“Zero-Sum” in Family Business

Zero Sums is represented by, or in the case of relationships the "belief" that the gain of one is a loss to another – the perspective of your gain being my loss is evident in business, politics and relationships.

In family businesses it is exceptionally devastating to the achievement of a multi-generational business as well as the sustainability of the family itself. Non-zero-sum or "positive sum" occurs when a win-win situation is achieved.

Ralph, third generation in a California real estate family business, was introduced to a family business mastermind group – where best management practices for family business success was the primary discussion among peers from several family businesses.

Ralph expressed finding a great deal of value from the mastermind – discussing his challenge in getting his father to listen to his ideas. Another participant talked about the challenge of curtailing his son who was bringing on ideas for change too soon and too fast.  Without the interference of their own family, they were able to hear the other’s perspective.

Ralph approached his family about the business paying for his participation in the group. A week later he called me saying that the family was not willing to cover the cost. One of the responses of his family members was that he would be getting something they were not.  

Family dynamics are complicated, and zero-sum mindsets within them are hazardous.  They destroy the potential.  To often it takes a “whack on the side of the head” to want change. A first step is to engender an intention for change; and, often, professional help is necessary to start making progress.

Health, Wealth and the Fiscal Cliff

Along with succession planning, both estate planning and wealth planning are critical to the success of a multi-generational family enterprise. Succession and estate planning are the two primary topics family business owners procrastinate most on.

While what will become of the estate tax next year is uncertain, it can be safely assumed that it will go up.  The current rate is 35% with an exemption of $5 million ($10 m for couples).  Restoring rates of 2009 would increase the rate to 45% with exemptions of $3.5 million ($7 m for couples). If congress does not act it will automatically return to the pre-2001 rates of 55% with exemptions of $1 million ($2 m for couples)

The challenge with estate taxes in family businesses it that often the cash available to family members is tied up in the business; and the next time the next generation has to liquidate the business to pay the estate tax will not be a first.

I know none of you are planning to die early to avoid a higher tax rate next year, and that this is a topic most of us would rather not have. There are actions you should take now, however, to not only minimize your children’s tax bill also provide resources for them to lead when they take over the business. Guidance from an (your) estate attorney, CPA, and financial advisor are needed to do the proper planning.

Insights on Family and Business

Five insights on family and business from a fourth-generation family business member.  I am interviewing family business leaders - asking their advice on developing a family business mastermind.  Along the way I am picking up valuable front-porch wisdom, such as:

1. If the current head of the business is dragging their feet on retiring it’s probably because they don't want to.  Rather than force the issue, find ways for them to continue doing something meaningful in the business.
2. The leader who says he or she cannot take a vacation is full of b.s.  No one is that important.
3. My relationship with my kids is more important than having them work in the business.
4. Encourage your children to follow their own vision, goals and dreams.
5. It takes a team to build a successful business.  A lone-ranger cannot do it.

A Tale of Two Families

There are two stories I often find myself telling in conversations to emphasize that multi-generational success in a family business requires intention and is a process that begins early ... because while the actual transfer of the operating and ownership agreements might be done in short period of time, developing the next generation to lead takes a lifetime.

I grew up in a family business in Scranton Pa. I had 2 friends, also from family businesses. Both were second generation, and both became involved in the businesses started by their fathers.

The father of one friend passed away suddenly when the son was in his late 20’s.  Shortly afterwards the son threw a party for the business that cost over $35,000 just for the music … in 1980 dollars. Most people pause hearing that, trying to get their mind around all the implications.

I can only speculate about the meaning of this for the son. Was it a celebration of a life well lived by the father, or, on the other side of the spectrum, that the son was now able to run the business his own way?

What was father and son’s relationship toward the business and each other? Did they have different leadership styles – each effective but held competitively rather than collaboratively?

I expect the family did not have the experience of openly discussing a vision and their values (what’s important to them) as a family business. To their defense, though, this process is more learned than intuitive. Too frequently, talking about the family in the context of the business is entrusted to a second priority, after achieving viability and profitability of the business itself.

The second family, with the help of a consultant, developed a number of policies for family members working in the business. The first policy helped the next generation understand the family values and culture, and it emphasized the family’s commitment to a family business.

If a family member had an interest in the family business, it was required of them, starting as early as 15 years of age, to attend the annual family business retreat. There, they saw who the leaders were, and watched decisions being made about the family and the business. They learned about the values, vision and goals of the business, and the saw the family in the context the business. They saw how next-generation leaders contributed, and they became part of the discussion of the family’s legacy.

A second policy was, if a family member wanted a management role in the family business they were required to work somewhere else in the industry, and get a raise and promotion, before applying to work in the family business. A third policy was that family members were hired according to need, and were given raises and promotions based on merit comparable to their industry standards. This family business is now in its 5th generation.

