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By Wayne Rivers

I was participating recently in a CEO Performance Roundtable for a firm near Atlanta. During the employee interview phase of the analysis, I walked one employee out of the room in order to welcome the next one. In a relatively small firm with a reputation for good service and good teamwork, the first employee put her head down and walked briskly past the other employee without so much as eye contact, a nod, a hand gesture, or a syllable. She walked within a foot of the other person without any sort of acknowledgement whatsoever of the presence of another human being. I was, to say the least, flabbergasted. I reported the observation to the peer group, and we began to probe more deeply for dysfunction among the staff in this highly profitable family business.

How is it that the woman entrepreneur, who had been producing extremely strong financial results in their company and who had known about the dysfunctional employee relations for some time, tolerated and, in effect, condoned it for such a long period of time?

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By Wayne Rivers, CEO Family Business Institute

Conflict is a fact of life in family and closely-held businesses.  This research paper deals with definitions of conflict, suppression and avoidance of conflict, keys to successful family business conflict resolution, and tips for those occasions where you find yourself as a third party intermediary in a dispute situation.

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By Wayne Rivers, CEO Family Business Institute

We once worked with a family business founder who truly had the Midas touch. On a shoestring budget, he bought a small, struggling company, worked diligently and tirelessly for almost 30 years, and built a regional powerhouse with an amazingly consistent track record of profits. In his spare time, this business founder utilized the wealth created by his operating company to accumulate over $25 million worth of commercial and residential real estate. This entrepreneur was successful by anyone’s measurement.

About three years ago, his three children joined him in the business from other careers. Since the next generation came aboard, tension has developed. The “kids” see things that aren’t quite right, issues needing time, attention, elbow grease, and strategic thinking. The business founder, on the other hand, isn’t too bothered. He has worked very hard to get where he is, and he is finally beginning to enjoy life a little more. He’s traveling some, buying expensive cars, and participating in civic and political affairs more then ever before. There is a bit of a tug-of-war going on. The NextGen of business is saying, “We have issues! We need change!” The founder is saying, “I built this company to where it is now without the things you are recommending; why do we need them now?”

What NextGen Business is learning is that it is hard to argue with success.

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By Wayne Rivers, CEO Family Business Institute

In 2001, Jim Collins, author of Built to Last, wrote the blockbuster business book Good to Great.  Many family business leaders rushed to embrace the concepts in Good to Great and translate its big business findings into their own family or closely held companies.  When we at The Family Business Institute read Good to Great, the item that leaped out at us as an incredibly vital tool is the seemingly simple concept of “get the right people on the bus and the wrong people off.”  The sad fact is that many family business owners spend more time researching the purchase of a new copy machine or planning their next fishing trip, than they invest in increasing the quality of their talent pools.

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Leaving Motherhood at home and CEO duties at the office.

By Wayne Rivers, CEO Family Business Institute

Motherhood is the most difficult (and possibly the lowest paying) occupation in history. Mothers in family businesses have it doubly hard. In the Spring 1999 issue of Family Business magazine, Ronda Vecchio relates her experiences in balancing family and business over the last 17 years.

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