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| Visions & Revisions |
Cymbals of Success
06/01/2005
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Craigie: We
were the first generation that had options other than being a homemaker. My
grandfather recognized that. He would even provide us with examples of women who
were successful in business.
Debbie: When I had my first job, my grandfather
would say, “Why are you working for someone else? Why don’t you work for
us?”
In some family businesses that kind of expectation can cause
problems.
Craigie: It can be dangerous if you go too far down that road. You
often hear of family businesses having issues. To keep our business healthy,
we’ve set up a number of rules—such as entry criteria for future generations—so
that we don’t have succession issues. As
Debbie said, you are not necessarily
entitled to come into the business. On the other hand, we don’t want to compel
the next generation to come into the business and make them feel they have no
other options or that they have missed out on some other opportunity in their
lives. There is a lot of preparation. An enormous part of our responsibility is
to prepare the next generation to be involved in the business.
How are you doing that?
Debbie: They are already involved. My daughters, who have graduated from
college, both did summer internships here. Over the years, when our kids were
young, we would bring them to trade shows, and they would spend time at the
booth. Even if they weren’t working, they could meet the customers. A lot of
times, if we have international customers come, we would include our children in
the dinners because our customers like to see that we are a family. And we want
our girls to understand what the business is like. It’s not that we are forcing
them into the business, but we want to expose them to the business.
Craigie:
The reverse side to that is we go to the management team and say, “You need to
create training sessions for the shareholders. It is important that they get to
know the next generation.” There has been a lot of business training that has
come their way. If they don’t go into the business here, maybe they can use that
training somewhere else.
What we try to do is develop a passion for the
business, which is pretty easy. We are not manufacturing widgets here. I mean,
kids love to go to concerts. This is an easy sell. It is a dynamic business that
is a lot of fun.
When you joined the business, was a succession
plan in place or was that something you created?
Craigie: Armand, our father, did it. He passed away in 2002, but before he
did, he had absolutely everything in place. Everyone knew exactly what was going
to happen. Succession is critical in any business, and I have to credit our
father for having done that. Debbie and I are trying to do that for the next
generation.
Are there members of your family who have chosen not to participate
in
Zildjian?
Craigie: My oldest sister has never really been involved. My brother was in
the business, but then went out on his own and did some other things. Although
he wasn’t working day-to-day in the business, he was always a shareholder and a
director of the company, and attended all the directors’ meetings. So there are
different ways to be involved.
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