A significant factor in the success of any family business is good communication based on shared values. I thought it would be helpful to demonstrate a statement of purpose and values. S.C. Johnson, A Family Company, prepared their statement, This We Believe, in 1927.  They continue to bring them into their conversation with their family members, employees, product and service providers, and customers today. Click on the link to see them: This We Believe.

What does the head of a family business need to do to develop the leadership that will lead the business and family to the next generation?

Seven ways for preparing the next generation to lead the family and the business ... to the next, and the next generation.

1. Be a model of leadership yourself.
2. Demonstrate honor and respect for family members who are leaders.
3. Provide younger family members with opportunities to lead.
4. Encourage the development of individual & innate leadership styles, recognizing that all leadership is not same. Gabrielle Gillfords, Martin Luther King, Oprah Winfrey, Ronald Regan, General Patton, and Steve Jobs were all leaders with distinct effective leadership styles and traits.
5. Encourage their involvement in leadership activities elsewhere – school, professional associations, in the community, etc.
6. Encourage the attitude of “What do I want to accomplish for the family and in the business?”
7. Help them learn to identify leadership opportunities within and outside the family business.

Are you an entrepreneur or a leader?

CBS Money Watch recently published an article comparing and contrasting entrepreneurs and leaders.

The entrepreneurial leader, the author noted, are people who not only changed our lives but changed life as we know it. He noted as entrepreneurial leaders people such as Steve Jobs (Apple), Yvon Chouinard (Patagonia), Herb Kelleher (Southwest Airlines), Bill Gates (Microsoft), Henry Ford (Ford Motor Co.), and Sam Walton (Walmart).

While I very much liked the article, I thought it could possibly have been comparing leaders and managers.

And at the same time, I see significant value recognizing distinctions and nuances, when and where they exist, between manager, leader and entrepreneur. Awareness of and the ability to articulate distinctions demonstrate an intense knowledge and understanding. The Sami, for example, an Artic indigenous people, have hundreds of words for snow (Wikipedia).

What do you think? You can read the article at http://bit.ly/zvGiRl.

A Happy & Prosperous New Year!

Wishing you a very happy and prosperous 2012 ... as we end and begin in a weaving of life.

"Making a fishing line from a piece of hair, twisting it both sunwise and moonwise - This is the way life is. We weave together sunrise and moonrise, man and woman, summer and winter, and in that weaving there is life.” - A Mohawk observation/quote.

Why Family Business?

Approximately 85% of all businesses are family-owned - from neighborhood mom-and-pop stores, to the millions of small and midsize companies, as well as the household names such Wal-Mart and Ford Motor Company.

While not unlike most small businesses, less than 30% make it past the third generation. Family-owned companies, however, enjoy a comparative advantage over their management-based counterparts. A success stemming from shared values, industry knowledge, and skills learned over generations, as well as other traditional competitive advantages of small business.

Why family business? I grew up in a third-generation family construction business, listening to my father talk about business around the dinner table.

I started and sold an environmental management business, and completed training as a business coach. Since 1996 I’ve worked with closely-held and family business owners on leadership development and business growth; and now focus exclusively on working with 2nd-4th generation family-led businesses, out of a sense of a family business’s overall value to society. I also lecture on family business management in the Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College, City University of New York.

Why family business? Intriguing and extremely valuable, beyond their competitive advantage, family businesses contribute to the social and economic fabric of the community in which exist, upholding a sense of trust and unfailing values.

Entrepreneurs and owners of family-led firms rightfully focus on revenue and growth of their business. Unfortunately many never learned the unique needs and strategies for multi-generational success in a family business – strategies such as a requirement that family members wanting to join the family business work, get a raise and promotion somewhere else, thereby averting concerns of nepotism, or clear roles for family members that support the growth needs of the business. This is important, for if the business does not prosper than the family will not be prosperous.

The Little Red Book of Family Business

“The fundamental task of parents is to raise responsible adults who have high self-esteem and can function independently in this world,” David Bork, The Little Red Book of Family Business.

The Family Firm Institute, a professional organization for individuals involved in family businesses have a list of recommended books on family businesses. The Little Red Book of Family Business is one of them. It is a pocket-sized book of wisdom about the complex and rewarding world of family businesses.

The advice in the book was culled from the author’s 40+ years of experience working as a family business counselor, covering topics such as family-work boundaries, competence, competition, being rich, sibling relationships, and spousal roles. Each point is brief, to-the-point, insightful and sometimes humorous. Their strength is probably as a conversation-starter for an indepth dialogue with family members.

The main focus of the book is helping owners manage their families rather than their business. Interference in business decisions, double standards in employment, and succession wars can make families the worst enemies of their own businesses.

