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Tips for a Young Upstart in a Stodgy Family Business
It’s not easy getting complacent teammates on board with big shifts
Jessica Powell, the former Google vice president who wrote The Big Disruption and told you how to quit your job, is here to answer your common, but often tricky work questions. Check back every other week for more management advice with a tech inflection.
I work at my family’s publishing company. Initially, I was very excited to be a part of it, as I was expecting I’d get to learn business management with and from mentors such as my father, who is a company director. But over time, I have realized that the vision I have of how our company should grow is not shared by the other directors, who are okay with the status quo. How do I communicate that if we don’t follow through with growth plans, we may see declining business in the face of increased market competition?
Do you perhaps work for Logan Roy on the HBO show Succession?
I’ve never worked in publishing, but I’ve seen variations of this question from people working in multiple industries. Even without the family element, it’s a pretty common problem: A majority of the decision-makers at your company are committed to a vision that doesn’t seem fruitful to you, and you want to shift them to a more successful strategy.
Just like Shiv Roy and her ill-received memo, you have your work cut out for you. But it’s still worth trying to present your case.
The first thing to do is to make sure you have a business argument that can be supported by facts. The truth is we make a lot of decisions based on instinct and casual observations. That’s not a bad thing necessarily: Often your gut is right, especially if you’ve worked in an industry for a long time. But while your gut is telling you that your company’s directors are stuck in the past, their gut instinct may be that you haven’t been around long enough to understand the lay of the land. The publishing industry — like many other sectors — is undeniably going through shifts, but they’ve seen a million different ideas walk through the door, and some things never really change. Trends come and go, and that’s what they may think your suggestion amounts to.
Could there be a…
