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Thursday, Apr 9th, 2009 ↓Fathers & Sons
Working with a family-run business is different. All organizations have their own cultures and personalities: family businesses have an additional overlay of kinship and shared history complicating matters.
I was recently advising the founder’s son in a small light manufacturing enterprise in Brooklyn. This firm was under tremendous financial pressure due to misjudgments made over several years by the father. The son and I were discussing tactics: how to make it through the next few weeks; and in particular, how to manage cash flow to get jobs done. “You know what my biggest problem is?” the son asked me. “The second we get any money in the door, my father tells me to give it to whomever is annoying him most.”
He was right: the father was, in fact, using the firm’s cash revenue to pay personal debts and obligations. Leaving aside the question of legality (to me it looked like tax evasion), the practice was starving the company of working capital. Everyone was suffering: employees and suppliers were routinely getting paid late or not at all. The founder’s son was a virtual slave to the business, taking very little in the way of owner’s draw and did not even have health insurance (the group policy had lapsed because the company was not paying its bills).
The son paused the conversation, put his head in his hands and said, “I can’t believe I’m throwing my Dad under the bus.” I tried to convince him that rebuilding a sound business was in his father’s best interest: it would eventually be able to pay down all of those personal debts whereas now he was barely able to make minimum payments to keep debt collectors away. I even tried to joke with him that all sons sooner or later throw their fathers “under the bus.” But he was unable to summon the willpower to say “no” to his Dad and the business’s problems have multiplied and increased.
Career Change: Then and Now
For the second time in my career, I find myself engaged in an extended career transition (first time was in 1996-7) and I will address a few posts about how the experience has changed over the past 12 years.
The circumstances are different now:
- In 1996, I voluntarily left a secure government position because I wanted to work in a more dynamic field where my work would have more impact. Last summer, my position was restructured out of existence and I joined the 2 million other Americans whose jobs were lost in 2008.
- In 1996, I had been in the workforce for only five years and while no longer “entry level” was at the beginning of my business career. In 2008, I have been working for nearly 20 years and am in mid-life and mid-career. That fact significantly affects the way that potential employers will view me and how I must present myself to them.
- The most important circumstantial difference is that in 1996-97 (the year of President Bill Clinton’s reelection), the economy was growing at nearly 4% per year. In early 2009, as we prepare to begin the “age of Obama,” the severest financial crisis of our lifetimes has led to a deep recession. The national economy is shrinking.
Nevertheless, there are elements of continuity. In both cases:
- I have spent my transitional time in New York City; a town I know intimately, but where I have never worked happily.
- I derived considerable satisfaction from redirecting energy from a career focus to a family one. Key difference - my 1997 toddlers have grown in millenial teenagers. And don’t misunderstand - I need to get back to work for a variety of reasons.
That’s the context. In subsequent posts, I’ll discuss how the business environment has changed for job hunters. Notwithstanding the ill condition of the economy, I believe technology has enabled significant opportunities that were not feasible as recently as the late ’90s.
