These comments are from an email to a friend with regards to my recent review of Father, Son & Co.:
The book excited me at first because in the intro Jr says that if you have the opportunity to go into business with your father, you should do it. I figured the book would be filled with all the fulfilling things that he experienced as a result of that relationship.
Instead, it seemed to be chock full of warning signs! His father seemed to be interested in exposing him to the business at a young age. He took him on a cross country train ride for business around age 10 and introduced him to managers, sales people, toured plants, etc. Sr was thinking of him and the business from the start. But what Sr never seemed to figure out was how to actually transition his son into business and power.
Junior started out a salesman and did that for several years with small success after initial frustration. Eventually he was brought in as a manager, but there was no set plan for Senior to retire and hand over the reins. They also hadn’t worked out how a space for Juniors younger brother would be handled. It seemed like Senior was either enjoying the prestige too much, or had his ego too wrapped up the business, and was reluctant to give up power, even when it seemed clear his energy and mental faculties were failing.
Junior and Senior fought constantly, and violently. It’s likely a lot of the fights were due to this unresolved question of power sharing and succession. They had different ideas about how to grow the company, junior seeing value in computers and senior being skeptical of them. They always made up in the end but what a terrible toll to take on one another emotionally and physically!
Eventually junior asserted himself and got his dad to agree to give power to him. It was almost like he was waiting for him to man up and insist. One of the challenges of the transition was that there was a perception that senior had surrounded himself with loyal yes men. Junior ended up canning a lot of these people, and then canning other people he and his dad had both picked for different positions, until he had culled the management team down to just a group he had advanced himself. This is typical in business and represents a challenge especially for family succession. An ideal situation would see the aged old guard nearing retirement right around the same time as the younger new guard is ready to take over, that way there are no hurt feelings or dicey incentives from one regime to another.
So I think some takeaways were:
-talk early and often about strategic questions, especially succession timelines and process
-have an agreement to transition an entire management team, don’t expect the successor to play well with people he didn’t groom himself
-if there are other family members involved in the business, discuss roles and opportunities (based on merit) early and often and establish a clear hierarchy of who reports to who and why
-the son or family successor will never be comfortable and confident exercising power, and will never be taken completely seriously, until the previous family member officially and totally transitions out
-don’t let business issues poison personal family relationships, if you find yourselves fighting outside of work, seek counseling
A House Rises 