Transitioning Ownership & Leadership - Successors & Siblings

Listen to Ben Grossman and Michael Schoedinger discuss the process of transitioning into a leadership role in the family business. In a family business, transitioning the rising generation into management and ownership positions can be difficult for other employees. In order to maintain a favourable work environment, effective communication and follow up between top-level management and the rest of the business members is vital.

Ben Grossman Family comes first, you know, family is the most important. And I never want to let you know, the business get in the way of that. Coming into the business people learned to trust me cause they knew that I was getting the job done. One way that we realized quickly would be a great way to establish my credibility was by generation revenue. Numbers don’t lie. If I come in and bring business to the organization, I’m helping to protect people’s jobs and helping to grow the organization. Michael Schoedinger And then as my father, after I finished my apprenticeship, started to transition me into kind of a management role, I wasn’t overseeing any people but he was giving me more responsibilities and increasing my duties, and then the staff starts to pull away. Because now they don’t perceive you to be one of them. Your transitioning into a “Schoedinger”, one of the owners, one of the managers, one of the leaders. Ben Grossman Be able to grow and innovate and drive change in a 102 year old company, it’s a tremendous opportunity and I’m very lucky to have it.