At the Family Business Performance Center, we think of business as a competitive sport. When you think of great sports dynasties I can assure you they have a well-thought-out plan for bringing their teams together and creating a winning game plan.
One of the most common family business challenges is creating a strong and cohesive family business leadership team. One of the deliberate practices we help our families create are well thought-out and executed family meetings.
Family Business Communication
Family meetings are an important part of the process to create a strong leadership team, or as we like to call it in the family business arena, setting up effective family business governance. If your team doesn’t have a solid and clear plan for who’s calling the shots you could end up with chaos, family business conflict and a dysfunctional locker room of family business players!
A few of the most important goals of effective family meetings are:
- outlining the family business’ short-term and long-term objectives
- clarifying roles and clear expectations for results for each player
- creating a strong culture of accountability for long-term success
- practicing important family business communication skills
- creating a venue for constructive debate and collaboration
If we follow the sports analogy we can see that the best baseball teams come to sunny Arizona every March for organized practicing of the fundamental skills to be a team. They don’t just show up on the first day of the season and hope the team will learn how to play well together when the game’s on the line.
Great family leaders and head coaches realize it’s important for family business planning to create a venue for their team to practice and learn how to communicate and execute game plans before the actual game is being played. Too many family businesses just continue to do the work and hope their past success will be a guarantee for future championships… but we know that’s not the best game plan for success.
Family leaders should take the time annually to identify the top skills their family team needs to develop and create a plan for practicing the skills. For a great game plan, check out our free family business playbook! And of course as always, feel free to lean on Coach Pete for some quick advice on how to put your plan together! We have a long list of successful family business teams to get to work with and we help them avoid the most common mistakes that can undermine a team’s success!
Get your practice plan together and “Play to your potential!”
