Posts

,

Parenting & Family Business Leadership

Many people throughout history have worn both the “family-business-leader” hat and the “parent” hat simultaneously.

A certain percentage of them have excelled in both roles, some have been much better at one than the other, and still others never really mastered either.

Of course there are plenty of areas where the things one does in one area will undoubtedly have an effect on the other, because it is virtually impossible to separate the roles completely.

And just as I noted above, where some people excel at both, others at neither, and many at one at the expense of the other, the same can be said about certain actions that one takes while playing these roles.

There are many trade-offs where it seems clear that working late and missing your kid’s soccer game is a plus for the business and a minus for the family, or the reverse is true if you leave early to make it to the game but don’t finish that important order.

I like to think that the best thing that I can do as a family business advisor is to point out the situations that are in fact a lose/lose, and help families avoid them, and also point out the possible win/win situations, and help families exploit those.

It sounds simple when put that way, but simple and easy are NOT synonyms.

Interestingly, the two examples of the lose/lose variety that arise most often are opposite sides of the same coin, and they have to do with how we treat our kids and value their input.

On the one hand, there are lots of examples of parents who spoil their children with easy, high-paying jobs, with low expectations of performance. This is not great business leadership, nor is it great parenting.

The other side of that coin also occurs rather frequently, and it looks like this: The kids work really hard, are underpaid, are ready to take over the business, but they are never given the reins, because the parents are not ready to let go. Once again, the business suffers, and so does the family.

It all comes down to finding the correct balance, just like Goldilocks. We don’t want the porridge that is too hot because it will burn our tongue, and the cold porridge is just, well, yucky.

So what is the secret to finding that balance? Part of it is simply recognizing that you are playing both the role of the parent and of the family business leader. But that clearly isn’t enough, because as we just saw, you can actually screw up on both simultaneously.

Besides recognizing that you are playing two roles, it is important to think about your perspective, and to compare and contrast that perspective in two major ways.

First, look at the way you are acting in the two roles from a TIME perspective, and think back to when you were the age that your children are at now, and how you were treated and would have wanted to be treated.

Then look ahead to when your children will be at the age you are at now, and consider your relationship with your parents. If that is too extreme, think back ten years, and then ten years ahead.

After doing the time perspective exercise, simply take a moment to reflect on how you see things, and imagine how the other family members see things from their point of view, today. I will guarantee that if you ask them if they see things the same way that you do, you will be in for at least one or two surprises.

The key word in that last sentence is “if”, as in “if you ask them”. In my experience, few family business leaders will actually take the time to ask their children how they see things.

Yes, I know that you are the one running the show, and all your hard work is what got you here. Congratulations.

But do you have the courage to ask your children how they see things? You may be surprised with what you learn.

 

/by
, ,

Life Is Finite. Deal with It.

Sometimes a provocative title just feels right. This one came to me last week, upon learning of the death of a one-time friend of who passed away a few weeks ago.

This brought to two the number of friends in their early 50’s that I lost in 2015, and I was a bit shook up by the news. Both were men for whom I had a great deal of respect and admiration, and both left a few teenagers fatherless.

As a father of two teens, in my early fifties, I feel like there is something here for me to think about, write about, and do something about. I have already started the thinking, and I am currently doing the writing, soon will come the time to start doing the doing.

I know that few people like to be told what to do, so I long ago tried to abandon that method of persuasion. And while I appreciate the importance of thinking, contemplating, and planning, that will only take you so far. The results anyone gets in life usually come back to the ACTIONS that they have taken.

In December of each year, my executive coach, Melissa, encourages her clients to think of one word that they will use to guide them for the next year, kind of like a theme to pursue. Last week I emailed her to tell her that my word for 2016 will be ACTION.

Please notice that I did not title this blog post “Life is finite, think about it”, or “Life is finite, write about it”. I specifically chose the expression “Deal with it”, for a couple of reasons.

The first reason is that it is meant to be provocative, and be noticed. But more than that, I hope that people will take the actions required to properly deal with the reality that everyone’s days on earth are numbered.

“Deal with it” has become almost a throw-away line, akin to “get over it”, and there is also that element that I am going for. But I am also hoping that the action of dealing with it will begin to happen, at least for some of my readership.

Since last summer, Tom, my long time friend and the brother I never had, who also plays the role of non-family member of our family council, has been pestering me about updating my will. Initially, it was, “yes, after the summer, when the kids are back in school.” He continues to pester me, but that is on me, not him.

They say that leaders go first, so I am hereby committing to undertaking my personal will review and updating in 2016-Q1, and until such time as I have completed it, I shall not push others to do so. I do promise to write again about the experience, in ways that can hopefully again encourage others to follow suit.

In the meantime, if you have not yet picked up and read “Willing Wisdom”, by my friend Tom Deans, that is as good a place to begin as any. Deans believes, as I do, that not only should your will be up-to-date, but that its contents should be shared with the family.

Sometimes people refer to themselves as “thought leaders” (kinda makes me laugh sometimes), so I will try to be an “action leader” on this.

Let me leave you with one major thought: Talking about sex never got anyone pregnant, and talking about money never made anybody rich (or poor, for that matter). So can we please stop acting like talking about death will kill you?

Ideally, after you die, your family will be sad and they will miss you. The grief should be plenty for them to deal with. Please take the time to make sure that everything else is in order, and spare them having to also deal with a big mess that you could have (and should have) taken care of in advance.

If you are fortunate enough to be part of a family that owns a business or has significant wealth, then this is even more important.

Now is the time to Deal With It.

 

/by

Procrastinating or Preparing?

Procrastinating or Preparing?

Most weeks I write my blog post on Saturday, and sometimes even on Friday. I am just starting to write this post on Sunday, and the late NFL games are already on, so I am clearly behind schedule.

The title of this piece is “borrowed” from the name of a report that EY (Ernst & Young) just published, but I changed the order of the words.

It would be nice if I could honestly say that I put off writing this in order to really “feel” the procrastinating part, but that would be disingenuous on my part. I just plain did not feel inspired, and I had other things to take care of. I even went and visited my mother.

Why is it always so easy to put off doing important things? Well lots of times it’s because we are too busy doing things that seem more urgent. It really is an easy trap to fall into.

Hey, my Mom’s computer mouse died, and I am kind of her go-to tech guy, and she deserves to be able to use her computer whenever she wants to, so I had to go and install a new mouse for her, like, today.

Back to the EY report, which is called “Preparing or Procrastinating” and which is all about “How the world’s largest family businesses undertake successful successions”, as the secondary title says.

They surveyed over 500 of the largest family businesses in a total of over 20 countries and asked them how they handle the important task of succession. They worked with researchers from Kennesaw State University, who have a strong reputation in Family Business.

From their survey results, they have compiled a number of separate reports, and they are all available on their website. They have really been doing a nice job in this space with great content lately. I guess that with over 200,000 employees worldwide, it should not be unexpected that they put out high quality stuff.

This report talks about some of the things that successful families are doing to make sure that the generational transfer of the business is done well.

They list four main things that their survey respondents had in common, the assumption being that if these big family businesses did these things, and succeeded in becoming big businesses, then a lot of smaller family companies could benefit from following in their footsteps and emulating them.

I won’t get into all four of their points, but want to highlight the first one: Clearly define who is responsible for succession.

This is my favourite because it is not that obvious. If you don’t think that succession is YOUR responsibility, then you really aren’t procrastinating, you’re just being ignorant or oblivious.

But succession doesn’t just happen by itself, and it is not an event, it is a process. And ideally a long process. And someone needs to make sure that the proper preparation takes place.

It turns out that Board of Directors, at 44%, came out on top in the survey, as far as succession responsibility is concerned. This was followed by “owners/family council” at 23%, and the CEO at 22%. “Other” was at 11%.

Now I know that just about every family business, no matter how big or small, has a CEO, even if they don’t use that title. But how many have a board of directors, or a family council? A lot fewer.

