"I AM " is Reportedly the Shortest Sentence in the English Language... Could It Be that "I DO " is the Longest Sentence?" - George Carlin
by Ira Bryck, Director, UMass Family Business Center (more at umass.edu/fambiz)
Even at 55, I can recall most of my dozens of college roommates, and what I enjoyed or detested about our tenancies. It was a diverse group, but I hate to admit that a surprising degree of my satisfaction does correlate with what colleges claim are the only 2 telling factors of roommate fulfillment: neatness and noise level.
As I recall, even the rowdy slobs felt I was a wonderful roommate. (My wife notes that none of them married me, so she gets credit for putting her money where her mouth is.) Aside from me being born of neat freaks that know how to use inside voices, I think there are other qualities that contribute to one’s success with strange bedfellows, in dorms, hovels, or – you guessed it!- family boardrooms.
Here’s seven select secrets of what I’ve noticed helps family business members sharing close quarters… enough to fill my allotted column inches. (For the full 613, buy me dinner.)
PLAYFULNESS As Timothy Leary noted, the Yanks and Sox each desperately want victory, but if they kill each other, the game is over. When helping business families in conflict, I find if they can keep a semblance of humor, they have the perspective that prevents them from drowning each other. They can agree to count to 10 Mississippi, allowing their brain time to catch up. If you have a fun contest of who can better admit fault, and take responsibility, you will prevent many a bankruptcy and heart attack. If not, see your insurance agent, ASAP, to fund your buy/sell.
APPRECIATION If you were running a sole proprietorship on a desert island, you could take all the credit, but there would be nobody there to applaud except you. Though the Lennon/McCartney partnership was often described as “dynamic tension” they were right in noting that the love you take is equal to the love you make. Marriage authority John Gottman observes that a couple that has less than a 5 positive to 1 negative ratio in their comments is at risk of failure. What will it cost you to look harder for the pluses in your partners? How likely is it that they’ll absorb all your positivity, and reply only with cold pricklies? Get good enough at this that you can stop keeping score!
STRUCTURE As a fan of authenticity, I surprise myself in believing in “fake it till you make it.” But ironically, the least dysfunctional business families that I’ve met have the least resistance to governance, accountability, and policies. The craziest business families push back hardest on structure, and suffer most from lack thereof. There is no guarantee that by enacting best practices that you’ll reach perfection, but you could do worse than clarify the road map, the means of transport, the type of vehicle you’re dealing with, not to mention seat belts, back seat drivers, road rage, etc (to beat the metaphor to death).
LEGACY WITH A TWIST What worked before may work again, but that doesn’t mean you should always be consulting the portrait of dear old dad. If he was so smart, why did he let you run the business? Your pondering may need some tinkering, i.e.: What would dad do, if he weren’t such a cheapskate? What in our past has some clue to how we can overcome today? What can we “benchmark” from the playbook of our historic competitors? Many smart business owners have mentioned that they are in the business of solving problems. Solving implies more than killing the same monster every day. As many have noted, take some time away from firefighting today to figure out fireproofing tomorrow.
DIG UP YOUR GARDEN A while back I ate lunch with a group of garden center owners at a conference I spoke at. I made up a game, which I recommend to you. We went in a circle, starting with me, who said “I’m in the Garden Center business.” The next guy couldn’t say “garden” or “center” so said “I’m in the Relaxation Business.” The next guy also couldn’t say Relaxation, so said “I’m in the Anti-Anxiety Business,” and so on. Then we brainstormed about how to be better purveyors of anti anxiety, color, magic manure, etc.
GET HIGH AND ORDER THE LOBSTER Recently I suggested a business family eat dinner on a monthly basis, and only discuss their most crackpot, lofty, wonderful ideas, that can only be thought through when you stop making the donuts for a while. It’s not like they couldn’t come up with a decade’s worth of topics, but the lack of time, the stressors of partnership, the need to keep fingers in leaky dikes make the ultra practical role of big thinking and high perspectives seem frivolous. But if your company is not successful enough to spare you for 90 minutes and spend $30 on a creativity sparking crustacean, there’s always civil service!
NOBODY’S ALL SET Whenever I hear someone say they or their company are “all set” I worry for them. Nobody’s all set. The world’s oldest family business, Japanese temple builder Kongo Gumi, founded in 578, succumbed to excess debt and a drop in demand for new Buddhist temples in 2006. So a family business that never retracts their antennae, not only to market threats, but to internal disputes in need of mediation, is my kind of company.
Figuring all this out is messy and noisy, even for the most compatible roommates among us; but it’s what you signed up for when you joined the family business.
