Yelling "Fire" in a Crowded Family

The recent WSJ article, “"How Do You Fire a Family Member?"” by Veronica Dagher, made some useful suggestions, e.g., have private conversations with the problematic family member ("PFM") and don'’t create any scenes in front of non-family employees. The article had an intentional limitation, as it was focused on events after-the-fact, i.e., after whatever might precipitate a firing. I would urge that such problems can be avoided, or at least minimized, with proper preparation, i.e., taking the right steps before-the-fact. A few such steps are:

1. Establish standards and rules of behavior. If all family employees are fully apprised, before they are hired, of the expectations and the consequences of errant behavior, it reduces the likelihood of there being PFMs, as well as the occurrence of adverse reactions. Similarly others—namely, non-employee family members and non-family employees—who are often affected by PFM problems, will be more accepting of outcomes if informed in advance of expectations and consequences of misbehavior.
2. Develop the infrastructure and procedures to help prevent family member employees becoming PFMs and to deal with problems at the first signs of trouble and continually thereafter. This may include internal assistance from non-family executives, who should be trained to deal effectively, and where appropriate, outside coaches and consultants.
3. Establish procedures, up front, for dealing with problems when they arise, to assure actual and perceived fairness and to reduce embarrassment.

The above is but a partial list, intended as examples.

Some may feel that doing the right things before-the-fact may constitute a waste of precious time and money. In the long run, however, they help prevent and reduce otherwise exorbitant costs of solving problems. And those costs are no’t just monetary. They include negative impacts on non-family employees, with resulting inefficiencies and loss of good people, as well as complications in and even destruction of family relationships.

The Mortgaged Future of the U.S.

In the article, “Don’t Blame Age for Declining U.S. Entrepreneurship,” Ben Casselman makes important observations: Overall U.S. entrepreneurship is declining and the average age of existing companies is getting older. He seems to believe that with the millennials turning 40 fairly soon, the recent trend will reverse itself. I beg to differ. I think the rate of entrepreneurship may continue to decline for a variety of reasons, including governments’ direct (e.g., red tape) and indirect (e.g., restrictions on lending) intrusion into "free" enterprise. However, one of the biggest factors will be the overhang of debt. Today, 70% of college graduates leave school with debt from tuition loans. In addition, the relationship between debt and first job income has become intolerable. I borrowed my entire tuition for law school. When I graduated, my total debt was about 30% of my compensation during the first year after graduation. Today, a graduating student’s debt, assuming all tuition was borrowed, would exceed his or her first year’s pay. Those students who opt not to be entrepreneurs right away have a variety of excuses, but debt is their number one and growing excuse. Talk about stifling entrepreneurship!

Article inspired by Invent Reinvent Thrive

In Invent Reinvent Thrive, I talk about several different family businesses, and how they faced and overcame certain challenges as the business passed from generation to generation. In this week's Becker Spine Review, writer Laura Dyrda took her inspiration from the book to cover three family medical practices facing change at a time of business turnover. Laura provides lessons learned and how they can apply to evolving spine surgeon practices, including obtaining outside experience:

Steven Crown, a third-generation family member in Henry Crown & Co., struggled to work alongside non-family members who knew eventually he'd become their boss. His mistakes were corrected before he could learn from them. As a result, Steven left the company for outside experience before returning to the family business...

Read the rest at Becker's Spine online.

Even though I didn't cover medical practices as part the family business aspects of Invent Reinvent Thrive, this piece shows that the principles I'm trying to impart are universally applicable. Thank you to Laura and Becker's Spine for promoting the message of reinvention.

Lloyd Shefsky on Daybreak USA

On July 30th, Lloyd Shefsky was interviewed by nationally syndicated radio host Jay Young on Daybreak USA about Invent Reinvent Thrive.  

Lloyd talks about successful businesses and the key items that help keep them successful. He covers Howard Schultz of Starbucks, and the need to "reinvent" the core idea to be (or continue to be) successful.

Why I Wrote Invent Reinvent Thrive

Everywhere in our immediate gratification/instantaneous communication world, people want the silver bullet. They demand the single pill that will cure all that ails. Like so many others in my fields—entrepreneurship and family enterprises—we too seem to be seeking the prescription, not for a single pill (we’re too smart to think that exists) but for the cocktail of curatives. We try to understand the recipe, i.e., what combination of traits, properly stirred, will create a successful entrepreneur. We bow to Tolstoy’s: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” so we segment situations, e.g., by generation, to treat actual and prevent potential conflicts among relatives with related business or economic interests. Over decades of practicing law and later consulting in these areas, it struck me that there is no prescription, no recipe, at least not beyond the very short term. That’s because everything changes constantly, not only the entrepreneur or family member in control but also a myriad of both related and external factors. Entrepreneurship is not a cataclysmic event but a series of continual challenges and opportunities. Likewise family businesses are not best seen in a still photograph but in a video over time, indeed over generations.

I began to wonder what enabled some to make changes, as needed, while others became fixed and immobile. Some others were like deer in headlights, still others were anything but terrified. Those staring and immobile like deer were focused—focused on their entrepreneurial dream or focused on continuity, keeping the family business in the family.

Focus is a mantra endorsed by many business teachers, advisors, directors and coaches. So what could be wrong with focusing? Plenty. Focus often creates blinders. If one is so focused as to be unaware of hazards that require detours, how can he make necessary or advisable change, how can he reinvent even though the situation requires reinvention or “reinventrepreneurship” without which he faces disaster?

So began my journey, first of research in all the customary places. That failed to reveal any consensus and rarely even a suggestion that reinvention might be a continual prerequisite to success, let alone why some did reinvent while others didn’t and how those who did were able to do so. Next, I started interviewing successful entrepreneurs and family businesspeople. Even there I was drawn to inappropriate paths that dead-ended, a lesson that predisposition is confining. Fortunately my inquisitiveness was sufficiently broad-based as to encourage the interviewees to answer more expansively. Soon it became clear that those who reinvented knew what they were doing but not always why or how. Often, such clarifications occurred after-the-fact. As the interviews progressed it became apparent that the puzzle pieces were always present. Some lacked the picture on the puzzle box cover, others had worked on the puzzle for so long that the cover was lost.

Invent Reinvent Thrive explores real situations, related by those involved. It extracts from those stories the lessons that can help others thrive as a result of their inventing and reinventing, over and over and again.