Family business success relies on breaking with tradition.

Success relies on putting the individual first

The skills that will equip women to succeed in a family business setting traverse personal and professional growth says Susanne. “Women need to be brave and courageous enough to be the agent for change and learn soft skills around creating unity, focusing on self and family leadership, alongside business leadership”. 

Susanne says that as an adviser, she regularly uses governance as a “stealth method” to get family members to see each other differently. This includes operational, business, family and individual governance.

“Operational governance is about good decision making and communication where business governance is more about strategic leadership and understanding director skills. Women certainly play these roles and there are opportunities to upskill.”

“Then you have family governance, including family councils and family decision-making and how that links into the business. Individual governance is about taking responsibility for your own leadership and personal wellbeing, which is important because you can easily lose sense of self within a family setting.”

“Family businesses spend 90% of their time on operations, so that side is sound. It’s the family and individual governance that tends to be forgotten. By raising awareness for the emotional factors and their impact on operations, it can have a positive impact on the business.”

Changing perspectives

Susanne recalls helping a family whose experience sparked the idea for Women in Family Business. She was working with a mum and dad and three children to help with succession planning and articulate a vision for the business.

“I always do individual interviews, and when I talked to mum, she queried why she was included and the value she could add to the process. Her view was that her husband built the business while she was a stay-at-home mum.”

“I asked her permission to offer my perspective. I agreed that without her husband we wouldn’t be sitting here. But equally without her contribution to being there for the children and fostering the next generation, we wouldn’t be sitting here either.”

“From that moment, her demeanour changed. Her understanding of family and her role led to more input into the process, a desire to acquire director skills and mentor her daughter. It made a huge difference to that family’s journey.”

“What I hear a lot of is ‘I don’t want my daughter to be in the same situation I was in’”, Susanne added. “You give birth on a Tuesday after doing payroll and back doing payroll the next week.”

“I think it’s time for women in family business to go down the same road women in corporates have been on for some time, recognising the beauty that both genders bring and being part of the change that will carry onto the next generation.”

Knowing how to best do this can be difficult, so finding other women in family businesses who understand the issues is important and a good starting point.

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