Element of Succession Planning

The professionalization of business should be considered as one of most crucial elements of a successful succession plan. The sooner professionalization process is recognized as a strategic objective for family business, better odds are for successful generational transition for family business.

For example, my personal experience indicates that family business founders / owners are generally much better than professional managers in dealing with problems associated with risk and growth because they are stakeholder - it is their money being spent.

The founder/owner also tends to be more intuitive about business decisions because he/ she personally knows vendors and customers and more humanistic because they tend to personally know individual employees as well as personal situations of employees.

As business organization grows and matures, founder/owner typically becomes less visible and less involved in day to day workings of business. The usual trend is toward involving more "professional managers" (these can be family members or non family employees) who generally tend to be more bureaucratic and less personal in management style. As a result, individual members or factions of management. team functionally polarize between "personal" and "rational" approaches to solving even most simple management issues.

For family business owner, these differences can become a crisis issue involving basic family goals and business objectives: Are we a "business first" family or a "family first" business?

Outside Advice Sought

It is generally at this point when founder/owner seeks objective advice of an "outsider" because founder/owner is unable to get resolution of this dilemma from within family and within business organization.

Without resolution, management consensus will not he attained, and, as a result, business will produce a lot of expensive "commotion" but very little "locomotion" towards happiness of family and growth and prosperity of business.

... they shall be known by their weekend...

For Depression-influenced, pre-occupation with food and shelter led to a strong work ethic. Long hours, whatever it took to get job done. Weekends were more work, if not at a job, then looking after food and shelter. Younger members of this group didn't have much technology at work, so it was "all nighters" and long weekends at work to get out reports and analyses that job demanded for "better management."

Boomers worked hard, but their increasing affluence and consumption led them to start defining weekend: A beer on Friday night with guys from work; Saturday for kids activities; Saturday night neighborhood / friends socializing; Sunday around house for fixing and tv sports.

Gen X want a life beyond work so they demand more weekend. Shooters on Thursday night with men and women from work - joined by friends, friends of friends...

Gen Y's, with their digital world orientation of 24/7/365 probably won't know weekend from weekday, or weekday from weeknight.

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Humor aside, can a family business come up with policies to motivate and incent and reward people with such different attitudes and values? Probably not. But just recognizing differences is a good start.

And there are some other strategies that might also help.

Regularly survey employee opinions. Deal with negative. Celebrate positive. Show employees that their opinions do matter. Celebrating something positive is one good reason to promote opportunities for employees to socialize - use others also. Emphasize business' vision and mission, and its culture. Ensure they know how their job fits into whole picture and that they know they are important to business - don't assume they know - tell them!. A regular performance review process that includes these issues is a must. Recognize employees immediately who do things that show awareness and are consistent with those values. Look for ways to make life easier for your employees - flexible hours, transportation assistance, child care facilities or subsidies - they are busy as parents and care-givers as well as employees. Encourage your employees to share and show your sense of community and respect for environment. Recognizing differences in attitudes and values amongst your employees helps you to meet their needs. This helps you attract and retain best. Your customers, your employees and your family business all win. PS A really great bonus is that most of things you can do here cost you little or nothing in financial capital - they come from emotion and intellect, not your bank account!