Preparing for succession, which I actually prefer to call “Continuity Planning”, is important, and it takes time. The longer you wait to start, the harder it is to pull off properly.

If you don’t have a board or a family council, and you are the majority owner, the person responsible for succession is probably the person you see in the mirror.

Oh, and you may be overdue to at least call your mother.

Click here for EY’s Preparing or Procrastinating

/by
, , ,

Getting Brothers on the Same Page

Getting Brothers on the Same Page

This week, I was approached by a colleague about a pair of brothers, who are operating a business together, who are approaching a crossroads. My colleague asked me for some input on what kinds of issues they would be facing, and how he might offer to assist them.

(This made me flash back to a blog from April 2014, about another pair of brothers who worked together).

He didn’t give me too much to go on, and I’m not even sure how much information he had himself, so I will have to fill in some of the blanks with my own assumptions. This is fine because anything I offer here cannot be prescriptive, nor should it be overly directed to the specific facts of their case.

So here is a scenario, including my assumed facts:

Two brothers, in their late 50’s, co-own their company, which they have grown over the past 30 years or so. Both have children, but they are too young to take over right now. “Frank” has a vision of somehow keeping the business in the family, while “Sam” just wants to sell.

As usual, I have many more questions to ask before being able to supply any useful answers. Here are a few that come to mind immediately:

– Are these paths mutually exclusive?

Not necessarily. If Frank has an interest in staying on and eventually bringing his kids into the business, there are certainly ways that this can be done. If Sam wants out, they would need to come to a negotiated agreement on the sale price, including the terms and conditions, which would allow Frank to buy his brother out.

Frank would need to be sure that the leadership and management roles that Sam had assumed would be covered off by someone, and they would need to come up with a financing arrangement that would allow Frank to purchase Sam’s shares over time so as not to put the company at risk.

–  Can the business be run by a non-family member?

If Frank is not the type to run the business by himself and if it will be a number of years before his kids would be ready to assume key roles, the option of hiring professional outside management can also be an interesting idea.

Not all family businesses pass directly from parent to child; often some trusted managers assume top roles for a number of years while the next generation completes their years of preparation to take over the top job.

–  Has an outside buyer been identified?

If an outside purchaser has been identified, a sale of the business, whereby both brothers actually cash out, could be a blessing in disguise. Sam can close the book and move on, and Frank would be free to do as he saw fit with his proceeds.

–  Could Frank help his kid(s) run another business?

Some parents love running a business and long for a relationship with their children in which they can pass on that love to their offspring. But many times the particular business of the parents is not in a field that captures the imagination of their kids.

How about taking the proceeds and finding a business opportunity in a field that the children are attracted to, and helping them start their own business in that area?

–  Where should the brothers begin?

Ideally, Frank and Sam can discuss all of these options before going too far down the road with any particular option.

–  Beware the advisor who only carries a hammer!

Too often, guys like Frank and Sam are not sure where to turn, and they take the first piece of advice that comes their way if it sounds plausible. Remember the saying about a man who only has a hammer, who looks at everything as if it is a nail?

Business advisors, most of whom specialize in one particular area, are also prone to this type of reflexive advice. For big decisions like these, taking the time to look at ALL of the options makes the most sense.

 

/by

Understanding AND Agreement

Understanding AND Agreement

One of my guilty pleasures is to look at different words, whose meanings are often confused, and to take the time to analyze the subtleties in their differences. Sometimes the consequences of this confusion are humorous, and other times they can be more dramatic.

As you can guess from the title of this post, today’s words are understanding, (the noun, i.e. “an understanding”) and agreement. The two words jumped of the screen at me yesterday during a PowerPoint presentation, so I quickly took a picture of the slide with my phone, and I knew that I had my weekly blog topic.

The context within which this subject came up was a course I was attending in London, as part of the annual FFI (Family Firm Institute) conference. FFI offers a great education program, and this class was part of the final course in the ACFBA vertification. (Advanced Certificate in Family Business Advising).

