Growth Newsletter

Early on in 2019, there’s a worrying trend that I’ve identified with a number of the family business owners I engage with. It’s the evidence of time drift.

No, we’re not talking about the classic 1978 song and album from The Who this week, though I have to admit, this is one of my favourites from them (but doesn’t top “Won’t Get Fooled Again”).

There’s a lot of talk at the moment around millennials. How “they’re different”. How they don’t stick at anything for too long. How they’re busy planning the next trip or festival rather than establishing the foundations for their life ahead.

In my 30 years of working with family business, one of the greatest impediments to success that I’ve observed is loneliness. Let me explain.

I was conducting a Strategy Planning Re-Group workshop with some great clients a few weeks back and the issue of task completion came up. Most were complete. A couple of others were nearly there. Nothing of worth was not yet started.

The findings of the Banking Royal Commission were handed down late on Monday afternoon and for every family business owner in Australia, there are significant, long lasting consequences that must be immediately addressed.

For the most part, technology has been a great boon to our lives. It has increased our ability to obtain information, driven improvements in productivity and created advances in business processes beyond anything imaginable in a lot of family businesses.

I love the dynamic of working with family business. Mums and Dads, Sons and Daughters, Cousins, Aunties and Uncles. It’s a different environment where familiarity can sometimes lead to things occurring that you may not otherwise expect.

In July 1995, I attended a four day business development course at The Fairmont Resort at Leura in the Blue Mountains that I can honestly say changed my life. It moved me immediately away from being someone who reported the numbers, in arrears, to being someone who wanted to work with family business owners to create the numbers.

If you default to Seek when you are searching for staff in your family business, you’ve not doubt noticed the serious deterioration in the quality of candidates responding to your advertisement in the past 12 months. Today, I’m challenging you to stop heading for Seek and instead, seek other means of finding staff to solve your labour issues.