Do You have a "Control Freak" Culture - Can Your Business Survive In the Future?

Every day as I interact as a succession planner with family-owned businesses, I encounter control freaks. Unfortunately, control freaks do not want to be known as such and try to disguise their attitude and management style. Therefore, as I assess what is going on relative to the family and the business, I look for signs that help me understand how the family and business works. By doing so, any control freaks are almost always revealed. In this process, it is important that I be sensitive to these signs because a control freak generally handicaps, or even curses, a succession planning initiative.  As a succession planner, I must be aware of, and address, the organizational and family handicaps that may have been accumulating over many years. I must also be prepared to develop plans and processes that will manage the curses and discontinue negative affirmations that can handicap the continuation of success through the next generation of owners and managers. However, let it be said that, rehabilitating the control freaks that I encounter is a stretch because they are so devoted to their comfort zone of behavior,  attitudes and affirming the successes of their extraordinary controls that all we can hope to do is limit their exposure to those they handicap or curse. To read the end of blog, click here.