Did you receive a `Big Turkey Award?'

Ah, Thanksgiving! Tantalizing kitchen aromas in the air. Dry leaves crunching underfoot. The faithful packing the pews to count the year's blessings.

Among the icons of this season of feasting and football are the 1999 Family Business Big Turkey Awards. Nominees were selected from family businesses and companies that deal with family businesses.

The winner in each category receives a Volkswagen-size rubber gobbler inscribed with his or her name and the citation "I Was A Big Turkey in 1999." Could we have the envelopes, please?

Category 1: Best Protected Self-Image -- Psychologists sometimes fret about the erosion of self-image in the less luminous siblings of successful members of families in business. This award allows us to spotlight those at the well protected end of the self-image spectrum.

This year's winner is Jack, who has happily handed over the grind of running the family business to his brother William. Jack keeps his self-image shiny by passing himself off as the brains of the operation, the master strategist who thinks analytically while William sweats in the trenches. In a good year, Jack lets everyone know how crucial his guidance has been. When targets aren't met, he laments William's failure to follow instructions.

The truth is, Jack wouldn't know a marketing plan from a mango, and the family's thankful that William never listens to anything he says. Here's your prize, Jack. It's the big green thing over there by the mango.

Category 2: Most Stalwart Defender Of the Way We've Always Done Things Around Here -- This award recognizes the family business executive who is best dug in against any change that would improve the company's competitive position in a rapidly evolving marketplace.

And the winner is Milton, president of his family's petroleum products distributorship. Three years ago, the competition computerized their delivery trucks. They've already earned back the investment and are now nibbling away on Milton's market share.

Run to catch up? Never, says Milton. If he had his way, his company would still be hauling gasoline in a bucket. But if the company has another negative-growth year, the family will haul Milton in a bucket. Here's your Milton, turkey.

Category 3: The Push Kin Award -- It's always a pleasure to give the bird to someone who strives to advance the family business fortunes of his or her offspring.

This category honors parental effort and determination, blended with a big dose of disregard for the business and the rest of the family.

And the Big Turkey goes to Lucinda, stockholder and cousin to the CEO of her family's agricultural services company. Both her kids were offered attractive entry level places in the business when they graduated from college. But Lucinda insisted, loudly and often, that her children were star quality and should be hired directly into management.

The kids now work elsewhere, in jobs about two notches above burger-flipping. The whole thing has turned out badly for everyone except Lucinda, who's getting this great award. Congratulations, Lucinda. Maybe you can jawbone a job out of this old fowl.

Category 4: Most Likely To Induce Distress At the Family Thanksgiving Table -- This is truly the black belt of the Big Turkey Awards, so important that people work for years just to qualify for the nomination. Winning a place atop the Induced Distress pedestal requires a very special combination of characteristics.

And the one who has it all this year is Dan, the not unkindly but completely unplugged grand patrone of his family and its long-haul trucking company. This is the 40th year that Dan has presided over the annual groaning board, and the 40th year that the family has wished that he'd cram enough oyster dressing into his mouth to keep him quiet. Oblivious to the rolling eyes and gritting teeth all around him, the old boy notes that the son-in-law throws around the company money, the grandkids will never have the spine to compete in the trucking business, and the gravy's too salty. And he's run through that same litany, with a few changes of names, every Thanksgiving for as long as anyone can remember. You've earned the rubbery trophy, Dan. Forty years of gastric spasms is a tough record to beat.

Let's all be thankful that there aren't very many of these Big Turkeys around!

Living longer

Americans are living longer and staying healthier these days. The three-generation family -- children, parents and grandparents all alive and kicking -- is commonplace, and four- and even five- generation families are much less rare than they were not long ago.

In family owned companies, the norm has long been two generations working together, overlapping as the younger ones learned the business and then making a smooth transfer of ownership and management from one generation to the other.

In this configuration, there is the possibility of disagreement over issues of performance, promise and prerogatives between the seniors and the juniors. But the lines of authority and the timelines for transfer are pretty clear.

Now we=re seeing the rise of the three-generation business family, and that's producing some interesting new wrinkles in working and personal relationships.

It often looks like this.

The senior owner or founder, aged 70+, is at the top end of his or her career as CEO and family leader but still in pretty good shape. The next generation is the successor, the next in line, and is about 50 to 55 years old. This rising head of the company is experienced and ready to take over the reins. So far, the array of family members in the business is pretty routine.

But when we look around the premises we find a third generation of the family coming on strong. In their early to mid-30s, they aren't exactly a bunch of greenhorns. They might have been working in the business for up to 10 years, and they're ready and probably qualified to take on serious responsibility in the organization.

The senior generation feels the pressure of not one but two generations rising beneath him and easing him off the seat of power. The sensation might hurry along the date when the baton is officially passed. Or it might have the opposite effect, strengthening the senior owner's resolve to delay as long as possible giving control of his company to two layers of questionably capable children.

The successor is also feeling some heat. He's putting the final edge on his own ability to lead the company and maneuvering to convince Dad that it=s now his turn to do exactly that. He is looking masterful and confident for the benefit of the employees, the customers and the business community while fending off confused questions like AExplain it to me again. Is your father still head of the company, or have you taken over? Successful Succession of the Family Business.

1999Copyright
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