One of the first slides used outlined the “Core Issues underlying Problems in the Family Enterprise System”. The line below this title stated, “Lack of Understanding / Agreement on:…” , following a list of subjects, including “where are we going”, “what is important to us”, “who does what”, “who is the boss”, etc.

The class was only 6 hours long, and there were plenty of important things to cover in our group of about 20 students from at least 10 different countries, so I did not even feel we had time to address my penchant for parsing the differing meanings of “understanding” versus “agreement” with the group.

But I have this blog as an outlet, where I can do this at my own pace, so I was alright.

We can take a few examples right from the slide. In a family business, some family members may not have an understanding of where they are going, and that is an issue worth addressing. Other families may understand perfectly well where they are going, but that doesn’t mean that they agree with the direction!

Along the same lines, a family may “understand” full well “who is the boss”, while completely disagreeing on the choice of that person. I hate to think of how often this is true in real life.

The two examples so far may lead one to believe that understanding must always precede agreement. After all, how can you agree on something without first understanding it? In a logical world, this thinking makes perfect sense.

But we are looking at the world of family business, where logic is often absent. The people who inhabit this world are usually so immersed within it, that they do not even realize how illogical it can be, and they operate on a day-to-day basis not even seeing how some things that others take for granted are completely missing.

My point here is that many family businesses will operate for years (or even decades) based upon full agreement on questions about “who is the boss” and “where are we going”, without having even a basic “understanding” about the underlying questions like “why”.

They will agree to go along, without the foggiest notion of where they are going. They may not care, they may not think they will be told the truth, they may not think that their questions will be deemed worthy of a response, or someone may be deliberately misleading them about these answers. (Or they may ALL be clueless).

Yesterday’s course was called “The Professional’s Toolbox”, and was designed to equip us with tools that we can use with enterprising families. We looked at ways to help them figure out “where they are going” and “how they planned to get there”.

And I also wanted to add my observations about the importance of having everyone agree on the answers, but also to understand the answers.

Or was it that it is important to understand the answers, and then agree on them?

In a perfect world, they all understand AND agree. That should be the goal. We want to have both the chicken AND the egg.

 

 

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.

 

/by
,

There Is No “Rewind” Button

Those Hollywood movies that involve the ability to go back or forward in time rarely catch my interest, to the point where I would be hard pressed to name one and say anything good about it. Whether it be a romantic comedy or a sci-fi thriller, I just cannot suspend my disbelief long enough to make it work in my head.

In the same way, if you ask me the proverbial “if you could do it all over again” question, you would probably have to push me pretty hard to get me to say anything besides “I wouldn’t change anything”.

When it comes to looking to the future, I must admit that I have a tendency to start to plan a few steps ahead of everyone else, and it drives my wife crazy. It isn’t always easy to “stay present”, but when you think about, that’s where everything happens.

The title of this post refers to an expression that I often use when talking to families about where they are, and how they got there. Some members have difficulty letting go of their feelings about past events, when someone else “wronged” them.

If we did have that Hollywood “Rewind” button, things would be so much simpler, right? You could just press the button and that stupid thing you said, that accident that you had, that decision that you made a bit too quickly, could all be erased, and you could go back and make things better.

I have not found that button anywhere, and I don’t think anyone outside of Hollywood has either.

One of the problems with dwelling on the past is that it often allows old feelings to stay with you well beyond the point where they are useful or helpful to you. This happens way too frequently with people in a family business, whether it is between siblings, or among members of different generations.

Let me address this issue of “useful” and “helpful” a bit more. If someone says something or does something that you don’t like, it is can be very helpful to remember it in the short term, because your immediate response and reaction should keep these recent events in mind, for your own good.

But twenty years after your sister said something off the cuff that was meant as a joke, you may want to cut her a bit of slack if she has otherwise not been mean to you. (If she could hit “rewind”, knowing how much it hurt you, she just might.)

Many years ago, Dad may have told someone that he did not think you had what it takes to follow in his footsteps, and maybe you weren’t even supposed to hear it. Letting that affect you and hold you back ten years later is not very helpful. If you have been making great progress, and even if he never complimented you on it, well, that just might be his style and his way of keeping you hungry.

