If you can’t do business with friends and relatives, don’t do it, it won’t be good. Let us look at the reasons that many of those who have gained the experience of family business, sooner or later make this conclusion.
Family and organization: a meeting of two systems
When members of one family start a common business, two systems meet in one place: family and organization. The family is a powerful informal system where members of the same family are connected to each other at the level of several generations, regardless of whether they want it or not. Organization is a formal system where people come together by mutual agreement and contract, freely enter and leave it. Of course, each of us carries with us to work some kind of attitude, experience of relationships and partly a picture of the world of our family. Thanks to this, we sometimes behave at work not quite formally - some conflicts with managers or owners remind us of our relationship with our parents, some of our colleagues become our best friends or sexual partners, and work sometimes replaces life. But while the company and the family are in our “different pockets”, and we are the only point at which two different systems intersect, it is relatively easy for us to maintain balance while remaining a little different people in the family and in the organization. Thanks to this, we have no difficulties in understanding where the problem is happening now - in business or in the family. We can more clearly identify the problem, we can use the resources of the system where there is no problem, and solve it: consult with colleagues or borrow money for family needs, receive emotional or financial support from the family during the period of professional turmoil. When both family and business intersect at several points (people) at the same time, both systems inevitably experience the powerful influence of each other, and it is often difficult to understand exactly where the crisis occurs - in the family or in the business. More precisely, it is difficult to understand where it began, because when a crisis occurs in the family business, it occurs both there and there. Even worse, systems superimposed on one another can provoke crises, resonating with each other.
Bert Hellinger, the author of the method of systemic family constellations, formulated laws that adamantly operate in family systems. Violation of each of the laws leads to the fact that the system is trying to restore balance with the help of illnesses, deviant behavior or addictions of one of the family members, the inability to give birth to a child, and so on. When the constellators began to move to the business level, it became clear that in the organizations these laws work in some other way or do not work at all. But some others work instead.
How Family Laws Affect Businesses
- The law of belonging. The strongest of all family laws, meaning that every member of the system has the right to belong to it. This applies to all family members, regardless of how their actions were unbearable for the rest, as well as all who donated something to family members. In organizations, the law of ownership is, on the contrary, one of the weakest and usually only applies to people who have made a significant contribution to the business - usually these are founders or people close to them in terms of investment in the company. Ordinary employees and even middle managers can leave the system forever without devastating consequences. Sometimes dismissal can be a serious wellness procedure for a business. However, if a member of the founder’s family works for the company, his dismissal becomes not a business matter, but a family business and cannot happen according to the laws of the family system. Often this leads to the fact that the business begins to hurt.
- The law of hierarchy. In a family, a hierarchy is determined by principles that many of us would prefer to consider obsolete: the one who came into the system first is the most important (the eldest child is more important than the youngest), the woman enters the man’s family system, the new system is more important than the old (relations of married children , more important than their relationship with their parents). In business, the distribution of power can be more complex, less linear, it is not so much the order that matters, but the compliance of the authority of responsibility. In the case when spouses or parents and children end up in the same business, the probability that the family hierarchy does not coincide with the hierarchy in the business is very high. If spouses or children turn out to be more competent than their husbands or parents, they will begin to take positions in business with greater responsibility. As a result, a family member who takes on more responsibility than is expected from the family hierarchy, is dissatisfied, makes a complaint to his spouse or parent, and ultimately tries to slip out of business to return to the family hierarchy. Given that it is a partner with a stronger competency, business will inevitably fail in a crisis.
- The take-give law implies that each member of the system, receiving something from others, must balance it with something that will give. This is not the strongest law in the family system, but it is very strong in formal organizations. Every person in the business takes money during his life invested in the company. If the initial contract is observed at all levels (the work done by each employee corresponds to the money received by him), the business is in balance and can move forward, cope with environmental changes. If at some of the levels the balance is not observed, then the formal system requires forceful actions on the violator up to dismissal. If this does not happen, the system begins to hurt. We remember that the owner of a business cannot dismiss a family member due to the laws of family systems. But not only that is bad. In this case, everything is mixed up: the inability to dismiss or vice versa, consent to work for too low a salary is perceived by family members as a contribution to family relations. As a result, the take-give balance is completely lost in the organization, the company becomes lame, any changes in the environment can become intolerable for it, and there is a high dependence on employees.
- The law of love in the family system suggests that love should go from ancestors to descendants, parents dedicate their lives to children, but not vice versa. In business, the energy of love is replaced by the energy of money; it lives by other laws and requires a serious attitude to itself. The energy of love, for example, makes you take care of the children who are successfully replaced by employees in business. The energy of money takes priority in areas that feed money. Reducing advertising budgets or completely abandoning advertising in favor of maintaining a payroll is often one of the last decisions before deciding to close a business.
What to do if you are already in this meat grinder?
- Remember that the laws of the family are stronger than the laws of formal systems. When choosing between family and business, people will always choose a family. The best that an experienced businessman can do is not to put his people before this choice.
- Check what happens to the hierarchy in the family and business. If the family hierarchy is broken, you need to return to it, even if it will reduce business efficiency. At least this will give him a chance to survive.
- Find a person who is not related to the family, who will ensure that the laws of money are respected. This may be a good accountant or economist, financial director and so on, endowed with the authority to stop or reduce costs. It is ideal to use the services of an external consultant on a regular basis so that he can cope with the influence of the system, not enter into it completely.
- If you decide to withdraw a family member from the business, make sure that at your family level the take-give balance is respected. He who is asked to leave will make a sacrifice, and he must receive something in return.