Some of the advice from Bork includes:

• If the business does not prosper, the family will not be prosperous
• Money is a tool, but it should never be used as a hammer
• If the family ownership is used in marketing, then it is important for all family members to practice the values the family claims to have, and
• Sparking solitary soul-searching- from the section on wills: "Don't try to legislate from 'the other side.'”

Bork's red book doesn't provide a solution to every problem, nor does it claim to. "This is a little book, not a big one," he writes. But its pithy phrases provide a benchmark for determining the strengths and weaknesses of a family's relationship with their business.

Available from Amazon and other book sellers.

When Family Issues Overflow Into the Business

In the midst of a fullstaff meeting Jim’s father turned to him and announced loud enough for all to hear, “You’ll never havewhat it takes to run this business.”


When familyissues overflow into the business it hurts the business, the employees as wellas all family members, jeopardizing the sustainability of the family and thebusiness.

Family businessesprovide a unique cultural and economic tapestry within our society. Planning,starting with an end in mind of how the wealth within the business and familywill transition to the next generations, creates greater well-being within thefamily from one generation to the next.

Most programs and training of business owners and entrepreneurs, however, stop with maximizing the growthof the business - short of achieving the sustainability of the family and thebusiness.


The fact is, though, family-business Best Management Practices, whichsupport the growth of the business, grow the estate of the shareholders,promote the health and well-being of family members, and increase familyharmony, can be learned.

About Family Businesses

Family-owned businesses are a unique and integral component of our economy with distinct competitive advantages over non-family, management-based businesses.

There are, in family businesses, like in entrepreneurial businesses, concentrated ownership structures with overlapping responsibilities of management that enable speed in decision-making and “getting to market.” Family businesses, however, benefit further from its single family-ownership-management interaction.

A desire to protect the family name translates into high product and service quality, and a higher return on investments, which being a high-quality leader produces. Sons and daughters growing up in the business develop a deep understanding of the history and culture of the family firm as well as of the industry, the market, and the products. They watch leadership in action and decisions being made; they learn the benefits of patient money; and they develop a vision towards generations into the future.

Yet, while family businesses account for approximately 85% of all businesses in America, less than 30% survive to the second generation and 10% may make it into the third generation.

The problem is that most business owners have never participated in a succession process before. They started as an entrepreneurial business and grew into a family business. The focus has been on their growth; and they are unaware of best management practices of “family” in a family business. And, like most, passing it on some day - not being a part of the business - is not part of their thinking.

Children may participate in the business to help out, and stay because it is the path of least resistance. Perhaps they are expected to, or are needed. Or it becomes assumed that they will take it over, whether they are best suited or not, whether they want to or not. Or whether the founder is ready to leave or not.

The challenges to succession in a family business grow more complex as the business and family grows. Handing over the keys one day without consideration to nepotism, fairness, sibling rivalries, non-family members working in the business, birthright, estate planning, and an understanding of how the family operates in the context of the business is a prescription for failure.

The heads of family businesses should care. They have a number of unique competitive advantages, and when developed with a perspective of the next generation can become a very powerful force supporting the family and serving the community in which it operates, for generations.

Like everything else - your business, your investments, and a vacation benefit from planning. As the founder you may be struggling with how to leave, no clear successor, what’s next for you, or what this means to you, the business and the family; and as a sibling you may be encountering responsibility without authority, shareholder second-guessing, or sibling rivalry.

Needed are clarity on the goals, identification of the alternatives, and understanding of steps to get there, and the means to discuss them with the family and the managers of the business.

I grew up in a third-generation family construction business. In my business I work with the heads and next generation siblings of family businesses on developing the relationships and implementing family business best management practices to help them grow their business across generations. Last year I started teaching, as an adjunct professor, Family Business Management in the Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College, City University of New York. More importantly I have begun working with my siblings – all who are small business owners and self employed – to use our collective experience, knowledge and resources to benefit our children in generations to come.

A New Year

Greetings. Wishing peace, joy and prosperity to you, your family and your friends. A winter solstice and the lunar eclipse of December help me recall how infinite the universe is. May you celebrate the unique gifts that you bring to the world, build a dream ... so the dream will build you, and appreciate the moment ... so your desires will become your future.

2010 has been a year of growth and new possibilities. I look forward to 2011 and hope you find the coming year full of many unexpected opportunities.

I am sure, by now, you’ve had enough “what are your resolutions or goals for 2011?” Seth Godin (author of business books Linchpin, Tribes & The Purple Cow) sent out in, his daily ezine recently with a list of his accomplishments – or as he calls it what he shipped - in 2010.

