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Québecois, mais aussi canadien, et nord-americain

Je suis né à Montréal en 1964. Mes parents, étants arrivés au Canada durnat les années 1950, ont appris la langue de la majorité du pays, l’anglais. Chez nous, en plus d’un dialecte de l’allemand, c’était en anglais qu’on se parlait.

En septembre 1970, j’ai commencé ma première année à l’école Ste-Odile, à Cartierville, en français. Mes grandes soeurs, elles, étaient à Transfiguration of our Lord, en anglais. J’ai pleuré tout l’été, sachant que je serai forcé à débuter mes études dans une langue que je ne connaissait pas.

Avec une quarantaine d’années de recul, je constate que c’était une bonne décision de la part de mes parents. Mon père était homme d’affaires, et il voyait que pour son fils, ça serait pas seulement un atout, mais une nécessité d’être bilingue au Québec. La crise d’octobre qui est survenu à peine un mois plus tard lui avait confirmé la pertinence de sa décision.

Revenons au présent. La réalité est que le fait d’être bilingue (ou même multilingue) est un plus. Je n’entrerai pas dans le discours de certains, qui craignent la disparition du français au Québec, je n’y crois pas. Je reconnais leur passion, mais je ne suis pas de ceux qui croient que c’est en mettant des restrictions sur les autre langues qu’on fait la promotion de la nôtre.

Aujourd’hui je suis marié avec une francophone aussi bilingue que moi, et nos deux enfants sont encore plus bilingues que nous. Nous bénéficions des cultures des deux côtés, et même encore un peu de celle de mes parents immigrants.

Mais encore plus que la culture, je remarque d’autres différences entre les Québecois et le reste de l’Amérique du Nord. Je parlerai d’un seul secteur, mais je suis certain qu’il existe des parallèles dans plusieurs autres.

Dans le domaine des entreprises familiales, dans les années 1980, notre compagnie s’est joint à CAFÉ, le Canadian Association for Family Enterprise. Cette organisme existe toujours partout au Canada, sauf au Québec.

Au québec depuis quelques années le CIFA (Centre International des Familles en Affaires) existe, mais autant que son but est d’aider les familles en affaires, son rôle ne réunit pas les familles comme membres, qui peuvent ensuite s’entraider, ce que CAFÉ a toujours bien fait.

Sur le côté éducation, je suis présentement inscrit au FEAP (Family Enterprise Advisor Program). Ce programme développé par l’University of British Columbia, est maintenant administré par IFEA (Institute of Family Enterprise Advisors). En plus du UBC, le FEAP sera bientôt offert en Alberta, en Ontario à Western et à Dalhousie à Halifax. Montréal? Pas encore.

Mais agrandissons l’échelle encore une fois. Au États-Unis le FFI (Family Firm Institute) existe depuis 1986. Cet organisme est dédié à tous les professionnels qui font affaires avec les entreprises familiales. Il existe un chapitre au Canada, en Ontario, sans surprise.

Le monde devient de plus en plus petit. Il y a plusieurs bons modèles ailleurs qui pourraient être copiés ici au Québec, mais nous n’avons pas nécessairement l’échelle pour garantir leur survie.
Par contre, pour ceux qui parlent anglais, ce monde est aussi ouvert à eux. J’en profite. J’espère que d’autres feront pareil. Le monde est petit, mais il est aussi grand.

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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“I don’ trust him. I don’t know why, I just don’t”

Trust is something that can be very difficult to put your finger on. It is hard to define, and sometimes when it isn’t there, you aren’t entirely sure why.

In a family business context, trust is something that can take on an even more important role than elsewhere. Due to the complex nature of the beast, where traditional company relationships are intertwined with personal family history, trust issues can develop in many areas.

This week I came across an interview with Peter Leach, a family business consultant from the UK, in which he talks about respect and trust in the family business realm. I really liked that last couple of minutes of it, where he broke trust down into 3 main elements.

He credits Barbara Misztal, a respected author on the subject, for her work in analyzing how and where trust can fall apart. The three elements, ALL of which MUST be present for trust to exist, are: Sincerity, Reliability, and Competence.

