Family-Run Business? Growing Your Board Beyond Your Inner Circle.
We love working with family businesses and have been doing so for more than 20 years. But hiring new leaders to come in and bolster your team brings its own challenges. Families work so hard to build companies and cultures they can proudly call their own. It takes a particular kind of board member to come into that environment, make positive changes, gel with the existing board, and build towards a bright future. It also takes a particular kind of search campaign to find candidates with the right skills and personality to drive your business forward. At Moon Executive Search, we work closely with family-led businesses to absorb their goals and find leaders that will galvanise them to get there. Every individual business is different, but over the years we’ve learned a great deal about the central qualities and characteristics that make leaders thrive in family-run business settings.
Skills and expertise
Family-run businesses often benefit from close-knit relationships and a deep understanding of each other's strengths and weaknesses. This can be extremely beneficial but can also lead to very defined roles, a lack of new ideas, and a tendency to stick within your comfort zone. Through years of successful executive search campaigns and leadership consulting, Moon has learned that the quickest and most effective way to overcome this is to bring in new perspectives to help the business grow – including a select number of people with a wider range of experiences and backgrounds. A well-constructed board can bring fresh ideas, access to new networks, and expertise that can help you achieve your growth potential.
Tradition
Appointing a non-family member to a leadership role can be extremely daunting, especially for the first time. Family businesses often have a rich history and tradition that's passed down from generation to generation. They have stories to tell and take pride in their heritage. Passing even partial control of your business on to a non-family member requires you to trust them implicitly. You want to know that a new board member will value the heritage of your business and strive to expand it with a healthy respect for your past.
A Unique Culture
You need the values of leadership candidates to be compatible with those of your company. There’s normally a strong sense of culture associated with family businesses, based on a fiercely held set of values.
“I’ve worked with businesses which treat their employees as an extension of the family – with a deep sense of loyalty and commitment that’s rare to find in other organisations.”
Such a culture can be a huge selling point for candidates who are looking for more than just a pay check. This is one reason we deliver highly specified, bespoke recruitment campaigns – refining our searches to suit the uniqueness of each business we work with. In our experience, the most valuable acquisition advice is achieved through an understanding of the fundamental motivation for being in business, alongside long and short-term goals.
The Pillars of Communities
New board members need to care about the local community of the business as much as you do. Our local communities are stimulated and inspired by family businesses. Of course, family businesses can be nationwide or multinational operations, but they are often deeply rooted in their communities, and play an important role in supporting local causes and organisations. They sponsor local events, donate to charity, and volunteer their time and resources. This helps to strengthen the social fabric of communities and build a sense of belonging. So, it’s important for new leaders to understand the role of your company in the local community. Appointing new leadership to a family business can be unsettling, so it’s crucial to maintain organisational stability to keep this pillar of the community standing strong during times of change.
A Long-Term Perspective
If you’re looking for a new board member for your family business, you certainly don’t want to find yourself back in this position a short way down the line. Taking a long-term perspective is at the core of our approach at Moon Executive Search, and family businesses themselves are rarely focused on making a quick profit – they want to build something that will last for generations. Stability and longevity are reassuring to employees and customers alike, and leadership solutions that are built to last are the best way to fortify this.
Our distinctive approach has resulted in us forming long-lasting relationships with many family businesses. We’re immensely proud of these close ties and hope to create many more in the future. As a family run business ourselves, we understand the value of having trusted advisors to help you navigate tricky decisions and stages of transition.
Looking for a new board member? Contact us at Moon Exec Search to find out how we can help.