If you are fortunate enough to have grown up in a family that owns and operates its own business, then you have gained a wealth of experience and knowledge whether you recognise it yet or not. This head start is a material advantage if you use it wisely.
Active Knowledge Question:
Is your family’s business a place where you can discover your talents?
In last week’s blog, Inducting Family Members, I spoke of the importance of recognising that each family member will bring new talents to a family business. Moreover, they should be encouraged to explore and discover those talents, and then invest in, grow and leverage those talents.
Now not every family nor family business will be open to exploring new ideas and changing the way things are done but every individual is able to look inward and find where their strengths lie. And family businesses can provide a unique opportunity to explore what you are really good at, and those things that are just not you.
Businesses are complex environments, no matter how large or small they may be. There are many facets and dynamics to any business from the people who work within them to customers, suppliers, local community, and systems, processes, regulations, marketing, manufacturing and so the list continues.
And if you have grown up around a family business, you have already been exposed to and absorbed much of what a business entails. You may just not have reflected on those learnings yet or realised how it has impacted your worldview and attitudes, but the experiences are present.
Consider the range of activities involved in your family business and how each of them may allow you to gain insights into what you enjoy and where you believe you can contribute – and start exploring and discovering.
It is only through this humility and willingness to learn that you will realise how much you understand about what it takes to operate a successful business and where that intersection exists between your true passions and talents.
Ultimately it is this intersection that you want to invest yourself in and which will hopefully become where you can seed and grow new business activity, and a life of enduring success.
An entirely new level of performance.
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All the best in the success of your business,
Richard Shrapnel
