Do you want to grow and scale a family business, but family business dynamics are getting in the way? 

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Unlock the secrets to harmonizing family business dynamics and business operations with Savannah Suttle from Schema Consulting to reveal the powerful impact of psychotherapy and marriage and family therapy techniques on family-run businesses. You'll learn how to navigate the complex interplay between evolving family roles and business practices, ensuring a cohesive approach to tackling both personal and professional challenges, especially during generational transitions.

Discover the keys to balancing business needs with employee well-being as we tackle the intricacies of role reassessment and transparent communication. Savannah shares her wisdom on creating win-win scenarios where individual growth and business success go hand in hand. We discuss the critical importance of addressing difficult decisions head-on, fostering a culture of open dialogue that prevents fear and conflict avoidance, and underscoring the necessity of placing the right people in the right positions for maximum team morale and efficiency.

Finally, we explore the essential strategies for scaling family businesses, emphasizing radical transparency and effective communication. Savannah guides us through the pitfalls of over-relying on long-standing employees without proper succession planning and highlights the importance of nurturing the next generation's authenticity and innovation. From strategic leadership transitions to fostering a shared vision, this episode equips you with the tools to ensure your family business remains vibrant and appealing for future generations, creating a lasting legacy of wealth and collaboration.

So, if you want to discover how your family businesses can navigate complex dynamics and turn challenges into opportunities to grow your reach, impact, and team ... tune in now!

How Behavior Therapy Leads to Family Business DynamicsNavigating Family Business GrowthMaking Tough DecisionsPassing Businesses from Generation to GenerationBook A Strategy Call

How Behavior Therapy Leads to Family Business Dynamics

While now Savannah works with family businesses, she got her start in behavior therapy, specifically marriage and family therapy. What’s unique about this field is that it’s a structural form of psychotherapy—if you can change the structure of the family, you can change the dynamic of the family. So changing one piece of the system will change the whole system. 

This structure is very close to, and even overlapping, with business structures. And if you have a family business, the dynamics are even more entwined. What Savannah found is that some of her clients who had family businesses had cemented some of their family dysfunction into their business operations. The problem is that at one point the dysfunction was actually functional, and served a positive purpose at one point. But then, over time, the business/family outgrew those roles or procedures, and yet they left them baked into the process. Those dysfunctions are then difficult to remove because the family has not come to terms with who they have become and what they need. 

 [04:53] “Who you were when you started the business is probably not who you are now. And what you needed then is probably not what you need now.”

Navigating Family Business Growth

One of the ways in which family businesses may fail to adapt is how they scale. It’s one thing to manage a team of 10 people—especially when you know and love them—and another thing to manage a team of 150 people. The challenges of a team of 150 are different even from a team of thousands. 

[09:32] “The problem is when you start scaling and you’ve got a lot of people now, it’s usually a matter of headcount. Then all of a sudden you only have 24 hours in a day and you can’t talk to everybody and build relationships with everybody.”