Who’s in charge?

I do quite a bit of work with husband and wife teams with businesses. In the New Zealand SME context this is a very common ownership structure, so everyone who wants to work with these types of businesses needs to take a couple of things into account.

The first thing that should be understood is that when a married couple own a business together, they are 99% likely to bring the exact dynamic that drives their marriage into the business environment. This adds layers of complexity because a married couple come with often decades of built-in unspoken communication and demarcation points that need to be navigated when working with them.

Interestingly, I recently forgot this and looked at the client business as though it were like a privately owned enterprise with a single owner. It didn’t take long to get to the nuts and bolts of what needed to happen to get the business growing and thriving, but we kept getting stuck at the starting point.

The direction I proposed involved a simple restructure to provide clear lines of responsibility for team members, KPIs and procedures to follow to generate consistency of outcome which in the particular business was an important factor for success.

But something was wrong. The owners were clearly uncomfortable. One saw my plan as a circuit breaker to trigger a dynamic period of transformation, like breaking a logjam. The other owner saw merit but also what for them was an uncomfortable level of risk. They saw the potential for tension and dissention in the team and that was not an acceptable consequence.

So, we backed off to the core principle of what we were out to achieve which was an exit plan within a specified period with a certain exit value. We recommitted to the things that were agreed as essential milestones in that journey.

Next we explored what other approaches we could take to get to the goal. Out of this came a subtle shift in emphasis from individual ownership of a department and its results to a paired model where two team members would share responsibility for a result. By nature, this is not how I think. I tend to think in terms of absolute autonomy. One person accountable for one thing. No ambiguity. Part of a team all driving in the same direction but solely in the spotlight for “that thing”.

This idea of shared responsibility is not my default but what I could see as the conversation unfurled was a marked drop in tension and defensiveness between the owners and other peripheral points of contention dissolving at the same time.

At the same time I found that my own thinking shifted to a new paradigm. How can I set up dual responsibility without letting it accidentally fall through the cracks between the two team members? It made me realise that the emphasis now would have to be on coaching and training people in how to work collaboratively by finding their respective strengths and weaknesses and apply them to the task at hand and work in a way that is complementary.

Eliminating the issue of blame and dissociating from responsibility with “I thought he//she was going to do that” can only be achieved by showing people how working for a common goal that will gain collective recognition can only be achieved by learning to trust each other, display understanding and empathy, encourage and gently chastise at the right moment.

The psychology of shared responsibility is a deep and complex one, but it can begin with some simple stuff that will make a difference.

Do you know what triggered this post? It was the heart of the disagreement between the owners of the business. One said we should just do what John has laid out for us and get on with it The other said we should be able to discuss alternatives and just because John says it doesn’t make it right.

I’m not naming this wise person, but they are absolutely right. My job is not to write a prescription and they as patients just take the pills as prescribed. As with the best medical treatment, business transformation doesn’t have the owners as interested observers. It is a participant sport and the more they participate, the deeper the transformation and the more likely it is to stick.

Which brings us to the thing that underpins everything I believe about business in all its forms and stages - it is all about the people all the time. the rest is just stuff to do. Important stuff, but stuff none the less.

Get the relationships right and everything is possible.