Nom de Guerre

The chess player views the whole board and envisions two moves ahead. Some family business have members at the top who don’t look forward.

What is your assumed name – nom de guerre – in the Family Business?

What is your assumed name? Are you a front-runner, ground-breaker, or second-rate, insufficient?

Nom de guerre is a noun, it’s an assumed name under which a person engages in combat or some other activity or enterprise.

Family owned businesses account for over 30% of companies with sales over $1 billion. A number of studies show there is a 10-15% increase in sales if the term family owned and operated is used in marketing.

In a family business, two or more members within the management team are drawn from the owning family. Family businesses can have owners who are not family members. Family businesses may also be managed by individuals who are not members of the family. However, family members are often involved in the operations of their family business in some capacity and, in smaller companies, usually one or more family members are the senior officers and managers.

What is your assumed name? What is your Nom de Guerre? Leaders, real leaders practice the quiet arts. They stay away from the spotlight. They hide from the camera, from the press, promote others and practice the quiet arts. Leaders, Family Business Leaders do things that set the example. They are ones who stop mid-tour, mid-sentence and pick-up a piece of paper in the aisle, that is part of the quiet art. They take an unassuming title. I have a friend, a millionaire, he manages four different businesses. One is an international business, with partners halfway around the world. The title on his business card, Director.

Quiet skills include the ability to plan.

The chess player views the whole board and envisions two moves ahead. Some family businesses have members at the top who don’t look forward. When a leader doesn’t have a vision for the future, it usually because they are spending so much time on today, that they haven’t really thought about tomorrow. On a very simplistic level this can be solved simply by setting aside some time for planning, strategizing and thinking about the future.

Many times when a leader has no time to think and plan for the future, it is because they are doing a poor job of leading in the present. They have created an organization and systems that rely too much on the leader for input at every stage.

The Quiet Leader has Three I’s. Intelligence, Intuition and Inspiration. What is your Nom de Guerre? Are you a quiet leader? Intelligence in the Quiet Leader is the ability to know you do not know everything. Intuition in quiet leaders is “to trust your gut”. Intuition in the quiet leader is muscle memory. It’s the life time of errors and lessons. Inspiration is the Nom de Guerre of quiet leader. It’s the simple thank you, the sincere ‘Have you considered…

Family Business Leaders earn respect by how and what they do. It’s not a birthright.