My constant challenge when advising family business owners and leaders, is to make them understand that spending ALL their time on dealing with daily operational matters will eventually mean that they are driving themselves and their business down a narrow and dark alley. I see many family business owners act like a hamster on a wheel, constantly tired at running but never really going anywhere, similar to running on the spot.

Let me be clear. I am not advocating that family business owners should become totally uninterested in operational matters. Business need both strategic planning and operational excellence. After all strong operations are needed to execute strategic plans. However the common situation I see is that family business owners rarely, if ever, find any time to think strategically – to think on the ‘big picture’, at why a family business exists, what it is trying to achieve, what direction it is trying to go in and so on. So if family business owners are constantly stuck on the operational “hamster wheel” they are completely focused on day-to-day issues of the family business and at keeping the wheels of the business turning. In such an extremely common situation the significant danger is that there is complete disconnect between operations and strategy, since strategy would be almost non-existent. Such a great disconnect between operational thinking and the wider strategic direction of the business or at least the wider strategic direction the business should be taking, then creates the following problems:

• ‘Drift’ or lack of focus — energies become dissipated because of a lack of clarity about what is to be achieved or, in some cases, energies can be directed into wholly inappropriate areas because no-one is sure what areas they are supposed to be dealing with. As the old saying goes, ‘if you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there’.

• No basis for prioritising — in situations where workload demands exceed resources available, how do you prioritise if you are not sure what the important issues for your organisation are? I would argue that, in work overload situations, we need to be more focused on overall strategic issues, rather than less. Instead I see family business owners trying to catch up on everything, leading to endless working days, lack of sleep, with some of day answering emails late at night or weeks after they received them. Some reach me as they have hit a nervous breakdown.

• Being at the mercy of the overriding organisational culture — if the organisation’s strategy is not guiding our actions, then there is a strong chance that its culture will be very influential in shaping decisions made, actions taken and so on. If you have a culture that helps you to achieve your goals, that is not necessarily a problem, but for the many organisations where their culture is not entirely compatible with their strategic objectives, this can be very problematic indeed.

The more family business owners feel they are drowning in keeping up with daily operational demands, the more they should realise that this is unsustainable in the longer run and hence they need to think strategically – many times to save themselves from themselves. They would need to make sure that ultimately they are clear about the overall goals of the business, the specific objectives and underlying values that play an important role in shaping a business’s strategy.

Some family business owners make the mistake of thinking that just knowing what the goals, objectives and values are will be enough to bring them to life. This may sound a naïve approach on paper, but it is surprising how many people fall into that trap. Businesses need mechanisms for reviewing and evaluating the strategy and plans for achieving it. A very common danger here is that people may engage in linking strategic and operational thinking in a fit of enthusiasm for taking matters forward, but may not be able to sustain this in the long term because of other pressures. It is therefore imperative that there are mechanisms for reviewing what is happening and evaluating whether things are working out or not.

‘Firefighting’ mode has become the norm for many family business owners. Many times such family business owners feel at a loss as to why their business is not performing better, while they work hard all the time. This is likely to be the result of their inability to identify changing requirements in the market and their subsequent neglect to innovate and diversify accordingly. The key challenge for family business owners is to change their mindset and behaviours to get out of ‘doing’ mode in order to be able to work ‘on’ the business, rather than only ‘in’ it. Ring-fencing strategic planning and thinking time is one of the most successful ways leaders and managers can ensure strategy implementation and alignment. Even blocking out just 15 – 30 minutes every day to horizon scan can be effective in regaining focus on the company’s vision and strategy.

At EMCS, our advisory services for family businesses, through our Business Reality Check service, is based on helping family business owners and leaders, make this important link between strategic thinking and operations.

At EMCS Academy, all the training we provide both within the “Award in Leading a Family Business” accredited course and most of the online workshops planned for 2024 are all based on the importance to have family business owners make this mindset shift towards becoming more strategic.