By Shelia Watson
Contributing Writer

One of the most critical challenges is dealing with communication issues.

“The key is making sure conflict is addressed in a timely manner,” said Herb Klein, an adviser with the Dixon Hughes Academy, the business consulting arm of certified public accounts and advisors firm Dixon Hughes.

Klein noted that in any business, but especially in a family business, it is not uncommon for a communication gap to go on for a long time without being addressed.

“Sometimes people are reluctant to deal with conflict, and sometimes they’re not aware that poor communication may be the cause of other business problems,” Klein said. “This is true no matter what type business it is, but when you’re dealing with family, things can escalate very quickly.”

The dynamics in a family business are skewed, said Mike Blanchard, whose company, Charles Blanchard Construction Corp., was founded by his great-grandfather more than a century ago.

“Usually when you make decisions, you gather the facts and you decide, but when it comes to family, things get a little awkward. You’re in a gray area,” he said. “For 25 years, my dad was also my boss. If Dad and I were to go fishing, we were going to be talking about work. That was a huge part of our lives, and we’d naturally start discussing.

“The biggest challenge was when we’d be at work and get into an argument, then I’d go to dinner that night at my parents’ house. But in the end, we made it work because we had to make it work.”

For the Gianoukos brothers, owners of ATS Logistics Inc., communication is typically less heated, but they are just as committed as Blanchard to making their business work.

“When we have family functions, we have some shop talk, but we try to keep it to a minimum and keep it in the office as much as possible,” said Jimmie Gianoukos, ATS Logistics’ president. “Unless there’s something big going on that we need to talk about, we try to enjoy family functions. We’ve always had a motto that we try to run the business like a business.”

The ongoing challenge of any business is to figure out how to compete in a constantly changing landscape, which requires commitment to a continuous dialogue between the key parties, which in turn means learning and coping with individual communication styles.

“As the business goes through its normal processes, there are milestones for critiquing on a regular basis,” said Klein. “And there are several things you can do interactively to handle problems. For instance, when you see someone behaving in an undesirable manner, you first work on the behavior, then you can go back to the attitude, and working on that will affect behavior change.”

Gianoukos and his brothers work at keeping themselves accountable, he said.

“We have responsibilities and we have to be accountable,” he said. “We talk our way through any problems, set goals, have meetings and check up on the things that are measurable.”

One of the more heated, or alternately, ignored , topics in a family business is succession, Klein said. The communication gaps usually occur because, whereas all may agree that an effective transition must happen to further the goals and objectives of the organization, there is often a lack of strategic planning for such a transition.

Succession is something Gianoukos and his brothers haven’t had a whole lot of major discussions about, but he pointed out that they have a strong professional team that lends advice, Gianoukos said.

“We have a financial planner, accountants and lawyers, and we meet with them at least every quarter and get their advice, and they help us with those issues, making sure we’re covered in case of disability,” he said. “But there’s no definite plan as we speak. I’m sure we’ll be addressing it at some point, though.”

With previous generations, succession in Blanchard’s company had even less forethought.

“My great-grandfather started out as a general contractor here in the 1890s, and my grandfather took over from him in 1931,” Blanchard recalled. “My grandfather had four sons working for him. He ended up having Alzheimer’s and there were no succession plans. It broke the company up and all of them went separate ways.”

Blanchard’s father took over the core business in 1975, and Blanchard went to work for him in 1985 when he was 25.

“I remember saying ‘no way would I take over the business,’” he said. “I figured there’d be 10 years of having problems with me trying to take over and him fighting it.”

The actual succession was nothing like that. Blanchard’s father had a stroke and could no longer run the business, so Blanchard took over in 2001.

“There are a lot of things that are great about being in a family business,” he said. “I’m renovating a building now that my great-grandfather built in 1905. That’s really cool, and I’m proud of that heritage.

“But my kids are 8 and 11, and if they go into the business—and we’re still not definite that will happen—believe me, we will have succession planning and lots of discussions about it and plenty of help making sure we do it right.”

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