Foreword for 9 Elements of Family Business Success
Dr. Stephen R. Covey
What a powerful, greatly needed and comprehensive book on all the issues confronting family businesses!
When we mix emotional and economic criteria we open a Pandora's Box of problems. Few family businesses don't face these unique challenges. Many of these find their families torn apart. How sad. But how unnecessary!
Deathbed research shows that those "passing on" don't wish they had spent more time at the office or watching TV. They talk about their loved ones. They realize that no other success can compensate for failure in the home and that the most important work we will ever do is in the four walls of our own home.
This marvelous book is so vital and timely in dealing with the tough issues all family businesses face so as to preserve our most precious relationships and develop prosperous contributing businesses.
The book organization covering the 9 elements is so wisely sequenced, starting with sharing personal vision statements. These are the most important decisions, simply because they govern every other decision. Putting together the family team, determining compensation, selecting and grooming family member successors, dealing with spouses and non-family members—all become so vital in cultivating healthy, positive, synergistic family business cultures.
Chapter 6 on Building and Maintaining a Happy Family Culture in a family business is worth the entire book by itself! The 11 cultural potholes are so common and so realistic and the prescriptive analyses and recommendations are brilliant, wise, practical and very doable.
Finally—one of the most challenging issues—how do you transition to family members? Seriously, this book goes into depth on almost every conceivable, relevant issue. This book is a "must read" for all those transversing the emotional-economic chasms in the perilous journey to the family business Mount Everest, the top of the world.
But just think of the powerful lessons taught and the character growth which flows throughout the entire family on such a magnificent journey. Primary greatness is character. Secondary greatness is worldly success. Character is destiny. Also, think of the transcendent contribution the business makes—such as The Alternative Board does—and how children and grandchildren learn the importance of how contribution is ever more important than achievement, that they can be happy for the success of others rather than so pretending but eating their heart out, that integrity to principles is the essence of loyalty rather than loyalty being greater than integrity. Unbelievable character growth!
Family members, business involved or not, don't grow up in a comparison based culture where the true identity theft happens. The cultural DNA is aligned with the immortal spiritual DNA, unleashing the greatest potential of each family member and reaffirming their true worth and identity, unconnected to net worth.
Few family businesses achieve such heights. Sadly so. But by following these wisely sequenced 9 principles, this can happen.
How I wished I've had these materials in so many situations over the years with family businesses who struggled profoundly with such unusual challenges. I commend Allen E. Fishman on such a marvelous contribution and know you will profit from the reading and applying as much as I have.