We Just Keep Moving Forward

When we set out three years ago this month we knew it would be a challenge to engage our community in a new business membership organization.  There are so many other excellent programs going on; but we knew it would be worth it.  Three years later as we enter our fourth year we can feel our efforts, energies and imagination paying off.   

Therefore I will continue to push our message out to our local and surrounding communities.  Hopefully one of my messages will spark a flame to a family business leader and a new member will emerge.

Recently we had Robert Nason speak at our next generation roundtable regarding the research he did on the longevity of family businesses.  The research seemed to center on the well documented and repeated statistic of “only” 30% of family businesses succeed to the second generation.  In reality the word only was most likely added by consultants and advisors.   The statistic was actually intended to state that family businesses actually outperform other business models.   However planning and preparation is needed and a trusted advisor among so many other components is necessary. 

How many times do you hear your advisor talk to you about your succession plan..  “Lets get started….when are you going to talk about this…..who is your next leader…more and more questions.  But how do you get started?  Where do you start?  Maybe before you start succession planning some basic questions need to be answered.  If you are the founder…When did you decide this was a family business?  Why did you decide it was going to stay a family business?  Etc. and so on.  To help answer these questions a good place to start would be education.  As I read through blogs, message boards, articles, research papers it all comes back to educating the family businesses before, during and after the planning starts and continues.  It is difficult to start work on your succession plan if you are not properly prepared for it.

Here is today’s message - Storytelling…. a great way to learn about family business.  We do that at our center.   We have forums where our attendees and presenters tell their stories, their experiences, there challenges and their successes.  Of course we have educators and consultants and advisors that help us get our educational message out there but we are here to help educate you and help you find your way to preparation, planning, and being one of the many family businesses that succeed to the next generation.

We look forward to meeting you.

-Donna

Family Not Just Family Business.

That was one of the points that Drew Mendoza made last week when some of our local family businesses got together Thursday morning to participate in a breakfast forum.  He discussed how important it is to act like a family outside the business.  Make sure you have social gatherings with your siblings.  Bring your children to play with their cousins, building the relationship between the cousins can be the building blocks of future teamwork as they get older and start taking their roles in the business.

Another point worth noting is to be careful of what you bring home to your spouse and children.  Bringing home the baggage and the disagreements and sharing too much with your spouse and children about their in-laws and Aunts and Uncle’s can harm the family harmony at social gatherings. 

These are such two small points during the 2 ½ hours that Drew talked to us.  It would be impossible to cover it all.  I think he will have to make a return appearance in 2013 for the NYFBC.  I’m pretty sure the attendees would have stayed longer if he had kept talking. 

See you all next time.  Thursday, March 8th - Alan Andrews will be talking about boundaries.

Next Weeks Event

Murphy Siblings
Murphy & Nolan

We have a great event next week.  Our speaker is from Chicago and is a Managing Partner of the Family Business Consulting Group, but even more important than that we have some great local family businesses attending the event.  The easiest way for me to talk about the event and what you might get out of it is to simply reprint the article that was in Janauary 20th Central New York Business Journal.  Thanks goes to Eric Allyn for helping me with this. 

Preparation

What can help a family-owned business not fall into the category of Shirtsleeves to Shirtsleeves in three generations; and instead become part of the growing fourth and fifth generation of family-owned business?  We don’t have to look very hard to see many successful second and third generation family businesses in our community.  Some statistics say that only a small percentage will make it to the fourth.  So is it really going to be a matter of blind luck to get them there?   

On the contrary, most experts state that preparation for the continuity of a family-owned business must start at an early stage.  As founders of a business with young children there are steps you can take to begin this preparation.  Starting with assuming your business will evolve into the next generation(s).  As a parent, promoting partnership, communication, and conflict resolving skills at an early age will encourage teamwork between siblings. Giving them team projects, problem solving events or even planning the family vacation together can create great some great team work skills.   Something to avoid might be telling the oldest “this all might be yours some day,” or putting the oldest in charge of the team building projects, or being negative about the business at the dinner table or family events.

