Successful Outcomes for 100-Year Family Enterprises
Date:
May 2, 2014
Sometimes the greatest challenge for a family is to agree on how they will measure the “success” of the enterprise in each generation. The metrics of success should be tied to the current goals and priorities of the family, since they must be viewed in tandem. We can’t expect strong family leaders to emerge without investing financially in their development, and we can’t expect them to appreciate the value of the family enterprise if no one has been telling them stories that instill pride in the family’s history.
Enterprise families spend lots of time discussing how they will measure value, as a thoughtful definition of success is not easy to pinpoint. But some of the most articulate fifth and sixth generation families have phrased their metrics for success in meaningful ways, and we offer some of them here for your reflection:
Insights about Success from FOX Members
- “Our benchmark of success is to pass along to each generation the same purchasing power we inherited from our ancestors.”
- “Our guidepost is to respect the guiding principles of the founders and to trust the governance process to produce better decision-making for the family. We are measured on these decisions.”
- “We see the past as prologue to the future, and we realize that some family values will be carried forward and that others are gladly left behind.”
- “We recognize every generation is a first generation in building it’s own view of the future together.”
- “We focus on generational harvesting in our family – not getting emotionally involved with any business we invest in. We have found that telling the stories about how we have failed and recovered has been the most valuable to our family for developing an entrepreneurial mindset.”
- “We measure the strength of our clan by the number of family members who are actively engaged in some aspect of our family’s enterprise.”
This blog post is excerpted from the new FOX white paper, "Taking the Long-Term View of the Family Enterprise," which documents the characteristics of a family enterprise and provides a framework for you to consider as you manage the transition from a business-centric family to a family-centric enterprise.