A love letter on family businesses

Book review of The Ultimate Family Business Survival Guide

The author of The Ultimate Family Business Survival Guide, Priyanka Gupta Zielinski, is a lucky [as she admits in the acknowledgments section of the book], successful, second-generation family business scion and she clearly loves being one. Her book is a love letter to and on family businesses.

I write this review as an academician with years of research on family businesses. Therefore, I would like to put this out at the outset that I am an advocate of family businesses myself, though not unaware of the challenges. This is not to say that the author is not aware of the challenges. She is. It’s just that the book is skewed towards the positives. And that is exactly why it is such an important book for the next generation members of family businesses.

I hear from many next-generation members of family firms that they “have it too easy.” The author lays out her fears of making mistakes, losses, letting her father down, in a very vulnerable way. So it’s not so easy, after all. Many don’t want to join the family firm as it’s “not fashionable enough”, “not challenging enough”, and “not glamorous enough”.

Ms Zielinski sets out many reasons for the next-gen to join the family business. She effectively communicates that family businesses contribute in a big way to nation building by creating jobs, supporting local communities, and contributing to the exchequer. She systematically creates a strong case for the next-gen to join their family businesses and how there is plenty of opportunity for them to learn, grow and make a difference. The father-daughter conversations are endearing and depict the informal knowledge transfer that is an integral part of family businesses. The book lucidly captures the informal yet important communications within a business family, the stakes of the family in the business and the rich resource basket that the family is for the business and each member of the family. “Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations” might be an adage of the past if more family businesses read books such as this.

The author takes each stereotype about family businesses head on and turns it upside down to depict how they are actually good business practices. There is merit in what she writes and is true for many businesses. Yet, many of the family businesses genuinely need to change. An example is the role that gender plays in family businesses. The author writes that family businesses “have allowed women freedom, flexibility, and job security.” The picture in many family businesses is not so rosy. There is no doubt that family businesses can be an important vehicle for upliftment of gender equality. There is a lot greater involvement of women now. Yet, overall, they have miles to go.

The Ultimate Family Business Survival Guide

Author: Priyanka Gupta Zielinski

Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Pages: 256; Price: Rs 399

The toolkit to “help develop a sustainable framework to empower multiple generations in a family business” proposed in the book is fun, logical and unique. The Swiss army knife as an analogy for adaptation is particularly apt for change and the ability to adapt. The book also provides readers with some astute survival tools and throws light on how family businesses can make better decisions in difficult situations, such as in a pandemic or when they are pushed to the wall. For most families, survival of the business is extremely important as their entire wealth, reputation, and many emotions are linked to it.

But, to me, the most important contribution of the book is the impassioned appeal for the policymakers to recognise and respect family businesses for their contributions. It stresses the need for a policy framework that is tailored for family businesses. The author talks about centres for conflict resolution outside the courts. This is an important point as the more family matters stay out of court, the better it is for the family and the business. Also, so far, the world of management education has designed curricula for and imported lessons from large multinational diversified corporations. In this book, the author makes a case for these corporations to learn from family businesses. That is refreshing.

Lastly, in India, and globally, we need champions of family businesses like Ms Zielinski. We need more of the next-gen who joined their family businesses to come forward and narrate their experiences, good and bad. As Ms Zielinski’s father would say, “Kag padhaya pinjare, padh gaya charon ved — samjhaye samjha nahin, raha dedh ka dedh”. Applied to the context of family businesses, it means, if you educate a family business owner or next-generation member like the manager of a non-family corporation, it will not be adequate for him. Therefore, we need more next-gen members to read books such as these when they are in a dilemma over whether to join the family business or not.

The reviewer is associate director, Thomas Schmidheiny Centre for Family Enterprise, ISB