This month marks my sixth month as publisher of Family Business Magazine. Although new to the masthead, I am by no means new to family businesses. For more than 16 years, the Rock family has published Family Business, the authoritative guide on building and sustaining family companies. A wealth of family business issues have crossed our desks and our lives. My husband, Bob, serves as publisher of our corporate governance journal, Directors & Boards, and manages our company’s information, publishing and investment businesses following a career in management consulting. His father, Milton, 85, offers sage advice as he concentrates on philanthropy and board commitments.
While I currently reside in Philadelphia, I grew up in Kansas City, Mo. I spent my early years in a household filled with generations of family business members, all in the flour milling and consumer food products businesses. During Sunday lunches at my grandparents’ house, uncles, aunts and cousins socialized and reviewed the week’s events at our family business. We also discussed advertising opportunities, for instance choosing the “I Want My Maypo” slogan for one of our hot cereals. As in most families, there was a divide between the risk-takers and those who advocated a more cautious approach.
Many of my family’s friends owned family businesses, as well. To me, it was the most natural of business arrangements, giving the owners visibility in town as well as control of their own time, money and destinies. They were also very charitable. One need only look at the walls of the cultural institutions in Kansas City to find evidence of their philanthropy.
Yes, we saw our share of resolvable conflicts, but my family’s company still survives with several family members at the helm. My 85-year-old father stays active, with my brother and cousins sharing the workload. I don’t know what we would have done without the input of the older generations who had great experience with shifts in the grain market and labor union conflicts. You can learn from the past while embracing the future. Consider the examples of first-generation entrepreneurs whose hard work produced household names like Kohler fixtures, Hallmark cards and Gallo wines.
Family Business Magazine will continue to bring you the lessons of such real-life family companies to help you run your own family business.