Transcription

• Speaker #0

  What if the biggest challenges in our family businesses were not about strategy, about organization or even market conditions? What if they were driven by invisible dynamics, dynamics inherited from the past, inherited from the founder's personality and choices, and from your family's history? In this episode, John Whittington, one of the world's leading experts in systemic work, helps us understand what really impacts performance inside our organizations. And you will see how these dynamics, hidden dynamics, might affect growth, profitability, and even family relationships. If you want to make better decisions, unlock stuck situations, and lead your company with a deeper level of clarity, I'm sure this episode might change the way you run your business. You run a family business, or you founded your own company, and deep down you can feel it. It's time to change something in your model. give more responsibility to your teams, strengthen the resilience and performance of your company, improve your governance so that you're no longer carrying everything alone in an increasingly complex environment while preserving what makes your family's legacy unique. But how do you transform your company without losing its essence? How do you bring your shareholder family on board and help everyone find their right place? Welcome to the Family Business Next Generation Podcast. My name is Thomas Fio, I'm an executive coach and over the 15 years I've been helping business leaders successfully navigate their transformation. In this podcast you will find conversations with inspiring leaders who dared to challenge the status quo and practical ideas and tools to help you improve your business. My intention is to inspire you to develop a company and leave your mark. Ready? Let's get started. Hello everyone. And welcome to this new episode. Today is a special episode for me because you are going to meet someone who has inspired me a lot. But before I introduce my guest, let me say a few words about the topic that we are going to cover today. If you run or maybe are involved in a family business, you probably know this. Beyond organization charts, strategies, market decisions. Our companies are also shaped by something less visible. They are shaped by their history, by the personality of the founder, by the influence of former generations, by relationships between brothers and sisters sometimes, by key events, sometimes accidents that happened in the life of the company. In other words, what happens in our family organizations is often driven by deeper dynamics. Things, dynamics that you can feel, but sometimes that are difficult to explain. For example, that could be tensions that seem to come back again and again. That could be problems that persist despite the right decisions were taken. Today, we are going to explore these invisible dynamics and how a leader can develop a systemic approach to better understand and navigate them. In my experience, these This systemic perspective can be a real game changer for you guys. As a CEO or as a family member involved in the business, it can help you to resolve complex situations. It can help you to make decisions with a deeper understanding of what is really happening in your organization. It can create the conditions for your company to remain healthy on a long-term perspective. Let me give you an example that came recently through my work with a client. During the coaching process with this client, we discovered that the founder of the company a long time ago, actually 90 years ago, had a very particular, peculiar relationship with money. And little by little, it became clear that the company's persistent difficulty to generate profits was in a way linked to that legacy. It is as if this invisible glass ceiling was there. and it was difficult to overcome by the team. I first explored this very amazing topic in a previous episode in December with Vincent Monziol, who is CEO of a family company called Tournaire, an episode in French, of course, but I invite you to listen to this episode. And today we are going to go deeper in this perspective. And to have this conversation, I have the privilege to have a very special guest with me today. He's, according to me, one of the leading international specialists in this area. I have the pleasure to welcome John Whittington. John is the founder of Coaching Constellation, an organization that is... offering trainings in systemic coaching all around the world in France, New Zealand, Australia, the Netherlands, a lot of countries. And he's also the founder of this company. And he wrote a book that is now in its third edition. And the book, the name is systemic coaching and constellations. In recent years, John has focused a lot on founders and family businesses. And personally, I had the opportunity to follow several training with his team and to attend two masterclasses about my family business that he led in the last years. So I'm really excited to go further on this topic with you. And John is currently writing a new book about founder and family businesses. So today, ladies and gentlemen, we will get to... preview of some of this of his research and that's really exciting hello john thank you for being there after this long introduction thank you thank you welcome really happy and uh to be with you and you so i just said that you are currently writing a book i heard that the name the title of the book would be the origin story why this well it's there why yes yeah

• Speaker #1

  Thank you for that generous introduction. Yeah. So, you know, across all my work with founders and family businesses and in my own self-discovery and my own personal and professional development journey, I've really come to what sounds like a startlingly obvious conclusion when you say it, but that our origin story as human beings, in other words, our experience. of our first system of belonging. So that's really what systemic means. It means just the understanding of system, relational fields of belonging. And the first and most potent one is the family, our experience and our family of origin, the place we occupy, the way we find or don't find our authority, voice and role directly. influences whether we're likely to become a founder in the first place and certainly then how we lead organizations that we are the founder of so the childhood experience of the of the founder and that i would include also the social and cultural systems of origin and that influence them and then the origins of the organization that they begin so Both of those origin stories and where they meet in particular, the personal and the organizational, is what I'm interested in. And you say, you talk about research.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah.

