Many great companies start out as family concerns – yours might be one of them.

Mars, now Masterfoods, is a huge and successful example which grew out of a home-based sweet making buiness founded, in a small kitchen in Tacoma, Washington by Frank and Ethel Mars back in 1911. And S.C. Johnson, inventors of the Ziploc bag, Pledge, Glade and Windex were founded in 1886 by Samuel Johnson who invented a new floor polish to go on the parquet flooring he was installing in those days. I’ve had the pleasure of working with a number of Marsians over the years (I don’t know what the SCJ people call themselves – answers on a postcard) and they did stand out from the rest of my clients. More than any other group they seemed to be fiercely proud of their heritage and of the company’s products. No matter where the person worked they seemed to have a very detailed knowledge not only of  production methods but also of production values; to be let loose on the line as a young manager at Mars was to be trusted with the crown jewels – it certainly was not seen as lowly work.

And there are numerous other distinguishing features I could list which defined them as ‘different’ such as their unusual way of opening ‘product’ (Marsian for ‘sweets’) which was to peel the wrapper along the seem so as to reveal the production details (line number, date and time of manufacture, sell-by-date etc. etc.) Aside from all of this, the people from Mars seemed to act as a cohesive group, I hesitate to say for fear of sounding corny, as a ‘family’ group; there seemed to be an extra layer of fabric keeping everyone together.

But is it feasible to reproduce the kind of bonding fabric found in a company like Mars or cabury or in a well-functioning family, within an ordinary company manufacturing ball-bearings or tomato sandwiches? Or would it be found that the product was too mundane, the company too new, the people too ordinary? I suspect that those elements are really nothing to do with it. And I also suggest that there are proportionally just as many badly functioning families as there are badly functioning companies so that just trying to be more like a family probably won’t make a bad company, better. However, I do believe that there are some things that a well-functioning family can pass on to the leaders and members of a mediocre company; this view is in some way borne out by the words of a leading psychologist who was once asked at interview whether being a psychologist had made him a better father. He replied: “No, but being a father has certainly made me a better psychologist.”

So what is the definition of a psychologically healthy family? The literature on the subject suggests that it is one where the roles shift and swap according to what circumstances demand. Sometimes the father leads, sometimes the mother makes the first move. Sometimes the children are told what to do and other times the parents pay attention and act upon the children’s ideas and wishes. Sometimes the parents come up with the solutions, at other times the children spot the problem and the solution before the parents have even got out of bed. As the children grow in years so the relationships are allowed to move on; the children are encouraged to assume greater responsibility for their actions and the parents relinquish much of the control of the organisation and leadership of the unit in acknowledgment that the troops are now more than capable of organising and handling life’s events. By this point the parents have assumed a new role as mentors, advisers-in-the-wings whilst the children have gone on to create their own ‘companies’ with their own particular feel and collection of values and traditions. This all assumes, of course, that the parents have got their psychological act together in the first place, that is to say, that they, to some degree, understand themselves, their own insecurities and needs (especially in terms of needing to be needed) and that they have the courage and judgment to enable them to be flexible as well as consistent at enough of the right moments.

P.S Thanks to you Robert for the great cartoon you did for us. Click here to buy this very cartoon from him!

I was doing a spot of wiring at the weekend and whilst grovelling around through piles of dusty (and terribly itchy) ceramic insulation, in a part of the attic that I had never to, I stumbled across a large control panel bolted to the wall.

This shoebox-sized box sprouted a wild assortment of about twenty cables and was covered with an array of red LEDs – all lit. This large gadget had evidently been hanging there for the past three years, since we bought the house, fully powered up, doing it’s thing. What’s its ‘thing’ was I have not discovered but I do know that it did it quite without anybody’s help. No reset buttons to press, no dials to adjust, no displays to monitor. How clever of it, how resilient and independent; what a little stalwart. Not all machines are like this. The more we design machines to do, the more help they seem to need from us. Computers need upgrades, software needs patches, cars need servicing (oh, how they need servicing), bikes need mending and microwaves, well they just get thrown away – sorry. But we fully accept this maintenance burden; when we buy a machine we buy an uncertain future and usually a big fat warranty to ‘protect’ us from that future. But people, ah, now you’re talking.

"Come on ol' girl"

The beauty of buying, or as we like to say these days, ‘hiring’ people is that you just get them in the building, tell them where the coffee machine is (they always manage to find the toilets by themselves) and let them get on with whatever it said in the advert. Job done. Sometimes. The tricky ones need maintenance (oh gawd, here we go – should have bought another bloody machine instead).

Fear not, here is the Quick Start guide to help you get the best from your new person or ‘human’ without wasting valuable business hours.

1.  No need to read a book about ‘leading people’ instead ask it what it needs to operate properly: what turns it on and what makes it malfunction. Then believe it and do as it asked.

2.  Be aware that it will need a reasonably nice place to work properly: space for its cables and attachments, daylight, access to fresh air, a chance to eat and freewheel for a few minutes a day; in essence, somewhere that it is pleased to come to.

3.  If you are going to connect it with other people units make sure that all of them know why they are being connected and find out from them, or at a push, tell them, which person is going to do what. Of course, do make sure they are talking the same language. It doesn’t matter that they are different (you probably chose them that way), it does matter that they can make sense of each other.

4.  If they start getting dusty or crusty it is probably because you haven’t been near them for ages. As with any good machine, the better you get to know your person (and the better they come to know your preferences), the more productive and maintenance-free you and they can be.

5.  Preventative maintenance. This comes in a variety of forms; here are 3 critical ones:

• Communication. If there is an instance of good productivity or a malfunction – talk (like with the car).
• Time to think. If you load your machine with ‘stuff’ don’t expect great results. Like a washing machine – put too much in and it all comes out dirty.
• Be nice to it. We all talk to our cars and that works really well on an icy road or on a cold morning doesn’t it? (I hum to the microwave too – it helps the food to heat quicker). So be nice to your person and they will be nice back to you.

But if you are not entirely satisfied with your person, whatever the model, simply return them to where you got them and there is a good chance that there is someone out there who can successfully give them a more suitable home where they can function at their peak.

You can now listen to the teleseminar we held earlier this week. My guest was Martin Down, a Deep Democracy Black Belt. You might hear some new and very simple answers to some old and very tricky leadership and interpersonal problems… Listen now