Bosses Wife Syndrome

When Relatives Get in the Way

I had an exceedingly awkward conversation with a business owner last night. I had to tell him that his employees were grouping themselves into factions and the chief cause of this was simple. His wife, who has the work ethic of a sloth, had appointed herself the boss and decided that she was qualified to actually take operational control of one of the most crucial areas of his operation. Her efforts involved plenty of staring, plenty of chatter and plenty of posing and very little work. In short, the woman displayed every symptom of “bosses wife” syndrome and it was clearly not good for morale. The businessman said that he was aware of his wife’s shortcomings as a worker but did try to defend her staying that she was trying her best to help him out.

I think of this incident because it highlights one of the great dilemmas that small businesses face – the question of reliable labour. Business as they say, is about organizing relationships into something profitable and the best businessmen usually know that they can’t do everything themselves and so they end up hiring people who are better than they are to take care of aspects of the business, so that they can focus on what they’re good at. Unfortunately, this requires money and most people would rather work for an actual salary rather than a promise of a piece of business that may never take off. Small businesses struggle to recruit because they don’t have the resources of compete for talent with the bigger fish.

So, what do you do if you’re a small business? The successful ones are usually the ones that sell a “dream” of building something spectacular. This is especially true for the technology companies, where employees are motivated by the promise of building the future. One thinks of the numerous stories about how Steve Jobs was a jerk of the highest order but still managed to keep employees who were all driven by the prospect of creating future-making products.

The other solution is to get your relatives to help out. When my Dad started making it big, he coopted his fourth, fifth and sixth brothers to work for him. My fifth uncle left his employment but my fourth and sixth uncle’s cut their teeth working for him.

One of the things about relatives is that they are often willing to help in the name of wanting a relative succeed. If the relative is a shareholder in the business, the incentive to do well becomes even stronger. When well-managed, family relationships can be an asset. You can’t argue that the Walton’s who run WalMart, the biggest retailer in the world have screwed up.

Unfortunately, not every relative performs and history is filled with examples of relatives who screwed up the show because they forgot that doing well at a particular job requires something more than who you are related to. One only has to look at the history of monarchies to see how mediocre and incompetent kings screwed up and lost the kingdom – hence the former King of Bhutan’s insistence on imposing democracy on his population.

The problem with family businesses lies in the fact that the business is usually only as strong as the family that runs it. In Singapore, we had the perfect example of our first Prime Minister, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, who ran a tight ship of a government and ensured that his family behaved – as one reservist colonel said, “Both Lee brothers went through OCS and nobody gave them questionable deferments.” Unfortunately, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew had one problem – he was human and like all good human’s he got old and died and when the glue of the family went, ugly insinuations started flying around and the image of the Lee in power took a serious hit when his siblings started saying things the opposition didn’t dare to say.

What can family businesses do? Perhaps the most obvious point is that they need to recognize that work and family relationships need to be kept separate. One needs to realise that families are essentially human and eventually, human frailties will creep in.

I go back to Bhutan’s King-Father, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, who gave up absolute power and imposed democracy on his population. His argument was simple – he knew he was a competent king, he could do something to ensure his son and successor was somewhat competent but he couldn’t ensure that the generations after that would be able to do a decent job and so he moved his people onto a system of government that would not be dependent on the head of his family to do a decent job.

In a strange way, the King-Father’s move to give up absolute power enhanced the monarchy. Likewise, a family business can depend on relatives to start with, especially when lines of authority are clear within the family. However, smart families will realise that there comes a time when the business needs to be about more than a single family.