Employee Motivation - How to Power Your Organization from the Inside Out

If your overall compensation package is at least competitive and provides a reasonably comfortable life style for your employees and family members, then it is going to take more than additional money to bring out the creative and productive energy that your staff carries around with them.  It’s going to take INTRINSIC motivation. Intrinsic motivation is the compelling desire to do and be better because we want the satisfaction that comes from doing something simply because we love to do it.  In his book, Drive, Daniel Pink tells us that there is a “mismatch between what science knows and what business does.”  To read the end of this blog, click here.

4 Steps for Building Family Business Synergy - Changing "Dreamwork" into Teamwork, Part 2

Trust is the single most critical component of teamwork. Unfortunately, some people are just untrusting and believe in survival of the fastest and the fittest. Employment is just another opportunity to compete, win and validate their belief that they are capable of looking out for number one. Untrusting people expect others to disappoint and their fatalistic attitude generally creates a self fulfilling prophecy to the failure of a team. All forms of personal interaction have one purpose for the untrusting, improve their own circumstances.  They may be referred to as part of a group but the untrusting think individually and functionally, are team members in name only. To read the end of this blog, click here.

Evaluating Successors - Have You Clearly Communicated Reasonable Expecations

For up-and-coming successor candidates in family businesses, oftentimes their evaluation is not altogether objective or even reasonable. Family member employees live in a fishbowl where nothing they do is seemingly ever good enough. The good stuff they do is seen simply as par for the course. And frankly, that's often because no one in the organization gets a lot of affirmation for their hard work, so why should the "heir apparent." Yet, the errors of successor candidates often become mountains rather than the molehills they are. This reality is not fair. A major reason we end up facing significant challenges with successor candidates in family businesses is because they often come into the business with little to no communication about what's expected of them. Expectations can cover everything from performance to attitude and behavior. To read the ending of this blog, click here.

The Incentive Trap – Are You Caught Up In It?

Here’s something that may challenge your current thinking about incentives: Not all incentive programs motivate people towards better and higher levels of performance.  In fact, a good many of these programs have just the opposite effect. They can also serve as a source of motivation for the wrong people or a source of entitlement. Basically, there are three types of motivation:  Fear (self-imposed or direct threats); Extrinsic (outside programs such as bonuses, special perks, etc.); and Intrinsic (internal drive for accomplishment).  While fear and extrinsic motivation may have some immediate impact on performance levels their impact is generally short-lived.  To read the end of this blog, click here.

4 Steps for Building Family Business Synergy - Changing "Dreawork" into Teamwork, Part 1

Trust is the single most critical component of teamwork. In the absence of trust in owners, leaders and colleagues, members of the “dream” (versus team) are looking over their shoulder and subsequently handicapped in their ability to focus on their assigned task.  Building trust is the first answer to how we convert a “dream” into a team that optimizes productivity and creates the Success Marginsm demanded by business succession.   Trust builds cohesiveness and resilience that are the cornerstones of family business synergy. The potential of a collaborative group is not solely dependent upon the aptitude. Assuming journeyman aptitude it is the attitude of interdependence that determines the productivity potential beyond the natural sum of the parts. To read the end of this blog, click here.

8 Seconds After the Boss Is Gone, I'm Gone - Keys for Building Respect Between Your Successor and Key Managers

Over the course of the last decade in working with family-owned companies, I cannot tell you how many times I have heard horror stories of family successors driving their family’s business into the ground. Often times, it is our clients’ fear of this happening in their own businesses that motivates them to hire us in the hopes that we can help prevent this tragedy. In spite of situations that I  have been involved in where, after some time, I begin to share the business owner’s concerns, I maintain hope that I can be helpful in creating solutions to avoid this disastrous downfall. To read the end of this article, click here.

Harmony, You Know It Don’t Come Easy

My apologies to Ringo Starr.  In case you’ve never heard of him, he played drums for the Beatles during the 1960’s until that family business came undone.  Wait a minute, you say, the Beatles were not family members.  Well, perhaps not by the traditional definition of family; but remember, we define a family business as two or more people together for purposes other than making money.  Whether you’re family, friends, or strictly business partners, personal and professional partnerships are a lot of work; and they require the eternal vigilance of the night watchman. To read the end of this blog, click here.

Increasing Organizational Productivity - What Could Be Impacting Teamwork in Your Organization

Organizational productivity is dependent upon teamwork, which I describe as two or more people working together productively for a common goal. Team can be expressed or implied, conscious or unconscious but irrespective, organizational productivity depends upon the effectiveness of interdependent, collaborative effort. Teamwork can be fair, good or great, but teamwork cannot be bad because the contingency of teamwork is enhanced productivity. The English language does not give us a word that that describes the negative side of group collaboration which we generally associate with uncooperativeness, inter-organizational competition, backbiting and under productivity. To read the ending of this blog, click here.

What $180,000 Will and Won’t Buy You - Evaluating Family Successors

This past week I was with an auto dealer client, and we spent some time evaluating the progress of one of his children in the family business. It quickly became apparent that this heir doesn’t know his way to the bottom line of the financial statement. In the car business, razor thin profit margins are the norm. In fact, in a well-run store, for every one dollar that comes in, only about three cents finds its way to the bottom line. That’s a remarkable statistic, but even in other industries where the margins are higher, a deep understanding of how much makes its way to the bottom line should be drilled into the heads of all employees, especially family members seeking to take over someday. To read the end of this blog, click here.