Yesterday I attended a great session at the Center for Family Business on Who Will Lead and How. The material was presented by Dr. Myron Harvey. Much like myself, he works with a lot of family businesses. His presentation focused on how succession planning interfaces with strategic planning within a family owned company.
He spoke of the competitive advantage the family businesses have over non-family owned businesses. But why? The answer - tradition, stability, loyalty, and trust. He also focused on the qualities of success as being shared value, shared power, relationship, and mutual respect.
Another key item for family businesses is branding the family name. Many family owned businesses use the family name as part of the company name. This creates a frontline accountability and customers are always looking for someone they can trust.
He also shared a few great handouts. One was a Company Development Status Inventory. This checklist will help a company identify what stage of organizational development they have attained: Stage 1 - Entrepreneurial; Stage 2 - Managerial; or Stage 3 - Professional.
Organizations that have attained a Professional Development environment have a much better chance of combining succession planning with strategic planning. Why is this important? Only 33% of family businesses get to second generation and only 15% make it to third. Those with Professional Development have a huge advantage in getting to third generation.
Dr. Harvey also had a great Leadership Model Checklist. This checklist focused on six areas:
1. Creating a Vision – involves your leadership approach to problem-solving, making decisions, planning, creating ideas or a vision about what your area of responsibility will become, and setting objectives.
· Conservative
· Innovative
· Technical
· Self
· Strategic
2. Developing Followership – in order to make your best contribution, you must get others to respond positively to your ideas and efforts. The ability to influence others comes more from the strength of one’s logic, insight, imagination, and communication skills than from specific position power granted by the organization.
· Persuasive
· Outgoing
· Excitement
· Restraint
3. Implementing the Vision – once objectives have been set and people within the system have become convinced of their value and practicality, there remains the matter of setting things in motion. As a supervisor and leader you must communicate the part that others will play, get individuals to take responsibility, obtain the necessary training, set standards for judging success, and develop systems and procedures to support the total effort.
· Structuring
· Tactical
· Communication
· Delegation
4. Following Through – these supervisory and leadership skills ensure that things will happen according to plan.
· Control
· Feedback
5. Achieving Results – you are being asked to accomplish more with fewer resources. Even when you may not have explicit position authority, you are being asked to take charge and deliver higher levels of performance. You must set challenging goals, stay focused on results, and build an achieving climate in which everyone is encouraged to make his or her maximum contribution.
· Management Focus
· Dominant
· Production
6. Team Playing – leaders at all levels need the support of others to reach their objectives. You are both a leader and a follower in that you have to support the leadership efforts of others. The individual who is able to develop positive and trusting relationships throughout the company is often considered for even more responsibility in the future.
· Cooperation
· Consensual
· Respect for Authority
· Empathy
This checklist will help determine where your leadership (or team leaders) strengths and weaknesses are located.
Overall, Dr. Harvey had excellent material that he was able to share with us.
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