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.”

I am a second-generation family member working at the company that my father started. I remember over a decade ago, when I was asked by the family to be the President of the company, how difficult it was to function in that capacity because of the lack of respect. …and it wasn’t because I was not respectable.

I found that I had to work longer hours, be more proactive in the face of challenges, take more personal financial risks (which turned out to be disastrous for my family), be more committed to the company and totally involved in order to gain any traction with the employees, vendors, customers and other business partners. In addition to all this dancing, I found that I could never make a mistake.

Things eventually settled down and the company progressed smoothly for four years of our five-year plan. At the beginning of the fifth year things started to go sideways because of disagreements about the direction of the company within the immediate family. This became exhausting, discouraging, and debilitating! I functioned in the capacity of President for five years and discovered that I had to move on to other things to avoid complete and total burnout.*

I had been around the company since I was a young boy. I don’t have a memory of my father when he wasn’t involved with his business. He worked horribly long hours, especially when starting his business. I am the oldest son, and being such, have been around from the beginning. I’ve seen the hours my father spent dealing with some uncaring, unconnected, undisciplined, and “lazy” employees and the aftermath of the stupid decisions they made.

Many of his employees who had been with him from the beginning knew me as a young boy. I would hang around the company because I wanted to be around my father. Most of these employees saw me as a nuisance. On occasion, he would treat me to a bottle of soda out of the soda machine on the company’s dime when all others had to pay. I would also ask numerous questions of almost everyone because I was very curious about what commanded so much of my father’s time and attention. Unfortunately, these employees could not see me in any other way when I started my new position as President with all the responsibility that accompanied it. They still saw me as the little eight-year-old pest who received special treatment.

What his employees didn’t see was the other side of his business. They saw nice, quiet eight-hour workdays, great benefits, and an employer that fussed over them more than he should have. When my father semi-retired and shrunk his business, he was so disappointed that none of his former employees kept in touch with him. He had always treated them like members of the family, sometimes better. This was the source of many arguments and disagreements he and my mother have had over the years as well as much of the resentment my siblings and I held toward him and his business.

My father never understood that his employees were just people. People who were self-centered and selfish like most people. He never understood that his employees worked at his business—not because they were his friends or family members—but because the positions they filled kept a roof over their heads and put food on their tables. It suited them at that particular time. I remember him always taking it personally when an employee would leave his company for something that fit their situation better.

I’ve seen all the ugliness of his business. All of the time and attention diverted from my mother, my siblings, and me. I experienced all of the worries and all of the sleepless nights he had. Non-family members never saw this side of his business. Of course, all I felt was the time and attention that wasn’t showered on me but on someone else. It took too many years for me to understand that my father was just doing the very best he knew how to provide for his family. It has been a blessing for all of us that he is as talented as he is at what he does.

I still work with my father, however, rather than sixty-seven to eighty employees, we have only five. This alone has simplified what we do tremendously. We are lucky that we were able to find a way out of the jungle we had created. Our relationship as father and son is probably closer than it has ever been.

Family Business Rule : If they aren’t family, don’t treat them like family. Maintain boundaries! It will simplify your life and everything about your business!

*(A personal note here, because I wanted to get out of the position so badly, I made some very stupid decisions that ultimately lead my family into personal bankruptcy. However, that pain and sense of emptiness of never being able to satisfy the demands placed on me by all of the non-family members, but especially my family, still lingers. My wife and our children have paid a very high price for me trying to satisfy the rigors of my father’s business. In the end, after all of the dust has settled, I wonder if the price was just too high personally. My family and I are beginning to recover from the personal emotional and financial devastation that all bankruptcies bring. Life goes on. …but what an education I received!)

All material COPYRIGHT© 2008, Russell R. Bethers, Offpoint, Inc., USA
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