Family Business USA Videos

SuccesstionHenry Hutcheson at a presentation for the Association of Residential Cleaning Services International

Henry:

Family business succession. So you’ve got these bright motivated kids that are in your business and they’re getting independence and they’re really good communicators and they’re structuring the organization and things are going great, and you’re giving them room and you’re backing out and you’re giving them space and things are going great, until such point that you’re almost out the door, which is how these lines are kind of drawn here, is the current generation is having less and less responsibility, and the next generation is having more and more responsibility. They’re about to take this thing over. Things are looking great.

Except my kids hate each other and they’re fighting constantly and they just can’t get along. Now, I’m not saying you can go in and fix that, but what I am saying is that 5 years out, 10 years out, if you’re looking at that path, you need to be cognizant of that. It’s not the individual development, it’s not you stepping out, it’s how do we work on having them be able to work together? The two of them, the three of them, the four of them, the five of them, right? They need to be able to get along together if they’re going to run this thing together, and you got to start working on that now.