The Vital Role of Professionalism in Family Business Survival

One of the important aspects of family business is the challenge of professionalisation it's often assumed that professionalisation is automatics but that's not true what i have found that professionalise or perish if you don't professionalise in time then the organisation will perish so we need to understand what is professionalisation and how do you prevent organisations from perishing so let's try to understand professionalisation it's often understood that as the organisation transforms from a smaller organisation to medium sized or bigger organisation the way the management function changes from an informal system informal of functioning to a formal way of functioning and in most organisation this is facilitated by the introduction of organisational structure system and processes but in family businesses this done not happen automatically .

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So who are working in the organisation they are typicaly wearing two hats one is the family hat and the other is the business hat so when they are owners when they are family members to when they are business executives the way they look at the business may not be exactly the same it may be different again there are challenges at different points in time you will be infulenced by the personal interest as a family member versus the interest of the organisation so therefore it is very important to understand that professionalisation happens only if people have professionalism as a value like integrity compassion openness transparency trustworthiness these are all values so we need to decide that professionalism is a value and that will be practiced .

Which also means that professionalism is much beyond typical understanding of delegation throgh system and processes happens but unless professionalism as a value is not ingrained and practiced by the professionals it will not happen so in most family business unlike the non family business there would be family members who are working in the organisation and they will be working with non family professionals so if you are working as a family professional and there is a non family professional it is very important to understand the territories of responsibilities and at the very senior level this is often not explained and therefor what happen is that the famil member who is delegating responsibilities and entrusting resposibilities to a non family professional often assumes that these are the resposibilities that i am passing over to the non family professional and the non family professional will look at it from their angle and they look at the famiy member as a professional versus as an owner or a family member the scenario will be different .

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similarly if there are two family members working together two siblings it maybe two generations if they are working together at the senior level and if they are taking decisions are they working as a family members ar are they working as professional and again there is a managing director and a junior person family members are they behaving like family members or are they behaving like professionals it is not often clarified and if that does not happen and i've seen in many cases the senior member may initially start taking as a professional but often changes and wears the family hat and may start talking to the other person as a family member whereas this person should have spoken more like professional so this is a big challenge in the family business and it can be tougher the situation can be tougher if there are more number of people at the top level if there are more number of family members and if they have to interact with more non family members the situation may be tougher .

Professionalism has to be a value which means that there will be more of collaboration instead of a controlled direction top down approach here professionalised organisation will have a lot more consultation trasparency will be there family members and non family members would know what theis roles are this is possible only if the family members can control their ego and say that we are all working together as professionals in the interest of the organisaton so structures system processes are critical but those are only vehicles if the vehicals have to be run you need professionals it's not the qualification it is the attitude it is the mindset of professionals that making organisation professionalised and then the process of professionalisation will work and if you do that you can avoid perish you can avoid the danger of the organisation getting perished .

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