Introduction: A Personal Family Business Legacy

As a family we were so fortunate that in early 1989 my two eldest siblings, John and Maria, interviewed and audio-recorded our parents talking about their lives as founders and co-owners of the business they set up in 1949.

I’m using the transcripts I made of those recordings as the basis for a book about their life after Dad came to Scotland, having already written and published a book about his early life prior to finding himself in the UK when the war ended.

Revisiting the Past – Legacy Through New Eyes

However, at the same time as writing this new book, I am involved with my friends and colleagues, Russ Haworth and Alec Broadhurst in the Family Business Partnership, in launching a new course called The Path, for people in or involved with family businesses.

This makes the old family recordings all the more current and significant, as they go into details on so many issues faced by all family businesses sooner or later. So in this series of blogs I am going to look back at my life in a family business from a “What if?” perspective, specifically “what if?” me and my whole family, including my parents, had had the benefit and wisdom of the contents taught in The Path.

A Defining Moment in Our Family Business Legacy

Here is a draft paragraph from my forthcoming book. The year is around 1978. Jan is my father, Teresa my mother, and John their eldest child.

“Jan started receiving unsolicited offers from competitors keen to buy the business. Each customer’s rental contract was valued at two hundred pounds and the business had tens of thousands. He talked over with Teresa the possibility of selling the business but her response was always short and to the point: “It’s up to you.” Jan decided not to accept any of these offers but in retrospect felt that that was the right time to sell the business. However, with John working at a senior level in the business, Jan felt it was not right to sell. Moreover he didn’t really want to give up what he had built up.”

Decisions Made in Silence: The Cost of Not Talking

At this time not only was John working in the business and quickly moving into senior management roles, but his sister Maria, and two brothers, Jimmy and Richard, were also employed there.

I think my mother’s response, “It’s up to you.” feels not quite right and may in fact reflect her desire that my father should keep working in the business or at least continue oversee it, because by this time John was doing most of the day to day management. My mother may have felt that my father would fritter away his time if he had few if any significant projects in his life, and that this would not turn out well for everyone. Yet ultimately she knew that he would make up his own mind on the matter.
She may also have felt that the four children working in the business would have their careers upended, and that it would be better and more secure for them if they could stay in the business under the gaze of their father.

Looking back from the point of view of mainstream family business consultancy, there were no conversations with the four children already working in the business about the potential sale of the business. There was, by extension, no discussion on the subject with the rest of the next generation sibling group, of which there were six of us – yes, I am one of ten children of my parents.

Parallel Lives and Unseen Potential

At this time I had left school and was either in my first or second year at law school. I had no idea what I wanted to do after graduating. My younger brother, David, was around sixteen or seventeen, just about to leave school. Teresa, my younger sister, was also just leaving school. Paul had graduated in accountancy and was working with a firm. This leaves the two youngest of our sibling group, Andrew and Edward, then aged around fourteen and twelve.

Culture, Curiosity, and Complexity

In The Path we help families and advisors learn how to think more clearly and calmly about issues such as the real life one I’ve just explained. So “what if” my parents had been taught to have the wisdom to think more deeply and broadly about the implications for all the family members, not just of selling the business, but of not selling it, which is ultimately what they decided. Mindfulness teaches us that not doing something is also a decision and as such has consequences.

We were a funny sibling group, funny as in strange. We were very literate, loved the more radical contemporary music of the time, and were alive to the political issues we lived through. So in our home growing up we had on the bookshelves Camus, Kafka, Jung, Moorcock, Hesse; whilst under the record player were Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa, Jethro Tull, The Incredible String Band, and others. Intellect, philosophy, and creative arts were there for us and we gobbled it up, each according to their own taste. Note that none of this was afforded to us by our parents’ own interests, but they gave us the freedom to develop in our own way, for which we are eternally grateful.

The Conversations That Never Happened

Yet here we found ourselves, on an invisible conveyor belt that, despite these varied interests, led to a life working in a family business that sold washing machines and televisions, and had a travel agency that sold standard mass market holidays to Spain in the late 1970s.

I think our parents didn’t understand us. Of course they didn’t. One had had his family life bludgeoned into smithereens in the Second World War, the other was the daughter of a coal miner who died when she was only nine years old. How could they understand their anti-establishment gang of ten kids growing up in the 1960s and 70s?

Asking the Right Questions

Yet, with patience, guidance and the right help, we all could have learned how to communicate with each other and relate to one another in a completely different light, and from there started a series of crucial conversations which may have led to an entirely different path for all twelve of us concerned.

That is not to say that the paths we all found ourselves on – and are still on – have turned out badly for all. Even for the least fortunate of us, things could have turned out worse in some imagined alternate path in life. We simply can never know for sure.

However life is inherently about traversing unknowns that we come across, and wisdom is about looking carefully and thoughtfully at the options available to everyone who could be affected by any matter.

Imagine the twelve of us, from Dad aged around fifty-six to Edward at age twelve, sitting round a table – yes, granted, a big table – learning how to connect with each other in a far more enlightened way to prepare ourselves for a series of facilitated discussions by someone expert in the field of advising family businesses.

Questions they could have raised:

• “What do you really want to do?”

• “What do you really not want to do?”

• “How does working in the business appeal to you?” followed by “Why?” or “Why not?”

• “If you had a million pounds and had to spend it wisely on a career, what types of career would you like to try?”

• “What really matters to you?”

A Missed Opportunity for Guidance

I so wish we had had such training and practical education that we offer in The Path, and then expert guidance and support when I was that age… or even younger, and whether Dad had had offers from competitors or not.

I can envisage some fun versions of The Path or expert guidance even when I was in primary school, looking at kids books on geology, fossils, archaeology, greek and norse mythology. Instead these interests came and went without taking root in any way.

Why The Path Exists

I think of the nine of us siblings who worked in our family business at some point or other, only one was a natural fit. All the others would have been happier – if not necessarily financially better off – doing other things in their working life, from running a blues and wine club, or restoring vintage cars, or becoming an artist or print designer, or an author and poet, or a musician.

I wish we had had this education and guidance when we were younger, and that’s why we created The Path; so that others can now get that quality of help and not have to ask later in life, “What if?”