The Hindu Business Line : Relatives’ worth

Do you, as a family business leader, have a relative as an employee? Watch out, such a family-member-employee’s compensation can be fraught with problems.

Quite simply, compensation of family members is much less likely to be based on any objective criteria, and this can make compensation discussions difficult to conduct as emotions enter the picture, cautions Allen E. Fishman in 9 Element s of Family Business Success ( www.tatamcgrawhill.com ). “When family compensation issues and conflicts are not clear and based on some logic, the most common result is family disharmony.”

He advises, therefore, family business leaders to take control of creating objective standards for dealing with compensation issues. Sooner that happens, “the more likely it is that the business will survive and flourish into successive generations of leadership.”

Thankfully, though, as the business proceeds from one generation to the next, succeeding generations tend to handle FME (family member employee) compensation issues in a progressively more objective, professional manner, Fishman finds. “As a family business progresses into later stages, the founder’s early informal compensation structure naturally tends to morph into an increasingly more formal structure.”

The author warns leaders that compensation challenges can be particularly common when there are multiple siblings, with not all of them working for the business.

“Making certain everyone has the facts about compensation will shut down some of the conjecture and help keep family relationships healthy,” he counsels.

Instructive read.

Social disengagement

Suddenly, you find that the organisation you work for has become the cynosure of all negative attention owing to the misdeeds by the top management. As a consequence, an overwhelming wave of shame and embarrassment, perceived guilt and restless confusion envelops almost all those associated, like you.

Yes, we are talking of how social disengagement can happen within an otherwise functioning economic engine, even as there are no ready support networks offering a helpful shoulder to the affected.

Looking at such disengagement as ‘a significant public health issue,’ Mark Pettus offers succour in It’s All In Your Head ( www.macmillanindia.com ).

Resilient individuals usually have cultivated important supportive social networks and attachments, he says. “Conversely, individuals who are more isolated, disconnected, and socially disenfranchised score much lower on quality-of-life satisfaction surveys; experience more mental illness, substance abuse, addiction, and cardiovascular disease; and are more likely to be of lower socioeconomic status.”

Pettus assures us that there is no trajectory in our lives that we are not capable of changing, regardless of when we become aware of the potential to change.

He calls it a myth to think that you either can connect or can’t.

“People who are unable to effectively connect with others need their social pilot light lit and the right relationships and social context to fuel it.”

We all have a tendency to view our individual challenges in life as unique and unusual when in fact we’re really members of a very large club, cheers Pettus.

Recommended study.

Money paradox

Chase dreams, not money, reads a takeaway from Buckminster Fuller in Entrepreneurial Genius: The Power of Passion by Gene N. Landrum (Westland). The money paradox, as he explains, is that the more you chase money the less chance you have of getting it, whereas the more you chase quality the more money you get.

“The drive to make money is entropic for it seeks to monopolise order while leaving un-cope-with-able disorder to overwhelm others,” is a snatch of Bucky’s wisdom quoted in the book. “You can either make money or do what is right, but when money enters the equation the greed interferes with optimal success in any venture,” is another nugget.

To most successful entrepreneurs, money is a by-product, not the goal; and to Bucky , the pursuit of money was ‘a corrupting influence that distracted people from chasing their vision,’ explains Landrum.
“He dedicated his life to proving that the world’s resources, appropriately conserved, recycled and managed, could accommodate the needs of all humans and that ‘working to earn a living’ was not necessary.”
More importantly, as the author reminds, Bucky believed that the natural human inclination to work for personal fulfilment would yield all the productivity needed to render a higher standard of living for all.
Imperative addition to the wannabe entrepreneurs’ shelf.

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D. Murali

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