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Free Training Session 3

Pakistani Family Business Succession Expert

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Understand your family business, its components, and all stakeholders and people who serve the family business. Make them align and draw their boundaries.

Family and Business Characteristics WorkSheet

In this exercise, we will identify personality traits for different participants in a business and family context. The four main participants are:

  1. Senior Generation Member: Retiring manager of the business who is a family member as well.
  2. Younger Generation Member: New upcoming manager of the family business who is a family member as well.
  3. Loyal Old Employee: An employee who has been with the business for many years.
  4. Family Member (Not involved in Business): A family member who does not participate in the business but is part of the family dynamics.

Individual Personality Traits for Your Business

  • Example Scenario:

In this example, we will see how to write positive personality traits for each participant.

Senior Generation Member Traits:

  • Patience: They need to show patience when the younger generation makes mistakes in the business as it is their learning process.
  • Mentorship and Supervision: Their task is to mentor the younger generation, stepping away from the management role and into supervision of young managers.

Younger Generation Member Traits:

  • Respectful: Showing respect for the knowledge and experience of the senior members and old employees. An experienced family business mentor once said, “I can predict whether the business will last long or fail after observing the body language of the younger generation with the old employees. If the body language is respectful, the business will be successful; otherwise, the business will not survive.”

Loyal Old Employee Traits:

  • Loyalty: They often act as if they are the owners of the company when the owner is not around. Loyal old employees take on the responsibilities of the senior generation, ensuring stability when the owner is absent.

Family Member (Not involved in Business) Traits:

  • Supportive: In the Pakistani context, they should not interfere in the business and should stay friendly. Their boundaries should be drawn, and their financial needs should be addressed.

Now the example of a problem and its solution

Consider a young man who comes home late at night, which is a negative trait affecting his family life. His late arrivals lead to conflicts with his wife and disapproval from his father. This habit negatively impacts various aspects of his everyday life. Addressing this trait can improve his life and resolve family tensions.

By highlighting this negative trait and giving him the opportunity to identify good and bad traits in others, he will likely understand, accept, and work to address his bad habits.

Starting the Listing Process:

As an example, when the younger generation takes over the business, the senior generation needs to exhibit traits like:

  • Love: Spending more time with family and fostering a strong, united family after retirement.

We will explore skill sets in another worksheet, but for now, let’s focus on plotting traits.

Action Plan

Steps for Participants:

  1. Ask the participants to complete the worksheet and submit their answers on a single page. This task should not take more than an hour.
  2. Share this video or explain the exercise yourself.
  3. Inform them that we need to highlight all good and bad characteristics to understand what negatively impacts family satisfaction and identify ways to increase it.
  4. Similarly, determine which traits enhance or hinder business performance.

Once the traits are listed, it is not expected that everyone will adopt all positive traits or discard all negative ones. However, many traits will be adopted or discarded, leading to an overall improvement in business performance and family satisfaction.

Participants Involved:

  1. Business Participants: Those who are involved in the business or have the potential to join.
  2. Young Generation.
  3. Senior Generation
  4. Family Members (Not involved in the business)

By starting this exercise, you will see significant positive changes in both your business and your family.