Family Business — What Starts Here Changes the World

Families plan their summer often is a 4th of July picnic and celebration. Family Business enjoys July as the first days of the second half of the business cycle. Commencements signal the kick-0ff the start for a post academic career. Families treasure commencements, a badge of pride, courage, and honor.

The 4th of July marks the real beginning of summer. Commencements are another sign of the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. There are any number of great commencement talks. One favorite is University of Texas at Austin 2014 Commencement Address by Admiral William McCraven. The graduate of the University of Texas shares some lessons from his Navy Seal Team Training.

Family businesses can change the world

The University of Texas motto is “what starts here changes the world.” Family businesses can change the world. The following data is a measure of the impact and scope of family enterprises globally.
Family firms account for 2/3 (two-thirds) of all businesses around the world (Interview with John Davis, Harvard Business School) 

An estimated 70%-90% of global GDP annually is created by family business.

“What starts here changes the world” The Harvard Business review published “The Ambitious Business Goals Aiming to Change the World” in this piece Sam Walton, Family business owners wrote,” Sam Walton once said, “High expectations are the key to everything.” An increasing number of companies — particularly in the auto industry — are heeding that call, setting aggressive, creative, and visionary goals that change their approach to business and how they relate to the wider world.

High expectations are a key, holding people, the Team accountable is a corner-stone of the family, the business, the commencement While addressing the class of 2015 at West point on their 500 night celebration, Admiral Mcraven said, that your soldiers expect you to hold them to high standards. These soldiers joined the service to be part of something special and if they are not held to a high standard, if their individual efforts are no more important, no more appreciated than the efforts of a slacker then it will directly affect the morale of the unit. And I learned that nothing is more important than the morale of a unit.

MacArthur once said of morale, “…that it cannot be produced by pampering or coddling an Army, and it is not necessarily destroyed by hardship, danger, or even calamity…It will wither quickly, however, if soldiers come to believe themselves the victims of indifference or injustice on the part…of their leaders.”

The great leaders in the Army never accept indifference or injustice and they only judge their soldiers based on the merit of their work. Nothing else is important. Not the soldier’s size, not their color, not their gender, not their orientation, not their religion, not their ethnicity-nothing is important, but how well your soldiers do their job.

Family Businesses start the 2nd half of their year, they kick-off and celebrate the future with pride. We can only suggest you hold yourself and others accountable and judge only on the merit of what we do.