Asseement Tool - Questions Every Family Business Owner Should Answer

- FBI Inc

Purpose:
This assessment tool is designed to help you:
• Identify your business and family strengths and weaknesses.
• Establish your priorities.
• Work ON your business rather than IN your business.

How to Use:
This is a challenging list of questions which will provoke thoughts in virtually all areas of your business and family lives. Answer as many of the questions as you can – preferably in writing. Put the answers away for a day or so, sleep on your responses, and take them out again for reflection and review. TAKE ACTION on the one or two items you think are most important.

Recommendations:
If you really want to maximize the value of this instrument, copy it for ALL of your family members and key executives (some questions won’t apply to non-family employees ornon-employee family members), have them answer the questions, and then compare notes with each other in a scheduled, one-hour meeting. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at how much people appreciate your allowing them to express their opinions and concerns about the present and future of your closely held company

Assessing Family Relationships :

1. Are the family members employed by the business compensated fairly and adequately? Upon what standard is their compensation based?

2. Rate the quality of communication within your business family on a 1 to 10 scale with 10 being perfect. If your response is “6” or less, what are the contributing factors?

3. If you were to poll the other family members in your business and your key employees, is there an explicitly agreed upon vision for where your family company is headed in the next 5 years? If not, why not?

4. Are there regularly scheduled meetings for the purpose of working ON the family, communication, and relationships?

5. Is there a proven methodology that you employ for resolving conflict in your family?

6. When there are difficult decisions to be made, is there a proven methodology for arriving at decisions or do you often decide “not to decide” in order to preserve harmony?

7. Are there rules for entry of family members into business management?

8. Are there rules for entry of family members into business ownership?

9. Is the future ownership of your family company clearly defined? If not, why not?

10. Is there the potential for ownership in your family enterprise to be fragmented in the future (or right now) so no one person controls? If so, what anti-deadlock provisions have you got in place?

11. At this stage in your business life, being brutally honest, is your business generally adding to the quality of your life, or is it gradually draining the energy and quality of life away from you?

12. What, ultimately, do you want to get out of the business? Why do you work as hard as you do?

13. What is one item in your family or business that has been nagging you for some time and that you’ve been meaning to clean up? What is holding you back from cleaning up this persistent, uncomfortable issue?

14. What’s the one relationship in your family or business family that causes you the most concern? If that relationship were to improve dramatically, what types of benefits would you see?

15. What objective criteria do you use in evaluating your children’s strengths, weaknesses, skills, and talents as you attempt to evaluate their potential as successors? Where are you most confident in them? Doubtful?