> ... some families seem to enable and empower otherwise dull characters
> who would have trouble competing on an ordinary playground.
John,
These words work for expressing something that I have seen as a common
trait in many businesses... particularly in the
histo-presto/construction business that I know. A business builds up a
reputation and if it is a famly business, as most histo-presto
businesses tend to be, then a climate develops in which those family
members who are capable balance against those who are incompetent. The
capable enable the incompetent in many ways and it is rarely, as I see
it, a conscious process.
With Whatcher Callit (an earlier employer of mine that I learned a great
deal from) the first competent was the great grandfather who was a
gravestone carver and loan shark on the Brooklyn waterfront... then
there was his son who was quite competent, and respected by his
employees, and he built the business into a major player in the NY stone
industry... and of his three sons one went to Wharton Business School
and he was competent... but the other two sons were not dull, by any
means, but were certainly dysfunctional with an ordinary playground.
There is always a need to balance between the competent and the
incompetent... and with Whatcher Callit the greed for more money and
power (and it was a lot about who had the power) lead to getting
themselves tied up with the banks in speculative office building
construction then Black Monday arrived and, as Wang Lung suggests, they
did not know soon enough that they had already sold all the "land" to
the banks who in the end had all the power. They went from $60M
bondability to zero assets and unpayable debt, and along the way a lot
of scrambling to divert assets to wives, close employees and relatives.
The competent son had a debilitating stroke and thus the competent
person was eliminated from the mix entirely and went into semi
retirement in Boca Raton on disability... a nice sum diverted to his
wife. One son went and sold baby furniture, or whatever, and the other
son continues to bounce around the histo-presto market looking for a
steady job. The scene is you go from driving an Alfa Romeo in Huntington
and screaming at subcontractors to a Dodge four-door in Bayside and
begging your old employees for work.
So when I look at the big players in histo presto -- and these are small
companies by Bechtel standards (for the most part they continue to be
family businesses) -- I pay attention to a few particulars... to what
degree they appear to be riding on the reserved capacity of past
reputation (a family company can go a very long way on the good will of
one generation), to identify the dominant leader, significant changes in
leadership, the health of leaders, if they appear to be over extended (a
fleet of expensive vehicles being a prime indicator -- or their material
suppliers saying they will only deal in cash with them), if they are
solid citizens in the news or they need to hide, and the apparent
competence of the younger generation. Are the kids going to night school
to study structural engineering or business management or hanging in a
bar or working on fixing up their house or sleeping late in the morning?
There are so many businesses that have gone down in quality and
reputation when the "son" takes it over that it is all too easy to
assume that the passing on of a family business is equivalent to selling
the land... but poor family planning does not always need to be the case.
][<en
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