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| Your Family's 100 Year Plan |
Behind a Behemoth
Michelle Seaton
12/01/2004
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“For most founders, the business they create is their favorite child,”
says Bill Provett, facilitator at the Family Business Institute in Raleigh, N.C.
“The kids have seen dad taking care of the favorite child, spending all of his
time and all of his energy on it.” Provett says that children internalize the
sacred status of the business as a result. They may also come to loath the idea
of joining the business, because they see how much their father has to work, and
how the business consumes him.
 “The business literally takes a seat at the
dinner table, and the kids either hate it or love it from early on,” says Fredda
Herz Brown, managing partner at the Metropolitan Group in Cresskill, N.J., a consulting company that counsels entrepreneurial families on generational
conflicts. “The parent’s emotional need to perpetuate the business gets
introduced early on.” Members of the second generation can see their role in the
family as contingent upon their role in the business. Jeff found this to be the
case. “I didn’t think I could leave the company. It wasn’t even an issue of
loyalty. You just don’t stop being someone’s son.”
Jeff and his brother felt
trapped and increasingly unhappy. When the economy was shaken in September 2001,
the company’s sales plummeted. The crisis forced the family to reconsider the
company’s future and allowed Jeff, for the first time, to begin to envision a
path for himself that did not include the family business. “The day I realized
that I could go do something else—sell bananas, or anything else for that
matter—that was a real shift for me. I could say to my dad: ‘We’re going to
solve this or I’m out of here.’ ”
Ultimately, the Sullivans hired consultant
Jim Hutcheson of Regeneration Partners in Dallas to broker a succession plan,
which relieved tension on all sides. Hutcheson had worked with other clients on
succession issues like those that bedeviled the Sullivans. The founder who
refuses to exit gracefully is a common problem, he says. “Work gives them a
reason to get out of bed in the morning.”
Looking back on the experience
now, Jeff wishes he had taken control of his destiny earlier. He could have
worked elsewhere for a while to gain experience and confidence. He could have
challenged his father earlier and threatened to quit if he was not free to make
his own decisions and mistakes. He could have given himself permission to
leave.
In the Wake of a Titan
Often, it takes a crisis of some kind to bring the
issues to a head and to force the founder to recognize that the time to leave
center stage is nearing. However, a family business succession is not the
product of dispassionate corporate executives considering tactics with
professional sangfroid. The architects of these plans have both a professional
and emotional stake in their success.
They are also, typically,
strong-willed individuals. Builders of successful businesses are often absentee
parents who have taken enormous financial risks—and won. Their children do not
just know the story of the family’s success, they have watched it unfold. Like
Jeff, they may feel unable to challenge their larger-than-life parents on
anything. “The children of entrepreneurs have enormous admiration for their
fathers, because they sat right there and have seen what was sacrificed to
create the business,” explains Leslie Mayer, CEO of Mayer Leadership Group, a
consulting firm in Wayne, Pa., that advises CEOs on leadership issues. They
admire their parent’s sacrifice, even if that included their relationship with
their children and any possibility of a normal home life, Mayer adds. “They are
not allowed to feel disappointment for what they didn’t get. They get the
message that they should feel part of the sacrifice that made the business
possible.”
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