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How Do I Get My Family Members to Work Together? If you're lucky, your family easily comes together to plan and execute things. You use a democratic process, hearing everybody's input before discussing things and examining pros and cons before making decisions. Everyone is cooperative and respectful of each other and once a decision is made, everybody does their part on time. If the CEO gives a directive later, family employees follow it readily. There are no jealousies or resentments among siblings, cousins, spouses or any other relatives. The culture is extremely healthy. You get together at regular intervals, everybody comes on time, is prepared, pays attention and contributes mightily. The plans that result are clear, strategically sound and actionable. You measure what you set out to do and review performance. Wonderful, but rare. If you're like most families with a family business, family members may have lost credibility with each other. Things are too familiar. You've seen each other at your worst. You don't like to admit each other's strengths. Siblings play devil's advocate with each other and shoot down each other's ideas. If one sibling is the boss, others don't exactly take direction well. It would be like getting cats to jump into the ocean to get these people to sit down and hammer out a strategic plan, would it not? So how do you plan in an environment like this? Throw them a curve ball. Get them to plan something else: their lives. What they want out of life. What they want for their children. What they want for retirement. How much money it will take. They'll come to the conclusion that they better come together as a team to make those things happen. Chances are, none of you are fully equipped to facilitate these types of processes, and you may need some coaching or facilitation from a consultant. In addition to ability to help you discover or sharpen your core strategy, that's our stock in trade. Call us when you're ready to make the "family" in family business a real strength and propel your family business forward with solid growth. Luck favors those with a plan. |
The Two Pillars of Family Business Planning Make the "Family" in "Family Business" a Real Strength Strategic Planning without Family Prosperity Planning doesn't work We've seen family business leaders try and divorce the "family" phenomenon from the strategic planning effort. They reason that all they want from a consultant is strategic development and operations advice. They will handle the "family" part, thank you very much. Actually, this is code for "Let's get a consultant to tell us what to do. Other family owners will have to accept it, then." I have to tell you, we hate it when we're called in to be what amounts to intellectual bullies. If it's just "code", and you haven't really addressed getting family members truly aboard with the process, it just doesn't work. The rest of the family doesn't usually accept it. However, if out of your strategic plan's sheer overwhelming brilliance they do, they won't be committed to it and won't put their shoulders behind the wheel to make it work. Then you'll be hearing "I told you this wouldn't work." The worst part of that is the fact that you might have come up with a brilliant strategy that will now be hell to resurrect. So, if you have other family members working in the business in key functions, you'll need to have them aboard from the beginning.
Oddly enough, the best way to develop
a strategic plan that will return the growth you want is to
start someplace else: family members that are owners in the business
and what they want for their futures outside of the business.
Then come back to the business. After all, what is the business
primarily for?
If you want commitment to your business plan, you need a strong family system regardless of whether it owns a business or not. If you want that to persist, you need a strong business plan to provide for the family's needs, aspirations and goals. The strong, value-based family can use this strength to create a strong, growing business of which they can be proud. If the family isn't quite clear on it's objectives and values, the visionary family leader can use the business as a motivational catalyst to get there. When it happens, it is a thing of beauty. Here's an outline of how to make it happen.
Before going through this process, we
recommend that family members read some good material on the subject
to prime them for what is to come. Or, you can invite your
consultant to come in after you have "sold" the rest of your family
on the idea. The consultant can explain the process and the outputs
at each stage of the game, plus why they are important. I. The Family Prosperity Plan
II. The Strategic Business Plan
III. Reconciliation of Plans
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