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.” (more…)

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. (more…)