How Is Your Family Time Doing?

Where Are Your Greatest Achievements?

In my career I have delivered many more hours to my business work than I have to my family.  There are three major reasons why I believe this is so.  First, I have done so due to my sense of duty for providing income enough to supply our family economic needs, wants and desires.  Second, I have come to recognize that when you own your own there is more work to do than there are hours in the day to provide an adequate supply of necessary accomplishment.  Third, it is very easy to fulfill recognition needs that drive owners to become owners.  Owners have a high need for accomplishment and recognition acknowledgments.  Owners strive to be the leader, the boss, the decision-maker and the one who becomes the go-to-person.  These three elements drive owners to work more often than what they might consider giving to their own families.  Being married to a business owner is much like sharing a spouse with another mate.  The other mate is the business.

Leadership Is Fickle, Who Is Leading Whom?

I have recently been given an opportunity to step down from a leadership role.  The organization which purchased the business I was managing has replaced my leadership with a manager of their own.  In my book of thoughts, this was an automatic and necessary move.  When the sale was taking place, during the negotiations and process, my wife and I discussed what I might do if I were in their position buying our business.  We discussed how we envisioned my future.  I spent two nights describing to her how I would most likely make leadership transitions with all of the personnel in our business.  The first thing I would do is change the management.  The business I would be purchasing is a distance away from where my current locations reside.  Even though our world has greatly improved technology, nothing works quite as well as the first technology...eye to eye.

Here is why.  The business I would be purchasing has its own nucleus of employees with its own model of leadership in place.  The model we are buying is a retail business model that will eventually be providing our products and services to its regional customers.  Some of the current products and services they provide now will remain, but a good deal of them will change.  Some of the philosophies each model supports are not exactly designed to be in parallel order between the two businesses.  Some shifts will need to be made in order for the two businesses to become operating on the same page, in a similar fashion.  To buy the business as it is and to expect the old leadership and old nucleus of employees to successfully manage the future of these needed changes is asking far more than what most organizations can endure.  A new leader with the right sensitivities will need to be inserted.

Furthermore, my wife and I discussed how important it would be to protect the old leader from trying to maintain a leadership role with the rank and file employees during the transition work provided by the new leader.  The potential for some very wrong dynamics to occur is extremely high.  As a result, I would try to find a place away from that old location and move the old leader to a new place.  It would serve everyone's interest better if this type of management change was engaged and handled with respect and care.  We discussed this type of process to be one of the most useful methods for initiating a good change for all.

Clean Breaks Are The Hardest To Do But Work The Best!

Clean breaks are the best to recover from when businesses buy other businesses.  All new ideas, all forms of change are going to be met with a certain degree of resistance.  This effect is almost unavoidable.  However, to minimize the length of the resistance is the key to making the best of the changes that are in the plans to occur.  A fresh leader who has the new companies best interest in mind will help to prevent the old business from becoming organized within itself for pushing a successful campaign to resist the many changes coming.

My wife and I discussed this potential at length.  The changes did occur as we defined them to be well in advance of them occurring.  They are exactly unfolding as I had described I would do if given the same scenario.  No surprises.  However, one discovery has occurred.  In my nearly 40 years of business experience, I have come to realize how important my family time has become.  As an owner, manager or leader of many business models in my career, I have come to recognize how much sacrifice an owner learns to endure when it comes to sharing family time with the needs of the business.

The new manager of the old business has given up all of his family time to help the new buyer develop a successfully growing business model.  I have had the pleasure of working with him more and more each day as we work to make the most of this transition from old ownership to new ownership.  I have come to recognize his recent and past dedication to his business life during the time we are spending together.  He is fully dedicated to his employers.  I suspect his time chips to work average somewhere near 80 hours per week.  He lives a distance away from his employment and does not always travel home each night due to the length of his working day.  He has a wonderful spirit, good sensibility and thrives on recognition.  He will burn out.

Family Time, Not Just Holidays And Big Events!

This post is not about me and where I am going.  This post is shared to all of you hard working owners to recognize when too much is too much.  A serious deficiency can occur with how you spend your time with your cherished families.  When that balance is clipped and trimmed away to the bone, portions of what is important to life begin to deteriorate.  If that deterioration continues long enough, huge chunks of important life components begin to fall away.  The destruction that follows is not always the best contributors to anyone's sense of recognition.  The leader who faces these challenges usually begins to fail at their work.  The only thing that remains steady is the time they spend at their work.  Productivity diminishes as the time at work increases.  Nobody wins this war.

If you are an owner, make sure you honor the time you need to spend with your families.  It is precious and should always be protected with care.  If you are off the track right now, work on setting yourself straight.  You will always have plenty of work remaining on your desk, regardless of how much time you give to your business.  Always.  But you will not always have your family in full respect of what you share with them.

Until next time...