“Who is to blame?'“ is a sticky subject in family businesses.
Blair Trippe and Doug Baumoel’s excellent book, Deconstructing Conflict reminds us that the causes of conflict in a family business may not be as obvious as we first assume, and that it is worth delving deep to understand conflict and possible measures to resolve or ease it. It reminds us that there are layers of causation, and that what sparks conflict may not have much to do with the actual cause.
One of my clients, a non-family CEO of a substantial family business, sometimes describes his own mindset toward business decisions in terms of scarcity and abundance. When he’s in scarcity mode, he finds himself thinking of a particular issue or transaction as a zero-sum game. He begins to hoard opportunities, to be defensive and paranoid about others’ motives. Recognizing his mindset, he has learned to stop himself and think instead in terms of abundance. By envisioning multiple mutually-positive potential outcomes—opportunities for win-win solutions—he finds he is more creative and more open to possibility.
Say you and your family own a business together, and you’re trying to make a major decision. You agree to take a vote. That’s fair, right?
When it comes to fairness in decision-making, it’s a two-part analysis: For a decision to be considered fair, the participants must believe that both the outcome of the vote and the process by which it was conducted are fair.
Created in the 1970’s by professors John Davis and Renato Tagiuri of the Harvard Business School, the Three-Circle Model is a time-tested and oft-referenced tool for understanding the relationships between the owners, business, and family in a family enterprise system.
Watch this short, informational video to help round your understanding of these critical relationships and gain insight that may change your perspective.
As family business consultants, we are often asked, “How do you know if a family in conflict can be helped, or if they are headed toward either litigation or stagnation?” While there is no test of absolute certainty, we have identified a predictor of how likely a family might be to manage conflict in new and constructive ways: The Family Factor.
