Author Recap: Resilience and Trust: What Leaders Can Learn from Family Businesses

So, Adrian, you and I have a little business. We sometimes call it the family business. We have not been in business for 627 years, although sometimes it feels like it. What were some of your takeaways from this? I found it just fascinating. Oh, me too. How do I even, yeah, I can't start, but I'm going to start with something Devin said, that we've got to start realizing stability, or the exception to the rule is stability. We've got to plan. We've got to be ready for turbulence because so many of us find, oh my gosh, there's been a downturn. There's been this, that, or the other. We've got to be more ready for a lack of, as you said, capital, labor, justice, whatever happens to us. Let's start being more thoughtful, not panicky, but just more thoughtful. Yeah, the crisis is endemic, you know, isn't it interesting? And you do, you think about, you know, we've lived in the States, we've had this prolonged, you know, era of prosperity, even through the pandemic, we managed it so well. We've got Devin up there in Canada going, yeah, no, listen, it's safe. We don't lock our cars or any of that. I really found it was interesting that succession planning about the reason that family businesses survive is because of the pride they have in the product. You know, often their name is on the product and that means so much, right? The quality has to be there, the delivery, the experience, whether he's talking about, you know, olive pressing or the insurance company or a Suguso glass. I thought, you know what, that's right. When you join a company and it's transactional, you know, you work somewhere for five years, you go to another place for five years, there's not that emotional connection to the product. You know, we experience this, right, every time we write a book. It's Gossikin Elton. We take great pride in that. It's just not another book. It's our book. Yeah, yeah. If you put your name on it, it changes things. Yeah, and this is, I think what John, or Yvonne talked about, it was building a shared narrative. Why do we do what we do that often gets lost? And I met once a competitor of Yvonne's, John Davis of Harvard, who was a family business expert too. And he says, often family businesses fall apart in the third generation. Right. Because the second generation sees how hard mom or dad had to work, but the third generation don't. And that's where you start your work. So do you have a shared narrative to understand why we do what we do, how we make the world a better place? Yeah, and just my last thing here, I thought it was hilarious when he said, you know, there wasn't a lot of research about family companies because they're kind of private. They kind of keep it to themselves. Happy people have no history. I thought it was hilarious. I'm gonna put that on a plaque somewhere in my office. It reminds me of a burger company, one that was extremely successful, that you went in and gave a talk to, and you said, hey, can I write your story? And they said, not only can you not write it, if you do, we will sue you. Yeah, right. It's happened more than once with family businesses. Hey, I've got a great story, can we tell it? And you go, nope. Not even close. Yeah, their PR person is there to keep the press from away. So I just thought that was great. I thought, yes, so much to learn there. I know it's anxiety-inducing sometimes to talk about these things, but I think what they learn can really help all of us. So what a great session. Wonderful to learn from Devin and Ivan. Big thanks to you from all of you who have listened in. Big thanks to our producer Brent Klein, to Christy Lawrence, who helps find amazing guests. If you like the podcast, please share it. We'd also love you to visit thecultureworks.com for some free resources. Right, Jess? Yeah, you know, Brent and Christy, we could call them family. I think we could. Absolutely. And by the way, we love speaking to audiences around the world virtually in person on topics of culture, teamwork, and resilience. Give us a call. We'd love to talk to you about your event. Adrian, as always, I'll give you the last word on this fascinating conversation we just had. I'm just really excited about that. Yeah. It's fun to have really cool, innovative thinkers with us. And hey, everybody, thanks for joining us today. Until next time, we wish you the best of health.