For Richard, the son of a newspaper publisher in the Southwest, the feeling of inadequacy was reinforced everywhere he looked. “My father was tremendously popular with his employees,” he says. “I was Little Richie, who used to get stuck in the doors when I came to visit the office because I wasn’t strong enough to open them. I was an adopted son in a family of extremely smart people. My dad was Phi Beta Kappa in college and an extremely dynamic person. I was a good athlete but a poor student, and couldn’t compete with him intellectually.”

Richard did not feel up to the job of running a newspaper and overseeing the other family properties. He was also afraid the company’s employees would sense his fear and lose what little respect they had for him. When Richard joined the paper, his father devised a training program that rotated him every six months through a series of departments. “I knew I was in the spotlight with everyone watching what I did. Some people saw me as a way to get messages to my dad. Others felt that they needed to make me learn the hard way,” he recalls.

A few years after he joined the family business, Richard’s father fell ill, which caused him to rely more heavily on his son. “He promoted me to associate publisher and was complimentary to me on my work, but, really, I didn’t even report to him anymore. I had my own budget and full authority,” Richard remembers. His father died soon after, but his son continued to feel inadequate, even years later. Employees continued to talk about his father, and some even claimed that they had seen and spoken with his ghost. Richard laughs about it now, and sees it as a testament to his father’s charisma, but for years it was an unwelcome reminder of the differences between the two men. 

Harvard vs. Hard Knocks
Members of the second generation often attempt to offset their lack of real-world experience with knowledge and perspective. The heirs of entrepreneurs may have studied business in college or even graduate school, while the founder often learned everything he knows in the marketplace. “The second generation is the first to get some formal education related to business processes and strategy. In some situations the business founder is beaming, saying, ‘Here is my son who is going to teach us,’ ” says Leslie Mayer, CEO of Mayer Leadership Group. “But in many cases the founder will be incredibly threatened, and will put down any ideas coming from academia. This is very frustrating to the second generation, having gone out into the world to gather resources, not being able to use them to influence the founder. It’s fertile territory for power issues in the business, entrepreneurial superiority versus educational superiority.”

Illustration by Jonathan Barkat.

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Additional Information
 The Big Picture
 The Daughter's Dilemma