Family Business
Issue No. 28 - April/May 2006
Never discount the pride and the passion at work
The “number crunchers” often discount family businesses as being fundamentally flawed because they’re such hotbeds of emotion. Those of us who live and work in them would dispute that view. We would say: understand what it’s all about and you’ll see that properly channelled and managed, the emotional hotbed can be a formula for great success.
Take for example the recent, attempted takeover of Coopers Brewery. The offer from Lion Nathan was not inconsiderable, and gave shareholders a great opportunity to liquidate their holdings — an opportunity that doesn’t come every day to shareholders in an unlisted company.
Given some fairly compelling financial reasons to sell, the vast majority of shareholders responded to a range of actions by politely saying to Lion-Nathan CEO, Rob Murray: no, thank you. Privately, Rob Murray must marvel at such shareholder loyalty.
The Coopers story is typical of many family businesses: it combines the direction of generations of family characters with the cyclical ebbs and flows of an industry that’s been at the core of Australian society since European settlement.
When faced with a challenge such as the recent attempted takeover, that pride and the associated passion for the business on the part of its owners — and many other stakeholders — translated into an immovable force which put into perspective the not insubstantial financial offer. Where the dominant motivation is financial, the result is often very different to the Coopers case.
But family businesses are different and the Family Business Australia SA State Conference to be held at Adelaide Pavilion on 10 May will explore these issues, providing insight on how to feed the pride and direct the passion to best serve the family business.
Keynote speaker, Jon Kenfield from Victoria will set the scene for the day’s proceedings by defining the concepts to ensure that delegates fully understand the m...
