Pulling from
chapter 8 of Reframing Organizations,
Artistry, Choice, and leadership, by Bolman and Deal, employees contribute
personal and social friction to the work environment. This is caused by the
various personalities interacting in a work setting.
This friction
or mismatching between personalities can be said about the upper management of
the internship I worked for this past summer. The business was family owned,
and the CEO happened to be the eldest of five brother that worked either
directly for, or indirectly with the company. The company had been previously
owned by the five brother’s father. For privacy sake we’ll say that the current
CEO’s name was Tony. Ranging from management to consultation and marketing, the
brothers played pivotal roles in the success of this company. The origin of
conflict began when the company began the process of getting acquired. The
youngest brother, Timmy, with some help of his father, was placed in a role
working directly with the private equity firm and getting this deal to pass.
Clearly, this aggravated some of the other brothers. It should also be pointed
out that the CEO was not confrontational at all, and allowed Timmy to take this
role without any problems. The elder brothers felt that they deserved, at the
very least, a little more control of the major decisions that were going to be
made in the following months. Due to a lack of communication between the middle
brothers and the CEO, Timmy went ahead and essentially ran the makings of the
deal with the help of his father and eldest brother Tony.
One situation
that particularly irritated the other brothers, was the decision to potentially
change the company name. The private equity company was unsure of whether they
would keep the original name that the company had for many years or whether to
change it to something easily recognizable with their portfolio. From Timmy’s
side, he was trying to negotiate the highest price possible, and something like
a company name might not be a subject he was willing to fight for. A choose
your battles type of situation. The middle brothers began a plan of pushing the
original companies name and history, by updating the office with pictures of
the founder, and other historical touches to the office space. The original
name and brand had a lot of branding put into it, after all the company was
previously successful and buyers knew this company the way it was. This is
where the lack of communication between the brothers became the main reason for
conflict. If the middle brothers had just say down and expressed their desire
to keep the original name, maybe Timmy would have realized its importance and
pushed to keep it that way. In the end, the company was allowed to keep its
original name while the Private Equity firm decides how to further its
branding. Although this was a rather positive outcome, it did not stop the occurrence
of various arguments between the brothers that had nothing to do with the
original problem.
In the end, I
think that if the CEO had been more commanding of the situation, and understood
the desires of all the brothers, he could have diffused the situation. This
particular conflict arose from members having informal roles and a lack of
leadership from the CEO. It was his job to reach out and understand the way the
others operate, specifically on a task and processes level.
You managed to combine conflict in the family with conflict in the organization. I had wanted to avoid posts about the former - sibling rivalry is common and well understood and perhaps stems from other issues than what Bolman and Deal write about in Chapter 8. But in this case of a family owned business, the mixing of the two makes sense.
ReplyDeletePart of the story you told - where Timmy was the one selected to work with the Private Equity firm - could have been illuminated more. You said this aggravated some of the other brothers. You didn't say why this was so. Did they feel more qualified than Timmy to do this work? Did they fear their own interests wouldn't be well protected this way? Without knowing what it was that caused the irritation it is difficult to understand how this might have played out better.
While it is not the same thing, among my two siblings I was the one responsible for handling my parents' estate. In this case, that was specified in my parents' trust documents, though I was the middle child, not the oldest. Doing this sort of thing is emotional and stressful. There are these long standing family issues/resentments that play out in the background. The parents don't have equal regard for each kid. The kids know this. That weighs on the circumstances.
In the story you told it seemed the father was still alive. If he had favorites among the kids, that might have influenced the situation, even if Timmy otherwise did as good a job as can be expected. So I will close with this last question. Is it possible to determine whether keeping the family brand was the real issue or merely a symptom of the real issue? I couldn't tell from reading your piece, but maybe the answer is obvious to you.
To elaborate more on why the brothers were aggravated, I must assume it had to do with Timmy being the youngest. A sort of respect you elders situation. I'm not entirely sure if he was more qualified to handle the situation or not, but I do know that the youngest brother spends a great deal of time with the father because he lives much closer than the other brothers. So maybe for that reason he was favored in choosing. To be fair, I did not work that closely with Timmy, so I cannot gauge the situation perfectly.
ReplyDeleteI would say the family brand issue was not a symptom of the original issue. Some of the brothers that were not involved in the transaction seemed to be more sentimental about the family brand than Timmy. Timmy may have been pressured by the closings of the deal to lose this sentimentality, but I cannot say for sure.