Why siblings may choose golf during office hours

While there are many benefits in running a family problem, I am finding myself overwhelmed since my brothers hardly spend time in the office and are always out playing golf and disregard the future of the business. ILLUSTRATION| JOSEPH BARASA

What you need to know:

  • Good as money your father made clearly is, it does not seem to excite your brothers.

While there are many benefits in running a family problem, I am finding myself overwhelmed since my brothers hardly spend time in the office and are always out playing golf and disregard the future of the business.

While my father was alive, they would not do this but for the last three years they seem not to care about growing business and I fear that if we all start behaving the same it would go down with us. I would like to sit them down - and with no emotions - and explain to them that they need to grow business. They think having millions in a bank is enough.

How do I approach them? We are three in the family.

-Beatrice-

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You sound like a rather angry lady who has brothers that lack ambition. You have found an easy scapegoat – golf and have decided to blame the sport.

Your question raises several issues which must not be confused while seeking a way of helping you. The first relates to the benefits or otherwise of running family business.

Whereas it is true that there are models of family business that have reached great heights, there are many examples of family business that have failed to transition from the first to the second generation.

Indeed, the scenario that you describe in which your brothers seemed to have behaved well as long as their father was alive is a common complaint by second generation business people.

Many cases currently in court indicate the failure to create adequate structures to support transgenerational survival of business. Those intent on working in family business that goes from one generation to the next might do themselves a great deal of good by talking to experts/consultants in this rapidly growing field.

I am not sure what business your father was in and more importantly whether he was in one or more business that might be supportive of each other.

In the simplest of cases for example, it is possible that your father was in the transport industry, and when he died he had say thirty or forty Lories that carried goods from Mombasa to Rwanda and Burundi. Upon his death, he might have left with the expectation that you would grow the same business to South Sudan and the Congo.

His business model could have been as simple as that and he had no intentions to forward integrate the business. If that be the case, your siblings might have no intention of straining their minds and are happy with the few millions that you make, plus the few that were left by their father.

They might in addition be bored with what they consider to be a very simple business!

In the alternative, it is possible that your father had a more integrated business that included, transport, warehousing, vehicle repairs as well as interests in petroleum products.

If the latter be the case, then it is possible when you sit down with your brothers to get them to help you manage one or other of the businesses that support the core transport business. One could, for example agree to grow the auto repair business in which he could, in addiction to your family vehicles he might find a bigger market repairing other peoples trucks.

Your other brother could be persuaded to grow the warehousing side of the business and he could make lots of money working with others in the field.

So, if you have an integrated business, it may be possible to get your brothers to see the sense of playing less golf and have each play a complimentary role in the full chain of the transport business.

All the foregoing is purely theoretical and is clearly based on the best case scenario. The real world is rather different and sadly, that is where we all live.

What, for example was the relationship between your father and his sons? To what extent did he include them in his business when they were growing up and to what extent did they play any part in the growing business?

Might they, for example, have resented the fact that your father was a demanding dominating, insensitive man whose sole ambition was to leave behind as much money as he could?

How often for example did your father talk ill of golf and golfers and describe golfers as lazy men, lacking in ambition who spent 4 – 5 hours a day hitting a small white ball with a stick, only to walk to where it landed and hit it again, all for the purpose of getting it into a small hole?

Is it possible that by painting golf so negatively and senseless, and long hours of work so positively might have landed your brothers where they are? What if playing golf is an act of rebellion by your brothers against their fathers’ philosophy of life?

It all sounds very complex but you must allow yourself to look back to your growing up if you are to look forward in the hope of solving your crisis in the family business. Far too many people work far too hard to the point where they fail to notice the resentment of their philosophy of life by their offspring!

Not all human beings are driven by more and more money (like your father seems to have been). Some enjoy other things life has to offer, like reading, music, gardening, golf, or simply being with friends and family.

Good as money your father made clearly is, it does not seem to excite your brothers!

This article was first published in the Business Daily