Eric Allyn, 4^th generation of Welch Allyn shares that preparing the next generation early through education and building trust in each other is essential from the start.  The Allyn family focuses a lot of activity on educating the next generation, who range in age from new born to 21 years old.  Eric states "We don't provide training on how to best manage the company, or our product lines, or our financial performance.  Instead, we focus our efforts on building trust among the 31 members of the 5th generation.  We have annual team building activities - ranging from 3 generations playing hockey together to a swim across Skaneateles Lake.  Having strong, trusting relationships with one another, coupled with a sense of responsibility in ownership, are our primary goals of next generation development.  Our intent is to ensure that the next generation become great stewards of our business, so that they can keep it family owned into the next generation."

Each stage of a family business is different from the previous and there is no one model that one can follow.  As the ownership moves into the sibling and cousin stage a framework will be needed.  Structure will need to be in place for decision making, leadership, planning, and goal setting.  Meetings will need to be more formalized.  Eric states that outside of the basic steps necessary to address ownership/estate tax challenges, he emphasizes the importance of considering governance changes when moving from one generation to the next.  "The truth is, the way my generation oversees this business - keeping in mind there are 11 in my generation - is very different from how Bill and Lew Allyn managed the company in the 1970s and 1980s.   The governance model needs to adopt as the number of owners increases.  And keep in mind, the 5th generation has 31 people in it (so far!).  One imagines that they will have to re-shape our governance in the future as well".

Your family business could still be a few years away from transition but preparation can begin early.  To learn more about the sibling/cousin transition the New York Family Business Center will have Drew Mendoza, from the Family Business Consulting Group as their keynote speaker on February 9, 2012. 

Why I Have The Best Job

In this day and age of social media and webinars and teleconferences and such, I feel my job is a little old school which may be a little new school for some.  My job is basically to connect people.  You know what I mean?  In the same room, not just names on a screen.  Now that sounds pretty easy but I have to come up with ways to connect people which sometimes is a little difficult with all the demands for time people have.  Specifically, my job is to connect family business owners, leaders, key employees, next gens’ and others.  So the challenges are scheduling - when would be “convenient” for them to come and topics that “might” interest them. 

So why do I have the best job?  Because of the outcome that I can see from actually accomplishing it, maybe even the thanks from the owners when they are connected to someone that can help.  Family Business Owners I have to say are amazing people, and seriously it doesn’t matter which generation.  Some are amazingly creative, entrepreneurial, some are great leaders, and some are finding their way.  But mostly they are nice, yes I mean actually nice.  People you want to be around, people you want to talk to, learn from, listen to, take a tour of the business.  Seriously I know that sounds corny but they have incredible stories, values, are humble and so proud of the people (family) that have come before them. 

So back to my job…. this week was especially showing, I attended two webinars and a teleconference.  Ho Hum…. looking at a screen, listening on the telephone, now granted they were educational and necessary and I did get tidbits from them that I will share soon but no connection was made.   Fortunately one of the webinars, I had three business owners in the room with me.  We did communicate a little throughout the webinar, about what we were hearing so that was good and it made it even more worthwhile. 

In the past few years NYFBC has been able to connect some well known business owners with each other and they have benefited from those connections.  We are very proud of that.  When we have an event someone new is always there and makes a connection with someone else.  It is “nice” to see. 

So next time you have a free morning instead of signing up for a webinar come to one of the NYFBC meetings and meet someone new, see someone from the past.  Connect, reconnect, share, learn from your peers.  Visit our website and see what topic might interest you, you never know who you will see there. 

Loving My Job – Donna

Next Gen Mini Retreat



Al Kryger (Senior Generation)
Sam Kryger (Next Generation)
Missing from Photo Wes Kryger (Next Generation)



Friday, January 20^th the Next Generation group held a mini retreat at the Hope Lake Lodge (Greek Peak).  The Krygers, the family behind this incredible resort, were very generous and supplied a beautiful conference room and a delicious continental breakfast.  

2011 ended with the group not meeting in November and December, therefore, the first hour or so was spent with catching up with their businesses and even personal lives.  After the break The Leading Element, Katie Doucette, Susan Burgess & Michael D’Eredita facilitated a session in discussing possible concerns and the successes in the transition of leading their family business.  Each attendee had insights and anecdotes to share with the others.  The bond that this group shares is somewhat unique as they are all from different industries but their commonality is family.  Each time they meet they walk away with something they can use personally or professionally.  In family business the line between personal and profession usually isn’t too thick, and sometimes can be blurred.

