She’ll be Right Mate

Scott Patterson, Director - Alternate Business Strategies

At a recent meeting with some valued clients who have built, and continue to operate, a successful family business I asked the parents, who both worked in the business, what their end game was. Did they want to retire? What was the goal for the business? What roll both in terms of management and ownership, did they envisage for each of their three children?  The husband (let’s call him Dennis) gave me his usual answer of “she’ll be right. It’ll work itself out”. At that point his wife (lets call her Dianne) dissolved into tears. The outcome of the next few minutes of conversation was that she was worried sick about the future, making sure their futures were secure and that each of their children were treated fairly.

Was this wilful blindness on Dennis’s part? That is, he had the necessary information from our previous meetings yet continued to refuse to accept it or act on that information. Was Dennis’s unwillingness to act the result of fear? Was it out of a sense of complacency that somehow it will all work itself out? Was it because at an individual level he didn’t feel that he could solve these issues? Or was it all just too hard?

Finally, after Dianne’s comments the nature and direction of our meeting took on a different tone and direction.

As business owners why don’t more of us act in this area? Is it because of pride? Is it because we created and built this business and we’re hanging on because we don’t know what we are going to do next? Is it because this business is “who I am”, and without it I feel like I have lost my identity? Or do we just not want to face up to the fact that we are getting older and perhaps our business is not worth quite as much as we would like it to be? Possibly it’s a combination of these things.

The result for Dennis and Dianne is that they have now acted. They now have a succession plan in place that involves each of their three children, who each have different roles and contribute to different areas and levels of expertise.  They have now established an advisory board for their business that has functioning systems in place like meeting monthly with agendas, minutes, action items and a board calendar. They have appointed an independent chairperson so that meetings are run well, issues are dealt with, and personal family conflicts are kept to a minimum. Dennis and Dianne are both still involved and remain on the board.