Jeff Faulkner

Letters to My Brother – Dysfunctional Management Arrangement
October 8, 2008

In this post, I will continue with actual correspondence with clients who are in sibling partnerships.

“Dear Brothers,

We have a very dysfunctional management arrangement. This ‘management by committee’ fails to provide the leadership and business management that any successful company must have. We have no real plan to execute. We meet once in a while and end up mostly procrastinating. We never seem to really address the basic and important issues we have. If we didn’t have some pretty good long-term employees, we would quickly be in deep trouble.”

Obviously this is not an effective sibling partnership. An effective sibling partnership must first determine that it’s going to be a partnership and not simply a joint economic venture. If the partners actually want to partner together, then a couple of things the above letter represents is the need to have an Agreed Upon Leadership Model and an effective Strategic Planning Process. I’ll focus here on agreeing to a Leadership Model.

There are basically two leadership models: selecting one of the siblings as the CEO, or selecting all siblings to act as co-CEO’s. In selecting one to be the CEO, it’s my experience that leadership emerges over time and that there are some key characteristics to be on the look out for. Three of those are:

1. A CEO must be trustworthy – this trust is earned when it is clear among the siblings that the leader is not trying to be their boss and dominate them. It should be clear that the leader’s role is not just to hold other family members accountable, but that they will hold each other accountable.
2. The selected CEO must also exhibit a servant attitude toward those he/she leads. 
3. They must be self aware. Lack of self awareness lends itself to family conflict and an inability to adapt leadership style to the needs at hand. 

I have rarely seen a co-CEO team work effectively, but if you must, here are some tips:

1. Each of them must have strong and positive character and be capable, competent, committed, and confident.
2. Each member of the CEO team must share vision and values.
3. They must have solid relationships built upon trust.
4. They must have clearly defined areas of responsibility and lines of authority.
5. They must have a clear decision making process.

Posted by Jeff Faulkner on October 8, 2008 | Comments (0)