Too many business families get “stuck” and have trouble moving forward because some family members are still dwelling on things that happened many years in the past. These people often tend to blame others for their misfortunes, and think about how “if only” something else had taken place, they would be much happier today.

There is no Rewind button. You can’t go back and change the past. Sorry, this ain’t Hollywood.

So what can you do? Today really is the first day of the rest of your life, and only you can make the rest of it better. If you can start to change your attitude, and focus on how you can help yourself TODAY, you can start to move in the right direction, day by day.

And please don’t start looking for the Fast-Forward button, because that doesn’t exist either.

(I will tackle the Fast Forward button in next week’s blog.)

/by

Lessons from Estée Lauder

I recently read a very brief piece on Estee Lauder, who was described as a “family business icon” by the Family Firm Institute (FFI). They also stated that her motto was “I have never worked a day in my life without selling. If I believe in something, I sell it, and I sell it hard.”

I found her motto very interesting, especially the second sentence, where she mentions selling something in which she truly believes. Obviously if you do not believe in what you are selling, it is very difficult to do a good job of selling it.

It also struck me because the word “sell” has a variety of meanings and connotations, which have also evolved over the decades since she likely came up with her motto. And as someone who despises coming across as a “salesman”, it forced me to think through her motto to try to find a way to make it work for me.

There is also the part about the difference between selling a product like cosmetics versus selling a professional service, like family business advising. The sales and marketing contexts and processes are very different. But I was determined to find the “gold” in her motto in a way that could be useful to me.

As a solo practitioner, what I am selling is myself, in many ways, and some people are over-the-top when they talk about themselves, while others are “under-the-bottom”, if you will allow me to invent such an awkward antonym.

Since I am someone who lives at the lower end of this scale, it is always a stretch for me to “sell myself”. When someone seems to be trying to hard to “sell me”, it is a huge turn-off, so I naturally assume that others also hate this tactic, and I try to avoid it, and sometimes I try too hard, to my detriment.

Back to Lauder’s motto, though, she states “if I believe in something, I sell it”. She did not say somebody, so for me, the take-home message is to focus less on the “who” and more on the “what”.

For those of you who are regular readers (thanks!) you may recall that a few weeks ago I wrote about “who I am” being more relevant and important than “what I do”, so the trick is to try to find the right balance, and to come up with the proper messaging of what I can to do help business families, along with the personal branding of the guy who delivers those services.

I am so much more comfortable selling an IDEA, as opposed to myself, but I also understand quite clearly that nobody would buy the stuff that I am selling if they were not convinced that I am someone that they can trust to work with some of their most precious valuables, the members of their family.

When speaking with others who do this work, I often bring up the phrase “spreading the gospel”, so allow me to attempt to lay out what this gospel is, because that is what needs to be sold.

Let’s start with a tag line that I recently came up with, which is still a work-in-progress:   “I help business families turn their transition dreams into a workable plan”.

For a family, this is hard work, and if they don’t start early, learn to work together, and have the crucial conversations that they need to have to do the work well, there are lots of negative consequences that will likely arise, not just for the business, but also for the family.

Very few if any families will undertake this work on their own, without professional external advisors. We do exist, but the families are not always “ready” for the hard work to begin, often until it is nearly too late.

If you are such a family, or if you currently advise such a family in another professional capacity, please reach out to start a no obligation conversation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

/by

OSFM: One Size Fits Most

During one of my too-frequent hotel stays this summer, I noticed a bathrobe hanging in the closet of my room, and there was something about it that struck me. There was a tag sewn into it, with the letters “OSFM”.

This set my “blog antenna” into action, as usual, as I wondered at first what those letters stood for, and then after my “A-Ha” moment when it dawned on me, the antenna kept vibrating until I had come up with a way to tie this into my work with business families.

