The History of the Business

Listen to Peter Jaskiewicz talk about the value of sharing family history and telling stories to the next generation.

The truth is there is no history, history is written by the winners and most of it is being socially constructed. Every generation will have a new version of history, they’ll be shedding some stories that are not anymore use and adding others and they might be adapting those that they actually heard about, and that is part of it. But it’s not about the exact content of it, but it’s about the meaning that it has, and the result or the implications that it brings with it. And we see that social interaction with family members makes them become aware of these stories because they also hear different versions of it, but they kind of build their own view of what happened. And it is just an approximation because it was probably slightly different than how it was told. But the way it was told has also obviously had an impact on them and it is being changed, history is constantly changing, there is not one history, and it definitely applies to family business too that good storytellers might have more success in motivating the next generation to join the business.