Bringing Change to the Family Business

Listen to Jordan Lennen, 2nd generation Dairy Queen franchise owner, discuss the challenge in bringing change into a family business. Often in a family business, the founder generation can be resistant to change that may be unfamiliar but can ultimately generate success for the family business. As the next generation, it can be beneficial to introduce and thoroughly explain new changes to the founder generation, so that they can appreciate the value of these changes, and be more accepting of them.

Some other barriers when it comes to business thinking, definitely just openness to change. I feel like our parents’ generation can be stubborn sometimes, you know, they’ve done things a certain way and now my brother and I are coming in with other ideas, different ideas, so sometimes you know, things have been going well, and so why change, but things could be going better if we do some of these things, so I think that that’s definitely one thing. Something we recently did, I mean, it’s a small thing, but we got iPads for the store to keep track of cake orders and my mother has never used a computer before so we started by getting her an iPad for Christmas and she was super upset when we got it for her, now she plays her games on it, she knows how to check her email and she’s loving it. We have pictures of all the cakes we’ve ever done so she can show customers, it’s really useful and it’s just a small example of how new things that my brother and I think of, she’s willing to accept and it makes the business better I think. Something about my family business that I think could improve is our online presence, I mean, my parents were never super familiar with the internet, so now that my brother and I are involved it would be super nice to be able to bring the community and the culture around our store onto the internet somewhere so that other people who may not have come by our store may stumble across it, or people who do come by our store can check us out online and see any updates, and just keep people more involved. The best way to introduce those changes is definitely get your mom and iPad for Christmas and just give it to them, you know, who’s going to turn down a free iPad right? She’s going to get used to it and then it’s smooth sailing from there, so.