As the title of this post has already given away, OSFM stands for One Size Fits Most. True enough, for most people, the robe in the closet would fit. For those who know me, you have already figured out that I am one of the exceptions. So be it.

There was probably a time in decades past when the more all-encompassing term “One-Size-Fits-All” would have been used, but either through a realisation or some sort of legal threats, the robe makers re-stated the case to “most”, which is surely more accurate.

So what does this have to do with family business?

All business families rely on outside advice from professionals of one kind or another, even though most really do not enjoy the process. They will usually try to limit these occasions as much as possible, wanting to minimize costs and what they often perceive as non-family people trying to influence things that are too close to home, and none of their business.

But here is where the downside of this comes in. Because of this reluctance to allow outsiders to truly get to know and really help their family, what ends up happening far too frequently, is that these advisors will “recycle” solutions that they have used for other families.

The family ends up with a solution that probably does fit MOST families. But it will not always fit THEIR family.

The advisors themselves can be part of the problem as well, if they do not know how to ask the right questions of the family leaders, or if their accounting or legal practice is set up in a way where cranking through a file as quickly possible so you can get to the next one and send out another invoice is part of the culture.

Inter-generational transitions are complex, and few professionals understand all the pieces of the puzzle and how they fit together.

When the lawyer works on his part, the accountant on hers, the wealth managers on theirs, and the tax specialist on hers, the client will often end up with what they believe to be a great plan.

The problem is that they can live with that feeling for many years before anyone learns the truth and that the pieces did not fit together very well at all. Not only will the one size not fit the family, it would not fit ANY family. Unless that family wanted a robe with different sleeve lengths, a non-matching belt, and polka dot elbow patches.

The complex planning that goes into the business or wealth transition from one generation of a family to the next MUST be a coordinated activity.

There is more and more recognition of the need for one of the advisors to have the “inter-disciplinary fluency” (term coined by Dean Fowler, I believe) to coordinate the process among the professionals.

“One size fits most” might be good enough for a lot of families, but I don’t think you truly believe that it is the best that you can do for YOUR family.

No professional will be able to truly be of service if you don’t both take the time required to work through a proper plan from A to Z.

And if you end up hiring someone who doesn’t fit into the hotel’s bathrobe, that’s OK too.

 

/by

Transition Planning: No Day at the Beach

We are in the dog days of August, and I am currently at our cottage, just trying to unplug a bit. We are experiencing unseasonably hot weather here on the Atlantic coast, so I am thankful for the air conditioning system we had installed in our new place.

The other day we went to the beach, an easy 5-minute drive, or a leisurely 20-minute kayak paddle via the Chockpish River. It was really hot that day too, but the water was great, even if I only waded in knee-deep.

So what better time for me to unveil a recent evolution of one of my favourite analogies, which just happens to involve a beach?

I say it is an evolution, but I am not sure that is the correct word. My point is that I have often used a swimming metaphor to describe one of the differences between my father and me.

He had much more impulsive tendencies, and was often tempted to dive right “into the deep end” of the pool with new ideas, while I preferred to “get my feet wet”, and then walk progressively deeper into the water, slowly but surely, like at the beach.

I am sure that I am not the only person who uses a “phased in” process of going for a swim at the beach. In my younger days, my preferred entry was to run into the water and dive in as soon as the water was deep enough to safely take the headfirst plunge.

Ten to fifteen seconds, and I was in, soaking wet and cooled off from head to toe.

Nowadays, my entrance is much more relaxed, and there are even a few discernable stages:

– Walk in slowly, up to about my hips.

After getting used to the water temperature around my nether regions for a couple of minutes…

– Wade in a bit deeper, slowly but surely getting in up to about my armpits or shoulders.

After another body temperature adjustment phase…

– Finally taking that final step, diving in head first and finally being “all in”.

I promised you an analogy, which I haven’t forgotten, and as regular readers know, I like to tie things in to issues that business families are living through.

But please recognize that while I was working my way IN to the water, the image I want you to picture is someone working their way OUT of their business.

The 180-degree switch will admittedly change the perspective, but let’s concentrate of the three phases, because that is where the value of this comes in.

