Waarden van het Familie Bedrijf, waarden voor Continuïteit.

Familiebedrijven, ze staan er om bekend dat ze lang, héél lang kunnen bestaan. (nb: wat te denken, bijvoorbeeld, van Ho-Shi?). Continuïteit gewaarborgd dus.

Wat ook kan: "Depending on the opportunity that presents itself, it may be best for all concerned if you design a company that will start fast, grow quickly, and then be sold or merged with another. Ask yourself whether you truly want to commit yourself and your company to the goal of a long and independent life."

Valt u niet voor hedge funds en gaat u nu samen met uw organisatie voor conitinuïteit, voor een lang bestaan, dan zijn er daarvoor voor u en uw organisatie enkele relatief eenvoudige tips.
In Business Week schreef James Olan Hutcheson vorige week:"If you want your family business to endure, strengthen it from the foundation up. Making a conscious choice to create a long-lived company is the first step in building a strong foundation. It takes some luck to survive for generations, certainly, but these things don't happen by accident either. It starts with your intentions."

Hutcheson deed een onderzoek naar deze intentions en komt met een aantal verklaringen, tevens tips, waarom m.n. familiebedrijven zo lang (kunnen) bestaan. Deze tips zijn ook interessant voor niet-familiebedrijven, als zij ook zo lang willen (blijven) bestaan. 

• => Passion Needed. "Once you've made the decision, building passion should be your next objective. You may have all the passion you need, but you won't be around forever. Someone must engender passion in younger generations. Start by exposing children to your business. Take them to work with you. Tell them about the things that you love in your business. Mentor them to have a romance with the enterprise. Then, make sure they have the training and experience needed to give that passion balance. Encourage and enable them to get appropriate university degrees. Enforce a requirement that future family business leaders get complementary work experience in other companies before taking permanent jobs in the family enterprise. Broad and deep preparation, both mental and emotional, is required of leaders of long-lived family businesses." (nb: ook als manager van een niet-familiebedrijf bent u er niet 'eeuwig' en gelden er voor u dezelfde tips, toch?)
• => Good Relationships. "At the same time, make sure your business has good governance in place. This means creating a board with a significant number of outside directors. It means building long-term relationships with nonfamily advisers who are both expert and independent, and won't just tell you what you want to hear. It means having policies that create accountability. In practical terms, if a family member executive or director isn't acting in the company's best interests, you need a way for the board to replace him or her. Otherwise, you don't have true accountability, and your company's future may be constrained." (nb: 'Goede Verstandhoudingen' dus, maar blijf wel zakelijk!, zelfs als het om uw familie gaat.) 
• => Communication is Vital. "Communication is the rebar that runs through the cement in this foundation. If you don't effectively express the commitment, passion, accountability, and rules guiding your business, how can you expect others to buy in? And if you don't understand the extent to which others have accepted your commitment and the rest as their own, then you are building blind and headed for trouble. Excellent communication begins not with speaking, but with listening. By carefully and consciously hearing the thoughts and feelings of the people you want to influence, you gain the knowledge you must have to cast your expressions so that they are understood. (nb: of in het Nederlands: C = (V x L)¹ + G² )
• => Go for Clarity."After you have listened and understood what you are up against, you are ready to express yourself. Everyone has heard that the three vital attributes of real estate are location, location, and location. Similarly, a great writer once said that three things are most important in communication: clarity, clarity, and clarity." (nb: bent u voldoende duidelijk? Overigens, als u 'ja' zegt: is uw partner, zijn uw kinderen het met u eens?) 
• => Be Fair."Definitions of fairness and justice vary widely, but whatever they mean to you, there is a universal test to indicate when you may be about to go outside the lines. That test is this: Would you want to read or see a news story describing your behavior for the world? You can use this to test your own behavior and that of your fellow leaders and employees."  

Dat laatste is een goede vraag, vind ik: 'Zou u een nieuwsbericht willen lezen, willen zien (nb: en dus niet van uw eigen hand!), waarin uw gedrag c.q. dat van uw organisatie openbaar wordt gemaakt?'

Als uw antwoord hierop positief is, dan zit het waarschijnlijk wel goed met uw intenties en dan ligt er al een goede basis voor Continuïteit.