Different Hats

Listen to Philippe de Gaspé Beaubien as he recounts an anecdote on how to divide family roles from business roles. It is important in a family business, to establish a clear balance between professional roles and family roles. To ensure the success of a family business, it is important to define clear work roles for each family member, as well as to constantly communicate in order to reduce the instance of conflict among family members.

We do have, we used to call different hats. You know we have, all right, are you wearing your family hat? Are you wearing your CEO hat? Or are you wearing, you know, your business hat? Your shareholder - owners hat. And you had to say, all right, I am wearing my owner’s hat right now, okay. I am not the CEO – I am the owner- I mean I am one of the owners. My father had this joke that he told us once, and it kind of memorable where, a son was working for the father, and the son, I don know if you told it to them but- the son comes back from – and the son wasn’t doing that good of a job at the office- so the father calls him up and says come to the house, so they’re at the house, and he says in the pool, come on son come in the pool, so the son goes in the pool, and he is wearing a hat that says boss and he says to his son, he says, “George you are fired”. Then he picked off his hat and he pulled another hat that said Dad, and said “Son I heard you got fired, do you want to talk about it?” and that’s what we try to do a little bit in the family, right, where you have different hats depending on if you’re - Am I your son right now? Or am I your employee? Am I?