C-Suite Hardware with F-Suite Software

Justin Craig encourages complementing the C-Suite skills with F-Suite capabilities.

It occurred to me, and I’ve been thinking about the F-Suite, the Family Suite, because I’ll be honest, I didn’t know what the C-Suite was 10 years ago, I don’t know if anyone knew what the C-Suite was. It’s a term that’s gained popularity. So there’s this total focus on the C-Suite, so I’m going ok here, once I find out there’s the chief-this, the chief-this, the chief-that, I get that. But in the family dynamic, the C-Suite is answerable to the F-Suite, so my intention there, and the intention of the presentation was to actually focus attention on being innovative, to better prepare individuals for a role in the F-Suite. And when I was listening to some of the presentations they were discussing in the corridor, I got to thinking about the idea that we still need C-Suite capabilities, we still need to be prepared for those conversations, you know, that’s the real hard-nosed business stuff that we can’t shy away from. We’d be naïve if we did. But if you complement the C-Suite and the F-Suite, why don’t we start to look at having a mantra that says that we have C-Suite hardware, that we still need the strong financial skills, we still need to understand the political environment, the regional, the demographics, and all those things that anybody would be operating in a professional competitive business environment, but let’s incorporate the F-Suite software. I don’t know, I just think there’s something in there to actually distinguish who we are as a family business community, and why that is different, and why we actually are preparing people to understand the challenges for a role in the C-Suite but overlay that with the unique challenges of being a contributor in the F-Suite. So C-Suite hardware with F-Suite software. I think it’s got a ring to it.