Growth Newsletter

Like most families, my own has plenty of stories from our past. In my mother’s case, there’s the story of how they came into contact with Pixie O’Harris, the Australian children’s author and artist, who was a contemporary of May Gibbs. My mother, to this day, still has the portrait of her as a 6 year old, painted by Pixie O’Harris, hanging in her home.

Family businesses are great at evolving. Often they start in the lounge room or the garage and move on to bigger and better things. The beauty of spending 30 years working with family businesses is that I’ve heard a lot of stories of how it has all started and what humble beginnings most of those family business owners have had.

I love working with my clients. They’re all very interesting people. They each have different characteristics about their businesses, even if they’re in the same industries. Their lives are often fascinating, even when they think they’re bland. Their journeys can be incredibly inspiring, when they just might consider the path they’ve taken is normal, perhaps even mundane.

If you’re the owner or manager of a family business, there’s no doubt you perform a number of roles, and wear many hats, in any given week. They could be:

Last week, I was in Melbourne for the 2019 Family Business Conference Asia Pacific. It was three days of learning, thinking and planning as the many speakers each provoked the delegates to consider how we should all future proof our businesses.

Here’s some of my takeaways:

Following on from last week’s edition of Growth (Edition 186 – Acceptable Mediocrity), this week, I challenge all family business owners and managers to consider the following:

It somewhat pains me the number of family business owners and managers I come across that are happy to accept sub standard work or mediocre performance from their employees. Here’s some recent examples:

Why do businesses insist on opening the door everyday, do whatever it is they do, finish up at the end of the day – and then not measure whatever it is they do?

Last Friday evening, Trish and I headed into Barangaroo, the newly redeveloped part of Sydney to take a look and indulge in some fine food and wine. The taking a look bit was pretty quick – the Antarctic blast that hovered around late last week meant standing beside Sydney Harbour was akin to being in the middle of the Canadian prairies in winter. We quickly headed for shelter.

In the work that I do helping family business owners build better family businesses, one of the most fascinating things to observe is the impact of emotion and mindset on outlook. When people communicate an issue, be it from a positive or negative standpoint, it shows through in terms of: