<strong>Narrator</strong>
Family businesses account for 85 to 90 percent of all businesses in North America, and more in Europe and in Asia. Family businesses employ half of the workforce, they create two-thirds of all the new jobs, and it is worth it to have advice from people who spend their lives studying and working in the field of family business.
<strong>Don Zinyk</strong>
Every family in business has got conflict. That is a given. Very, very few families realize that they are not alone, that everybody else out there has got conflict.
<strong>Narrator</strong>
The Business Families Foundation has developed a tool to help you, your business, and your family. It is the Road Map Course for Entrepreneurial Families.
<strong>Don Zinyk</strong>
Road Map is an absolutely phenomenal course built around a fictitious family called the DuPont family who own a hotel in Montréal and are in the process of expanding to buy another hotel. And like a lot of families in today’s world, there is a second wife, there are three siblings, two from the first marriage, one from the second marriage. There is an outside shareholder represented by the founder’s former partner. And like a lot of business families, they struggle at communication on difficult issues, they have got poor or inadequate governance, and Road Map basically, by following this fictitious family, allows the families in the room to see other options to what they are doing.
<strong>Actress</strong>
I do not buy it. My brother the lawyer does not trust me, he does not trust anybody. Maybe that is why he is having trouble with his own wife.
<strong>Actor</strong>
Oh, now that is a low blow.
<strong>Don Zinyk</strong>
If we can make the families aware that there are resources, that there are seminars, that there are people that they can talk to, you know, once people get a little bit, it is not rocket science. You know, you get a family in the room and start talking to them about the three circle model, and where you are in that model impacts your perspective, guarantee they can think back to a situation that has happened within the last three months within their particular family, and they say, “Oh yeah, I get it.” And you know, once they have got that understanding, they start looking at it entirely differently, and they will say, “Okay, well he is wearing his ownership hat today.”
After every time we complete the course we ask for the evaluations and there have been several times where somebody in the family has written, “Thank you so much, I now have vocabulary with which to talk to the family in the business.” It is amazing how many families will leave Road Map and within a short period of time start implementing some of the best practices that Road Map recommends.
<strong>Business Family Member #1</strong>
I mean I really have to add to that too, it was a perfect venue for us to take the time to meet together as a family and to discuss these issues, which we would never really have the time to do.
<strong>Business Family Member #2</strong>
It brought about such interesting discussions and it really brought the issues to the table and also the fact that we are all facing the same issues, it is just at different stages.
<strong>Business Family Member #3</strong>
I thought it was remarkably good, it opened up some lines of communication for us that had previously been not open.
<strong>Business Family Member #4</strong>
Sharing the experience with other families definitely is a different feeling, but a great one.
<strong>Business Family Member #5</strong>
The human aspect of a business finally came to the fore, thank God, and I am just thrilled to know that it is possible to be successful and to be happy.
<strong>Louis B. Barnes</strong>
And the whole idea of coming out of a learning experience with more questions than answers to me is an indication of a successful learning experience.