Advantage: Family Loyalty
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The Hollar family
(1956)
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The flip side
of any negativity associated with entitlement is the fact that
you are careful with your product when it carries your name.
When you have grown up with your name on a building, you care
about that building. Imagine how great it would be to grow up
seeing your name on dozens of trucks or on products that benefit
people. Youngsters who go through this make sure to prepare
themselves, so that they can bring honor to the business. Take
advantage of this. How? By hiring them!
You may want
to consider whether employment at your business would prevent
your children from doing something different. If you would
prefer them to choose other professions instead of doing what
you do, lovingly guide them in the direction of your mutual
dreams. If your plan is to sell your business to fund your
retirement, that is perfectly fine. It is just best to let your
family know that as early as possible.
Consider that
once you do hire the first family member, it will be expected
that you will hire more. The rest of the family will make that
assumption, perhaps even make the assumption that your business
is their safety net. They reason that they can take on another
job, and if they can’t make it, it’s no big deal. “I’ll go into
the family business as a last resort.” Therefore it is important
that from the very beginning you do two things:
1. Write a company policy on the hiring of
family
2. Let everyone in the family know about it
Consider that
hiring family members can be a huge advantage for your business.
At the start up stage, your children are cheap, part time, loyal
employees. During the expansion phase, young family members have
the energy and ability to help your company to grow. Before the
maturity phase, family members are needed for reinvention and
diversification.
Celebrate and
take advantage of their differences. Johnny is good at vehicle
maintenance, Sally loves keeping the books, and Mom is a natural
sales person. Consider that your big competitors are hiring
clones of themselves, while you have the opportunity to choose
creative winners that are family members that you trust. You
have the opportunity to bring love into your workplace, and that
is a good thing as well.
Advantage: Outside Experience
I was
approached by the son of a very good customer. His father was
putting pressure on him to get a job, specifically with him. The
son had just finished college. The son appealed to me to talk to
his father, to encourage him to allow the son to get outside
experience. So I pulled down the texts from my bookshelf and
studied up. The academics were unanimous. Their answer is that
the son/daughter/next generation member should get outside
experience for two to eight years.
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• The
youngsters need to make the choice of joining the business
themselves. Without this freedom of choice, they won’t
perform to peak level.
• The
youngsters need to work for someone that isn’t a parent.
This is in order to learn the difference between a parent
and a boss.
• This
break in time gives the parent a chance to quit parenting.
When the youngsters join, they are treated like adult
employees, not like parented children.
• The
youngsters should work outside to learn how to make
decisions, to learn how to take responsibility for their own
actions. If not, it will be too easy to say “Maybe I made a
mistake, but it was my parents’ fault”.
•
Working for a company that is larger than yours prepares
them for the added complexity that your business will have
with its own growth.
• They
can learn management systems and practices unknown inside
the family firm.
• They
will meet and make connections with people that can help
later.
• They
can help to identify new markets, different types of
competitors, and different strategies.
• They
will learn to fly or fall without the family safety net.
• They
will build self esteem
• They
will learn to face the traumas of transfer, promotion,
termination and competition.
•
Non-family employees will respect that the young hires have
earned their way into the business with outside experience,
not just blood equity.
• They
will learn their true market value of salary and benefits.
• They
will learn for themselves if the outside world is better.
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Parents aren’t really ready to give up any of the decision
making until they are about 60 years old.
Wow, that is
some list! It seems to me that I’d better backtrack 30 years and
start over again. I skipped my college graduation ceremony, so
that I could start in the family business more quickly. I was
happy with the offered salary — $1,000 a month was pretty good
in 1974. And the plan was for me to start our California branch,
so I wasn’t going to be under my dad’s thumb anyway.
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Vic Hollar (1954)
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As you
probably guessed, it didn’t start out too well. Instead of my
dad staying in California for a week at the start, he moved in
with me. Instead of me being the branch manager, I was one of
his grunt laborers. After a couple of months pouring concrete
and installing equipment, I suggested that it was time for him
to hit the highway, to really let me be in charge. He replied
“But you don’t know how to do anything.” Hmmm, calculating his
age at the time, he was 58. He needed two more years before he
was ready to trust me, and in retrospect, I needed a couple
years experience under a boss that wasn’t my dad. But you know
what? We broke the rule and got along fine in the long run.
From my
current perspective, I am pleased with the fresh education and
experience when we hire new young people. They bring us
something that our relatively closed system did not have.
My own son
Cody is now getting his outside experience. We do believe the
academics are correct. Perhaps he’ll find another career and
never enter our business, we’ll just have to take that risk. If
he does not join us, that is fine with me as long as he’s happy.
My customer’s son? He went to work in the family business. |
