Positive perceptions about the field of family business

Watch Colette Vanasse, Executive Director at the McGill - HEC Montreal International Business Families Centre share her view about how perceptions of family businesses are gradually becoming more positive.

In the past, you did not hear so many positive things about family business, you would not hear where things were going well. So I think there was a gap there in terms of positive encouragement to offer to the families and to the professionals. And I think that when we came on board, one of the things that certainly the Business Families Foundation’s mandate was saying look, there are families who have actually succeeded. I have seen certainly in the last year, year and a half since the Centre has existed, a sense that the media is more interested in this topic. And why is that? I think that they see larger family businesses have something to teach the non-family businesses. So we have seen some sense of the community involvement and the fact that they are closer to their employees, all those things that we talk about, the values, the family values, that perhaps family businesses have something to teach non-family businesses in terms of the long-term, and not focusing on the short-term shareholder return. And I think people are saying, “Well, maybe there is something to be said to work with brothers and sisters in something that is very, you know, beyond ourselves, that is longer term, that is solid.” I think people would not have said that 10 years ago. And the media, they have realized that they need to also talk about family business in a much more positive light. So we will do a lot with the press, with the newspaper, with the associations, the student associations, for example, will do a lot of things with us to make sure that we talk about the positive things about family business. Families actually in their advertising will say, you know, “We are a family company.” I mean, I certainly did not hear as much of that five years ago. And so it is nice to see some of the work that we are doing is sensitizing and is certainly, some families are proud to say that they are actually a family business.