My view on the exit of a founder from his or her business also has three crucial steps:

  • Handing over day-to-day Management
  • Turning over the long-term Leadership
  • Transferring all of the Ownership

You could imitate the teenage me, and do all three at once, getting it over with as quickly as possible, but these complete transfer “events” are most often associated with scenarios involving unexpected death, and would not be recommended by anyone.

Alternatively, if you sell to an outsider, you can also have a much quicker exit.

But transitioning a business from one generation of a family to the next should not be viewed as an event, but as a process.

Ideally it is done over a few years (minimum 5?) one step at a time, just like gradually walking into the ocean at the beach.

– Knee-deep is handing over day-to-day management.

– Shoulder depth is leadership and medium-term decision- making.

– The final plunge is share ownership from one generation to the next.

There are no hard and fast rules to all of this, of course, but open communication and thorough discussions, including regularly scheduled meetings to discuss your progress are a must.

For more about this subject, including a variety of perspectives on the challenges involved, please click here to read, download, and share:

“Sticky Baton Syndrome – Ask Prince Charles”

(The most recent “whitepaper” in my Quick Start Guide Series)

 

/by

I’m Not the Only One

Last week I mentioned that I had attended a Sam Smith concert in Colorado with my daughter, and then this week in Toronto I was attending a course where one of the instructors was talking about a client who had had an “A-Ha” moment, which culminated in the woman exclaiming “I’m not the only one!”

If you are not a fan of Sam Smith, allow me to explain why I found this relevant; “I’m not the only one” is the title of one of Smith’s first hit songs, so the timing of this exclamation makes this mandatory blog material for me.

Smith’s voice is incredible and I love his songwriting too, but they will only serve as the intro to this week’s blog.

My stay in Toronto turned out to be very interesting and will certainly be quite useful to me going forward, helping me to do a better job of engaging client families in the difficult work they need to do around the subject of transitioning their businesses to the next generation.

I spent four full days with a couple dozen people who were attending the course,“The Role of the Most Trusted Advisor” given by BDO and their SuccessCare Program.

SuccessCare is the brainchild of Grant Robinson, who teamed up with Daphne McGuffin in the late 1990’s, and they have been working non-stop ever since, “training competitors” to help spread the word about how important this work is for families to plan and execute their generational transitions.

McGuffin was relating a story about an event where they were explaining the importance of getting families to have the crucial conversations required to put the issues on the table so they can be dealt with.

One woman, after hearing other people ask questions about their own situations, which had some remarkable similarities to what she had been living through (silently), suddenly exclaimed, in a joyful voice, “I’m not the ONLY one”.

How nice it is to realize that others are going through the same difficult dilemmas that we are.

More often than not, people in business families imagine that their situations are unique. In one way they are, of course. No two family situations are identical; the sheer number of permutations and combinations of children, in-laws, birth order, gender, etc. are enough to guarantee that, and we have not even factored in any business issues.

But even though the family is unique, and the business is unique, and their ownership structure may also be unique, that does NOT mean that the issues they are faced with are also unique.

The obstacles that business families face when working through their inter-generational transitions are very predictable, and they have been for hundreds of years.

It is a huge undertaking, filled with complexity, and the stakes are high. Not only that, it is NOT something that you get to do over and over again until you get it right; it is kind of a “one off”.

The good news is (you knew that I would get to the good news, didn’t you?) that there are people out there who have been down this road before, who know the ropes, and who can help you.

And more and more of them have been trained to help families work on the subject in ways that address the family’s unique circumstances, desires, and goals.

They are being trained by great people, through SuccessCare (now part of BDO), and IFEA (Institute of Family Enterprise Advisors) and FFI (Family Firm Institute).

Their programs are all a bit different, but what they have in common is that they recognize a few key points:

  • Every family is unique
  • A multi-disciplinary team of advisors is best
  • Transitions take years to undertake properly

The key is for the family to find the right person to lead them through process. There are people who can help, and “I know I’m not the only one”.

 

/by