In a family business how do we know what other family members really want?

Why not ask.

In many situations we ‘assume’ we know what the other person is thinking, or we project our own personal attributions or desires on the other person. Having spoken on several occasions with the founder of a family business, ‘Dad’ was beginning to think about retiring.

His first concern was what he will “retire to” and what he will do in retirement? Bottom line, he had not really given it thought before, and now he knew he wanted to retire, but was fearful in not knowing how he would spend his time. He was insightful enough to know we needed to figure something out or he would continually interfere with his daughter running the business.

Hence, the second issue. ‘Dad’ had made the assumption that his son and eldest child had no interest in the business since after growing up with the business and working in the business for several years he had left the business a number of years back and had built his own management career with a public corporation.

In discussing the familial relationships, ‘Dad’ kept saying his son had no interest in the business and that only his daughter was capable of running the business. After finally persuading him to talk with his son, he was astounded to learn that his son had an intense desire to return to the family business and on top of that he also stated his sister had the knowledge, skills, and experience to be President / CEO.

Why wasn’t the conversation started long ago?

Now we need to work out the new partnership agreement, the buy/sell agreement, and the exit strategies of the next generation. This too will require asking the questions and a willingness discuss the difficult issues.

I would love to hear your stories about learning the right information by asking the right questions.

Let me know at steve@netfamilybusiness.com