Sincerity is all about doing things for the right reason, and caring about what you do. Reliability is doing what you said you were going to do, when you said you were going to do it. And competence is doing your job properly and at an acceptable quality level.

The absence of any one of these elements can lead to trust problems.

In new realtionships, it is often difficult to detect sincerity issues, since they can be concealed for a time. Sometimes that used car salesman can seem a little too smooth. But when it is someone in your family, you usually have a good idea of the sincerity component.

When reliability is absent, you have a person who has their heart in the right place, they are good at what they do, but they just can’t seem to deliver on time with any regularity. It’s easy to be disappointed in these situations, because you know the person cares and can do it, but the follow-through just isn’t there.

When competence is absent, you have a caring person who is trying and getting things done, but the things they do just aren’t good enough.

Segmenting trust into these three components becomes useful in situations like that of my headline, where you have trouble putting your finger on “why” there is a lack of trust.

People who work with family businesses often hear stories about various family business members who have trust issues with others in the family. When you take the time to look at the three areas outlined above, often one of the three elements becomes the clear culprit as the main source of the issue.

Once the source of the mistrust has been identified, it becomes easier to work on that element to improve the situation.

If competence is lacking, maybe more training or mentoring can help, or it could just sort itself out with time and experience.

If reliability is lacking, helping the person get and stay organized could be helpful in overcoming the issue. Or maybe just informing the person that their reliability is severely impacting their trustworthyness can do the trick.

When sincerity is lacking, you probably have a bigger problem. It can be hard to make someone care if they are at the point where they clearly don’t. Or if they are cutting corners and trying to fly under the radar and take the easy way out, those situations are not as easily remedied.

Problems of trust are not easy to overcome, but by taking the time to break things down into these three elements, at least you can figure out where you should start. Good luck.

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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Nothing Succeeds Like Succession

Succession is a huge subject in the realm of family business. It is literally a subject about which complete books have been written. I just want to touch on one particular aspect of it here, because it is too often overlooked.

A lot of time and effort is usually required in order to make sure that a succession is well planned and executed. The process often takes years, as it should when you think about all that is at stake.

When you are looking at your family business and how you are going to hand it over to the next generation, getting it right so that the business will contine to be successful for generations to come is complex and fraught with all kinds of potential stumbling blocks.

Last year I wrote a blog about the difference between “family businesses” and “business families”. There are important distinctions here, and this is precisely where the complications come in.

My premise is that far too often, a great deal of effort is placed into making sure that the business succession is successful, and very little effort is made into making sure the family succession has been handled effectively.

Maybe it is because the business is easier to look at in quantitative terms. The business is still profitable, is still growing, and is still a leader even after the next generation has taken control. Wonderful and congratulations, it is not an easy accomplishment and likely took a great deal of planning and effort to make it so.

I only hope that everyone in your family sees it as the success that the professionals who helped make it happen do.

I believe that the succession of the business is wonderful, but only if it does not happen at the expense of a successful succession of the business family.

This week I listened to an interview with James E. Hughes Jr., who is seen as a guru in the field of family wealth preservation and whose books are now at the top of my reading list. He makes a distinction between the transfer of wealth and the gift of wealth.

The parallel that I am drawing is that the transfer is that of the business, whereas the gift is more about the whole family. Hughes has seen his share of situations where the transfer was emphasized and likely seen as a success by most, but the gift was not made in a fashion anywhere near its potential.

I am still very much a neophyte in the space of family business consulting, as I have only recently begun moving away from managing my own family office and into helping other business families with their transition and succession issues.

But when I hear veterans of the space, or read their books, or follow their courses, I am very much inspired that I have found my sweet spot. I have lived many of the situations that they speak about either through my own family or my wife’s, or through others who work with family businesses on a regular basis.

Too often people are guided by professionals who are well-meaning and knowledgeable, but whose solutions have negative consequences that just aren’t understood. It is relatively easy to find specialists to help you save taxes or set up a trust for your grandchildren.

What is harder to find is someone to help you work through all these proposed solutions and examine their consequences to your FAMILY first, and then only your business.

I believe that the success of your succession should be viewed first by your successors’ ability to succeed. Whether the business is even involved at all at that point should be a secondary consideration.

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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