Money doesn’t talk..........
We have worked with many people who have made a lot of money
in business, and some who have inherited family prosperity to invest in or
develop a business. But it is this perception and the reality of wealth that can
give rise to all sorts of dysfunctional relationships.
I couldn’t understand why two members of the senior management
team were not included in the 360 degree appraisals that we were planning. The
Managing Director replied that two of them “don’t like you”. Now this business
has several blue chip clients in the oil industry and regards itself as the
market leader in its sphere of expertise. I had questioned this.
So Dave replied that one of his directors Jill, was a
personal friend who had been with the company for twenty years. He said that
she thought my approach was “too abrasive”.
“And what about the other?” the finance director, I enquired.
“Ah, well” Dave said. “I would hate to lose Suzanne because she looks after my
personal finances as well as those of the business.”
So I said “What do you mean lose, we are only looking at
what each member of your board can do to improve their performance in order to
improve the performance of your business?”
A genuine danger to any business is where hidden agendas,
duplicity and politics are rife at the top. In these cases, Bob Dylan is right
when he sings “Money doesn’t talk ........ it swears.”
No hiding place
It is quite common for Managing Directors to invite you into
their business to improve both sales and profit.... until they find out what
they personally need to do to enhance business performance.
Paula asked me in to her organisation for just that reason. As
a national vegetarian food distributor it was increasingly hard to deliver
certain outcomes with both key income streams and certain gross margins in
decline. As usual we started our work with the Senior Management Team and it
required a level of openness and honesty to actually agree what the Bull’s Eye
for this client was to be for the next three years.
During early discussions it was already clear that some directors
had different ideas from each other about the best way forward. So I invited
them to tell me who had personal responsibility for each of the eight segments
on the Kidson Diagnostic Wheel. Again there was disagreement and lack of
clarity.
Without any director appraisals no one knew what they needed
to do either individually or collectively to change the business model. The
upshot was that I chose to appraise each of the directors in turn, at the same
time in order to determine exactly who did what. On the due date for the work
the MD not only refused to agree that she had any development points but then promptly
invited me to leave the building.
The problem for Paula is that the work we have already done
in the space of two half days has exposed the fault lines in her own leadership
and management style. She can now deny it, she can cover it up or she can try
to forget it, but the fact is that the jugular issues we uncovered will not go
away, and they could well get worse.
Grow and grow
As the children get bigger, and the twenty somethings turn
into thirty somethings, we wouldn’t be human if occasional thoughts didn’t turn
to our own mortality. But it doesn’t have to be like that with the business.
So many family businesses can take off and fly through
successive generations. One engineering company dad said to me recently, “Well
I am so lucky to have my son David and daughter in law Jane to carry the
business on.“ I replied, “Yes John, and they are so lucky to have such magnificent
parents that started this business 35 years ago.”
Another seventy plus parent who founded a nursery that now
employs one hundred people said, “I’m just the delivery driver here, you need
to talk to Jessica, if you can catch her!” And the mother of a long standing
retail business said, and she is eighty this year, “I just come in and open the
post.”
But all these people actually do so much more with their
presence, their experience and their wisdom. And as far as the business is
concerned senior players are continuing to add more and more value, providing
that they themselves want to carry on learning and developing, providing that
they know how and when to hand over the reins.
I am facilitating the appraisals of some seventy year old directors
today. So never mind all the siblings, let’s hear it for the elder statespeople
that are still in there, doing the business.
