Juggling Acts

Balancing work and family life — the challenges are numerous, but with anticipation each can be managed effectively. 

The life of a family business owner is a dance, requiring a delicate balance between the demands of work and the commitments to family. While all entrepreneurs face challenges in managing their professional and personal lives, family business owners encounter a unique set of dynamics that can make this juggling act even more intricate.

When you consider the sheer number of businesses owned by families — Family Business reports that, of the 37 million businesses in the U.S., 87% of them are family-owned — these intricate challenges are widespread.

Here are a few you might recognize:

• Blurred lines. Most notably, blurred lines are aplenty in the family business owned and operated by you and your spouse. How’s that for blurred lines? Decisions made at the dinner table can spill over into the boardroom or the bedroom. This intermingling often leads to tensions, at best.

• Succession challenges. Planning who takes over a family business can be tricky for a variety of reasons that could fill the pages of a large and heavy book.

• Dual roles and expectations. Often family members fill several roles, which sets up scenarios where expectations become cloudy, aren’t shared across all stakeholders and are generally misunderstood. This doesn’t even touch on the more complicated roles of, say, the company CEO and father whose adult children are also his employees.

• A way of life. A family business is woven into the fabric of families and often defines who they are. It’s not only a family’s sense of place, it’s also their sense of self worth. With these defining emotional associations, business decisions can become very personal very quickly.

So how does a family anticipate the challenges that are sure to arise? The short answer is have a plan for the “what ifs” before they happen. Here are a few items to consider to get started.