‘Will We Ever Get Ownership?’
‘Will we ever get ownership?’ is often a gentle take on the bigger and unspoken questions of dependence and, more importantly, independence and achievement for the incoming generation.
Questions that — if left unspoken and unanswered — can cause a failed succession process. While for parents, the unspoken response to these questions is often, ‘How could the children even consider such a thing? Are they waiting for us to die? Are they just after our money? I intend to be around for many years to come so they better learn to wait.’
But the questions reflect a frustration, which is valid, for many members of the new generation around the timing of the transferal of ownership in the family business. And it’s not really about ownership but more self-realisation.
Here is a simple example:
· Grandma is in her early-90s, still alive and doing well. She is the ultimate owner of all the businesses but no longer is involved in their management.
· Our dads and uncles are in their mid-60s and control the businesses. They are the current ‘owners’ but actually legally don’t own anything as Grandma is still alive. But they make all the decisions and control the purse strings.
· We are the new generation in our late-30s, all married with children. We work in the businesses on a day-to-day basis but really have no control.
· Do we actually own anything? Will we ever own anything? And can we build any wealth for our families?
This frustration that can lie with the new generation around ‘ownership’ is better expressed as their capacity to build their own individual wealth and sense of achievement and contribution.
The thinking being along the lines of ‘We are working here every day as hard as we can and, yes, everything we ‘need’ has been provided for us but what are we doing? We don’t own anything. We are not building anything that is ours. Everything may be passed on to the next generation. Are we actually creating anything that is ours?’ Commitment and hard work require reward to be sustained. There will come a time in which the new generation needs to be given certainty as to their control and ownership. And this may be before the existing owners have died. The default answer of passing over control and ownership upon death may not provide the best solution to compounding wealth across generations.
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An Invaluable Resource — ‘Transition — Orienteering The Lands of Succession’
