Two weeks ago, the Australian cricketing world changed forever following the proof of ball tampering by the Australians in the 4 match test series against South Africa, in Cape Town.

I’ve worked with a wide range of family businesses over a 30 year period. A great many of them know about business strategy. In my opinion, these businesses fall into the following four categories:

Monday 26th just passed was a milestone for me. In cricketing terms, I waved my bat to the crowd to celebrate reaching my half century. Looking back over the innings so far, it is more akin to a steady, yet solid test match knock rather than the bash and crash of Twenty 20 cricket. 

In my opinion, when you talk about an ideal employee in your family business, for the great bulk of your team, you’re really boiling it down to whether or not they have the following two characteristics:

In the 1982 hit song “Hard to Say I’m Sorry”, Chicago’s Peter Cetera’s opening line was “Everybody needs a little time away”. He was stating the case for people in a relationship to spend some time apart, so they truly appreciate each other and what they have together.

In my opinion, the relationship that most family business owners have with their business is pretty much the same. I’ve long advocated for people to get far away from their businesses when they are involved in long term family business planning.

Return on Investment, or ROI, is a financial term to describe what is the performance of your investment relative to how much is invested. It is used by finance types to value businesses, determine lending capacity and estimate risk.

In family business, I believe there are 5 elements to ROI – however, I prefer to simplify it and call them the 5 Returns in Family Business.

We had an interesting experience in our household recently that resonated with something that I’ve often seen inside family businesses.

When I place myself into the driver’s seat of my Ford Falcon XR8 Sprint and fire up the 5.0 litre V8, the dashboard presents an array of data to me. The car tells me, amongst other things:

In a great many of the family businesses that I know and have worked with, there are multiple family members working in the business. Most prevalent is the numbers of spouses that work with each other.

No, I’m not talking today about the 1978 classic by Hot Chocolate which, by the way, still sounds good today when you’re out cruising around with the windows down and the volume cranked up.

I’m talking about the decisions that owners and managers make in family business when it comes time to moving people on. Let me explain.