[p]Every business is faced with challenges. However, as a family business owner, you are faced with unique threats to your business that, if not recognized, and addressed quickly, will drastically affect your success in the market place. Here are five common threats that every family business faces and tips on how to manage them.[/p]
1. Family Feuding:
There is simply no fun and games when it comes to family feuds in your business. Family businesses are faced with internal conflict that typically arises from the inability to separate your business and personal lives. Sometimes the feuding is due to the varied interests of each family member, personal egos or personal rivalries that spill into the business environment.
Regardless of the cause, if you do not find a way to stop the feuding, it will be absolutely impossible to define and achieve common goals for the business. In addition, excessive conflict in your organization can increase employee turnover and create a hostile work environment.
2. Nepotism:
Managing family is a delicate matter, and it is important to be aware that the fastest way to alienate the people that work for you is to create a company culture based on nepotism. Everyone wants to help out family, but hiring, promoting, and paying someone based on a familial relationship rather than on their actual merits and abilities, is a recipe for disaster.
You will quickly find that non-family employees will lose the motivation and desire to work for you. In addition, family employees may become complacent because they will not face consequences for non-performance. Ultimately, nepotism does not empower your employees, and as a result your bottom line will suffer.