NewsBeat

July 2017 NewsBeat 15 husband), I went to the white board and drew the diagram I used above, explaining, "Our problem is that we are trying to build a strategy around where you are today, without reconciling what happened in past. If you can reconcile your past differences, hopefully we'll be able to move you past the anger to a point before your Dad's death and Mom's new relationship changed the family dynamic." In a sense we went back in time: We began with very basic communication skills, so they could talk more honestly about their individual perspectives on how things had gotten so far out of whack, and why they felt the way they did. Just getting them all together in the same room was tough at first and required a lot of one-on-one work to bring about. It was a very emotional process — at some meetings, every family member in the room was openly weeping — and it took time, but we finally arrived at a point where Mom, her new husband and the kids agreed to merge the two competing businesses and move forward together. This outcome couldn't have been achieved had we not gone back in time and reconciled the event that had pushed them off their path. It's important to note here that reconciling did not mean that everyone had to agree on what had happened or why. It meant talking openly and honestly about their feelings and working through them, then moving on. Family feuds aren't new; from Cain and Abel to the Hatfields and McCoys, people hold themselves hostage to an event that they might not even have had control over at the time, and which they themselves may not even remember. I've seen families pulled apart over arguments that occurred a generation ago, who still hold completely different views on how the resulting schism went down. Yet, when they allow themselves to see the conflict through the other person's eyes, it becomes possible to say, "I hear what you're saying – I don't agree but I understand – and I'm willing to move on for the good of the family and the business." Everyone needs to be on the same team and in alignment to create one strategic direction that's good for all. Case Study — Irreconcilable Differences Of course, not all family feuds have a desired resolution – at least, not one in which the business relationships remain intact. Sometimes we have to settle for keeping the family itself intact, because the dynamic has become so unhealthy and fraught with hard feelings that there's no other way to resolve it. We worked with the Bakers, a father and son whose very different working styles doomed their partnership from the start. Dad was a "go with his gut" kind of guy, whose loose management style had worked well for him and his very successful business. He'd been an absentee dad — his business had always come first — but saw bringing his son in as his junior partner and heir apparent as a way to make up for his admitted emotional negligence after a divorce had parted him from his son's mother and drove a stake in the father/son relationship. But the personalities of the two men worked against this partnership from day one. The son is as brilliant a guy as his dad, but the resemblance ends there. As loose and unstructured as his father's working style is, the son's is cerebral, literal and analytical. He was uncomfortable with the lack of defined roles in the business, and wanted to create new structures and processes for a sustainable future. His father, who needs to have input on everything from the social media to pricing and long term strategy, wasn't willing to give up any of his control, and blamed his son for being so uptight and, as he saw it, ungrateful. After all, his son was already a millionaire thanks to Dad's business abilities — and the people whose jobs he was trying to redefine were there before he was, helping build that fortune for him. Couldn't he just learn to go along with the program and wait his turn to run things? Unfortunately the son's personality rubbed a lot of the key people in the company the wrong way, which only added to the friction. When a group of them came to Dad to ask him to intervene, the family called us in to help sort things out. For two years, we worked with them, trying different strategies to bring them together on common ground. But after many meetings and a lot of frank talk, it was clear that this partnership couldn't be salvaged – and the only way that father and son could stay on good personal terms was to manage the son out of the business. This event certainly shifted the strategic direction of the enterprise; now they're without an heir apparent as Dad's retirement looms on the horizon. The long-term planning for the future of the business has to change accordingly, and Continued on next page

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