mould in your family business? Are you ready to end a restrictive pattern of behaviour and run the business in a markedly different way?
We have experience supporting family-owned partnerships and businesses to reset the dynamic in their business. Rebuild the foundations of your business in a new way, where expectations are clear and agreed between your partners and key leaders. Gain clarity on how disagreements and challenges are managed in the business, so the business is no longer at the whim of over-dominant or micromanaging partners.
Case Study: Creating clear expectations and boundaries
A successful family owned logistics business, built over 50 years starting with over 300 staff was experiencing some ‘sibling rivalry’ being played out in the business. The father was approaching retirement and was seeking to hand over to one of his sons.
The sons had worked in various roles across the business, slowly taking on more responsibility. As dad’s retirement date approached, the competition between the sons became more intense. Bickering, power struggles, undermining and a failure to agree on key decisions was the norm.
The leadership team provided feedback to the family that the behaviours were destabilising progress and holding the business back. They realised they needed to find a different approach and asked us to help. We supported the family and wider leadership team through our tailored partner alignment program. The sons developed an understanding of their strengths and preferred ways of working. It became clear that one of the sons’ skills and engaging style would make them an ideal MD whilst the other was much more suited to running the operations standardisation across the regions.
The result was they no longer felt the need to compete as they had clearly defined roles and responsibilities in-line with their strengths. Neither felt they were missing out and they were now sharing fairly in the success going forward.
Within six months, the wider team reported that they were able to focus on servicing their clients and growing the business rather than the infighting. There was a noticeable lift in energy in head office.