I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how my experience has been different from my sons, both of whom work for larger companies. My son Brad is a manager for a national office supply retail chain, the other, Jeff, for a large locally based national carrier. My son Jeff has recently changed jobs and it has been very interesting for me to watch this process from afar. I am somewhat familiar with the circumstances surrounding the family that owns the company he recently left and the family that owns the company where he is headed.

As I watched this process unfold, I was dumbfounded at how arrogant Jeff’s former company behaved. They acted as though they were his only option. Even though he had learned quickly and progressed as far as he could within the local office (unless he was made branch manager) in just 7 ½ months, they thought no one else would have him. He was made to feel that, “Thank goodness for us (the proud and ponderous corporation) or you would be, homeless, starving in the streets!”

This company began what they called a “Boot Camp.” Read the rest of this entry »

Something happened the other day that got me thinking about the experience that I had over a decade ago pulling my father’s company out of Chapter 11 Bankruptcy or “Reorganization” as he liked to call it. He had been in this situation for 4 years when I joined his company. I thought I was joining his company to work as an outside sales representative. I felt that if I could boost revenue that the other challenges he was having would eventually subside. However, he had different plans.

Unbeknownst to me, I was soon introduced as the new payables clerk! I had never worked with creditors and this was to be a great learning experience for me. Things had taken a definite turn for the worse at the company. We needed to get a handle on some persistent problems or boosting revenue would be of no consequence. Read the rest of this entry »

Familistic is a term that all family business owners need to have burned into their conscious.

Familistic : a social pattern in which the family assumes a position of ascendance over individual interests. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition, 2005.

One of the great challenges of owning a family business is the necessity to care for the business so that the business can care for the family. This is especially true when it comes to extended family. Many times they do not have the immediate connection – the risk, stress, sleepless nights, …the sacrifice – one deals with when owning a family business. There seems to be a subtle disconnect that allows the extended family member(s) to float along in an ignorance induced haze. They do not live it 24 hours a day like the immediate family. Read the rest of this entry »

If you are part of the “family” that owns a family business I am sure you have felt overwhelmed by the amount of “dancing” that you must do.

You must dance for your customers, for your vendors, for your financial “business partners,” for the regulatory agencies, for other family members and especially for your employees.

When it comes to your employees, you find that you must dance faster, longer, more enthusiastically, and better than anyone must at the company. In addition, if you are a second-generation family member, you find that there is no amount of dancing, no type of dancing, no pace of dancing, and no quality of dancing that will please some of the employees, customers, vendors or any other of the company’s “business partners.” Read the rest of this entry »