Godin stated: This might be a useful exercise. Doesn't matter whether it was a hit or not, it just matters that you shipped it. Shipping something that scares you (and a lot of what follows did) is the entire point. [Funny, it's actually difficult to publish a list like this... maybe that's another reason we hesitate to ship, because we don't want to tout too much]. ... This obsession with shipping can really make things happen…… I didn't do all this myself... far from it. Thanks to … the thousands of readers and volunteers and colleagues …. that pitched in and made these projects happen. There's also another ten or fifteen projects that I started but couldn't find the guts to finish or ship. If it doesn't ship, it doesn't count.

Godin added, “Your turn to post a list somewhere... You'll probably be surprised at how much you accomplished last year. Go ahead and share with your friends, colleagues or the web... don't be shy.”

And unexpectedly, in a conference call with several mentor coaches from around the country discussing purpose in the context of 2011 goals, we focused on the work of Thomas Leonard, considered by many as the father of coaching. He suggested we could be more successful seeking to attract what we want in our lives rather than pursue them as goals … it is by creating a vision of what we want and a vacuum that pulls us forward rather than goals that we strive after. A compelling vision is a product of purpose, a picture of the future, and our individual values.

We can create a vacuum by making a problem that needs a solution, for example, a promise that will be difficult to achieve. Robert Kennedy stated: I dream of things that never were, and ask why not? Oprah Winfrey created a vacuum and now is pulled forward by over 100 producers that create an arena in which she works.

Finally, Leonard stated that we could better attract what we want by surrounding ourselves with friends and colleagues who believe in our ideas, and will bring out the best in us. Leonard passed away in 2003 at the age of 47.

Best regard and wishing you a great year.

Strategies For The Times

A publisher of a blog for the recreational boating industry recently asked me if I could write something to help his readership who are struggling to hang-in there until the economy improves.

I was a bit baffled at first what to write because it looked like we were in a state of beginning recovery in some arenas and still stuck in stagnated growth in other places.

I spent several hours reading on the internet, and came to realize that businesses need to employ tactics as though they were entering a recession, to shore up the business and maintain a presence for your customers, as well as tactics intended to make it easy for your customers to buy from you and keep them as fans of your business as the economy thaws and people start to spend money.

The seven things businesses should be doing now in light of the current economy are:

1. Keep an eye on cash flow … and work closely with your customers and your suppliers to help keep your checking account in the black. If stuck don’t be reluctant to ask suppliers to allow you to extend your payments - smaller amounts over time when short of cash. Be sure, however, to keep up with the new arrangement to avoid souring the relationship. Equally allow others who owe you money to extend payments when you can. Several of my clients showed me that the customers and suppliers that you come-through the recessions will be the ones you can count on also when things get better.

2. Continue to cut back on unnecessary expenses. Continue to go slow on unnecessary expenses to build your cash reserves. The recovery has been called a 2-step one: two steps forward and one back. You’ll want cash for the "one–back" step as well as the "two-forward” steps as the economy improves. A silver lining to a recession is that it helps us get rid of dead wood that seemed to creep up when money was more abundant.

3. Pay as you go. Capital business expenses should be made on corresponding sales. Known as “bootstrapping,” strive to make sure that elective expenses relate to sales generated within that period of time. This is important. As the economy strengthens there may be temptation to spend on things you have wanted, but held off buying. Continue to hold off for now. If sales are not forth coming, then you need to put in more effort with respect to marketing.

4. Strengthen your community. A community’s collective and individual strengths grow from supporting one another. The downturn hit some sectors harder than others. Understand how your customer base was affected, and adjust your strategy accordingly. For example, if your customers are short on inventory, offer a re-stocking promotion. Partnerships built in hard times lead to strong business relationships that last for many years.

5. Spend on marketing and advertising. This is a necessary expense during a recession. Be visible and let your customers know you are still there. Also, people see the product or service they want when they are ready to buy. Even if they were your customers before, when they are ready to buy they won’t unless they see you. Knock on doors now, and be ready for when they are ready to spend.

6. Offer dramatic, attention getting and significant discounts to reward your existing customers and attract new ones that will stay with you. By managing and engineering your cost carefully, a discount will mean thinner profit margins, but will result in increased cash flow and market share. A restaurant, for example, that offered a significantly discounted Sunday dinner saw its weekend revenue more than double.

7. Stick to your knitting. Build on your strengths; don't diversify into areas that stretch your ability or are simply too risky. For most businesses, this is the time to reorganize and improve on what you do best. Seek growth a bit slower than you would have 4 years ago. It is not the time to absorb the financial repercussions of a bad decision.

The principles are the same for a service as well as a retail business: A service business needs to continue to manage cash flow carefully; spend on marketing, so people know you are still out there; offer incentives for clients to buy from you - if selling B2B, help your clients re-ignite their own recovery by offering discounts on materials they need; and importantly build community.