This particular group has been meeting for over a year now, frequently new members enter the group and are immediatly welcomed and it is exciting to watch them begin to do business together and offer ideas and suggestions not only with the family dynamics but sometimes with business situations also.

I look forward to 2012 and playing my small role in bringing this group together monthly.

Women In Family Business

 

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As you might imagine there are a hundreds of blogs, Linkedin groups, websites dedicated to family businesses.  There are several that I follow and sometimes get really caught up in. 

Recently there has been lots of discussion on women in family business.  Of course there have been books written on this and research done on this etc.  However I have been having a hard time grabbing onto it.  I keep wondering why is there so much to talk about?  How different is a capable women from a capable man?  Shouldn’t the question be is the person qualified not what gender is the person?  I know I know in a perfect world right?  I guess my real question is what is all the talk about?  From what I see of the NYFBC membership we have just as many women as active members as men.  In fact five of our board members are women in family business. 

I guess I need to keep following these blogs and threads on Linkedin to understand more of the differences as it has been suggested by someone that I start a women in family business roundtable at the NYFBC (this suggestion came from a man though) but I just don’t have enough information to pull it off.  And I am not sure that I would want to separate the women and men as they seem to communicate and interact very well in the current roundtable situation.   Okay, so maybe I should just try one event and see what happens right?  Here goes, I am preparing to have a family business luncheon in April for just women.  Next item, what are we going to talk about?

The research is proving to be interesting as I read the comments from other countries.  It seems the one I am following now which was started over a month ago is talking about the women having the soft skills for the family business.  Well that seems like a touchy subject. 

Anita from United Kingdom starts this thread with -  In my opinion it's the women that make things happen in the family business when it comes to ironing out conflict and inter family relationships. So long as they have had a strong parent to mentor them as youngsters.

Several days and comments later from Kathleen in Louisville - I would caution against making too many generalities about the "nurturing" and relational qualities or "soft skills" of women. Not only are many women not possessive of these qualities, but many do not want to feel pushed into these types of gender roles simply because they have been told that all women are/should want to and be well suited for the role of counselor, nurturer, facilitator, etc,

While men and women commenting from different cultures does make for interesting reading I still don’t see the difference between men and women in the family business?  What am I missing?

Largest and Oldest New York Family Businesses

The Family Business Magazine publishes a list of America’s 100 oldest family businesses and 100 largest family businesses.  This list represents information about the family businesses that have made it through economic downturns, recessions and depressions.  A few have fallen off the list due to the economy and other situations but some are still going strong and stronger than ever.

Of course what I look for immediately is the New York businesses that may be included.  The list represents businesses that are over 155 years old.  I see nine of them from New York and yes some are agriculture and most based towards the New York City region.  However one we would all recognize is Harden Furniture Company coming in at #65.  In 1844 Charles Harden purchased a saw mill on Fish Creek and started bridge construction, today 5^th generation Greg Harden is the CEO. 

A New York business that fell of this list recently due to it becoming less family controlled is Corning. Founded in 1851 and went public in the 1940’s and according to  this issue of the Family Business Magazine the Houghton family’s ownership stake is down to only 2%.

Now on to the largest Family Businesses on this list once again I turn to New York. Thirteen this time!   Again of course downstate is represented pretty extensively.  But a few I know we enjoy are listed and one of our favorites and a sponsor of the New York Family Business Center Wegmans Food Markets, Inc., which comes in at #50.  #75 The Golub Corp  (Price Chopper), Constellation Brands Inc. out of Victor and #84 Rich Products out of Buffalo.   Hats off to New York State Family Businesses!

I know,you want to know the #1 for both lists. 

Walmart comes in as the largest family business in America with Ford not to far behind but of course they are both public companies.  For privately held family businesses according the Family Business Magazine would be Cargill Inc. coming in overall at #3.  Cargill founded in 1865, located in MN and controlled by fourth generation.

I bet you would all guess the oldest family business would be agriculture.  Well you are close that would be #2 in Virginia, and #3, 4 and 5.  However the number one oldest is a Cymbal maker out of Norwell Mass.  Avedis Zildjian Co. (don’t ask me to pronounce that) founded in 1623.  The fifteenth generation is involved in this company.  Wow. 

Well I’m not sure if all of you are interested in more information but I find it very interesting and would be glad to share more information out of this issue with you.   Maybe we should play trivia at one of our events.

Give thanks to all our Veterans today.