Help! Should I join the family business?

A reader asks: Should I enter the food business started by my grandparents? I’m 36, the eldest of three and the only son. One sister is a doctor and the other is a lawyer. I worked in four companies; my consultancy job is OK, but I want to find more meaning and value in work. Our family business is traditional. Two cousins are in operations. My father and their father are running things, but they want me to head finance. I don’t want to be the son of the owner, but I can try it out for six months. If I don’t like it, I’ll leave. What do you think?

My reply

While I commend you for thinking of joining the family enterprise, “[those] who are planning to join a family business … cannot resign,” says Alvin Yapp, second-generation in Singapore family business BusAds Pte Ltd in a 2014 issue of Today’s Manager.

“Not literally of course as you can leave the company but … it is perceived like you are leaving the family. Working for a third party, you can throw in your letter anytime. In a family business, this is not an easy option especially due to our Asian values.”

Four jobs in 15 years may be par for the course for millennials, but treating the family business just like any other job may backfire.

Moreover, six months is too short a time to have lasting impact. Stick it out for at least two or three years if needed.

Your elders want you to join them, but what do you really want? How can you use your strengths to help the business and improve on your weaknesses? How can you express your values through work?

Many entitled heirs love being the children of owners (COOs), so your ambivalence implies that you don’t approve of this, which I find heartening. Being COO brings added responsibility.

Yapp talks about his own experience: “A boss is someone you work with professionally, while a father is someone you have lived with your entire life. Expectations of me [from my dad] are definitely higher because I need to prove myself as a son whom he has raised well, and that I am a responsible person, given his love and upbringing that I have enjoyed from my parents.”

So far, your boss has been a nonfamily professional. I hope you have strong bonds with your father and uncle, enough to withstand issues that will arise.

You want to find value in work, but I believe there is meaning in whatever we do. In your present consultancy job, for example, you can take pride in helping clients to the fullest, instead of overcharging them on ideas that are impossible to implement.

Back to the family business. If you are open and motivated enough, you just may find value and meaning in it.

“Family businesses could be operating on very different value systems as compared to nonfamily businesses, simply because of the presence of a family unit within the business structure,” says Victor Ha, founder of the Singapore Family Business Entrepreneurs Group in Today’s Manager. “They may place a higher value on relationships over profit … Once you have established deep relationships, transactions will follow.”

Have an open discussion with your father, your uncle and your cousins on family and business values. Does the customer come first? Are innovations in food technology welcome? What about mentoring? Why do elders want to pass on the business to family?

“Family business leaders find meaning and satisfaction in serving their families by serving their business,” Kent Keith of Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership says. “Their positions with the family company are not stepping stones or short-term launching pads for jobs with other companies. They only have one family, and they are there to help their family and its business succeed.”