• Speaker #1

  Makes me nervous because it sounds like I'm an academic and I'm just a humble practitioner, really. My research is from direct experience, really. I've spent all my life in my early professional. life working for founders and working for family businesses as an employee so I know yeah how challenging and how rewarding it can be it's it's like the rest of life both joyful and painful and then I've spent the last 20 years as a coach with a particular focus on coaching founders and family businesses and I have a portfolio of clients that have I've actually walked alongside many of them for more than 10 or 15 years because it's really a commitment to lifelong learning and development and the life of a founder or a family business is never simple. If it is, you probably don't need to talk to me or you or listen to this podcast, but life is complicated in those systems. And then the third sort of axis of my research, as you've already touched on, my preferred way of working is illuminating system dynamics through systemic constellations, so in workshops. And I've just found that the reason I'm still doing it kind of 25 years later is because I'm learning all the time through the methodology. Because whilst there are some general principles, each... system is unique and constellations beautifully illuminate those unique aspects for example a relationship with money that goes back nine decades that's just the sort of thing you will find out in a constellation, you may spend years trying to find out in a conversation.

• Speaker #0

  That's a question that I had, John. I had the question for later, but maybe it's good to have it now. So what would be the questions that you would ask to a leader? I'm thinking of this company, 100 employees, more or less. The company was founded in 1929. and is this a real a real case it's a real case yeah it's a real case it's a client okay and uh it's a very nice company and uh but they have this thing of uh low margins you know being profitable is is something that they struggle with and they have been struggling with this for a long time and it has a lot of sides effect in terms of uh you know having enough money to invest in the to Increased salaries too. And people are, I think a lot of things are really good going in the right way in the company, but there's this glass ceiling that they cannot go through. And there's another difficulty in this company about business development. You know, it seems difficult for sales people to find their place in the company or to be heard. you What would be the questions that you would ask to that leader?

• Speaker #1

  Is this the same system that had the 90-year-old 90 years ago? Yeah. Oh, okay. Exactly. Yeah. So I would say the first thing to look at in that sort of situation, well, first of all, is to tune into the energy field of the system. And as you started describing it, your voice went deeper and quieter. I almost sensed, and this is what I would feed back to a client, a sense of sadness or loss somewhere. And so that would be the first thing is embodied resonance. It feels there's something heavy that that system is carrying. But in a more theoretical level, I would say the first thing to look at is to wonder about systemic loyalties. In other words... Well, what's a way, a way of asking about that would be, who would be pleased to see the system so stuck and the difficulty with money?

• Speaker #0

  Who would be pleased?

• Speaker #1

  Who would be pleased? Yeah. Who would be secretly pleased to see, in other words, imagine a forefather or foremother looking down on the organization, perhaps two generations, because you This is 1929, so they're nearly 100 years old, so that's three generations. So let's say...

• Speaker #0

  90 years.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, so where did the stuckness begin? Is it as they look towards their 100th anniversary, or has it been stuck for 30 years? And then find out what happened before that started. And the way of asking about that is not what happened, but... who would be pleased to see you stuck? Or who would be pleased to see you flourish? And usually there's a long silence. And then somebody in the team, often somebody who's been there longer than anybody else will say, that's a very strange question. But the person that comes up for me when you ask that question is, and then they name somebody. Usually somebody who's left the system in a difficult way or died while they were still employed or were part of the family system. And somebody or something that hasn't been included, honoured and given their dignity back. And that creates a kind of hidden, unconscious loyalty to not being more successful. than they were able to be so that probably sounds a bit strange but again that's the sort of thing constellations surface beautifully um yeah does that does that make any sense yeah of course that makes sense that makes a lot of sense I mean for this particular yeah it does yeah the thing

• Speaker #0

  that is not easy is sometimes in the room you don't have the memory of what happened so long ago you know, and Yeah. Sometimes not easy to, sometimes it's very easy. As you said, someone says, yeah, I know. I remember. It makes me think of one person, but sometimes they don't remember. They feel something, but it's hard to put a face or a name.

• Speaker #1

  Exactly. But four weeks later, when you see them again, they say, cause it's like, um, you put a little drop of homeopathic, homeopathic drop into the system with the question. The question works its way through the field of the system and somebody emails you or you see them five or six weeks later and they say, you know, we've been thinking about that question. And it's, you know, there's a step towards the answer or it sets off a different train of thinking that's more systemic, i.e. it's looking at the invisible dynamics as you articulated beautifully in your introduction. that are hidden in between the visible elements of the system, the people and other parts of the system. And, you know, I might also ask a more sort of obvious question, like what patterns do you notice? What are the strongest pattern, repeating patterns in the system that you notice repeating over these three generations? And one of them, I imagine, is... we don't like sales yeah yeah so you know that could be a new pattern or it could be an old pattern if it's a new pattern it's then it's related to something probably more recent you'd be surprised how many especially artisan companies companies that produce something beautiful and valuable have a sort of a dislike of showing off about it or selling it or talking about it too loudly. That can be a loyalty to a founder or more likely a loyalty to a whole system of not making yourself too big. And that could be the original family.

• Speaker #0

  Oh yeah, that seems so important. Yeah.

• Speaker #1

  A sort of false modesty about what you do.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, that could have been in my own peacock tail.

• Speaker #1

  Right.

• Speaker #0

  Don't make yourself too big.

• Speaker #1

  Okay, well, as coaches, you know you know this already um we all attract clients that are a mirror of our own shadow yeah so if you have that dynamic and you're energetically attract without ever being named explicitly clients with exactly the same shadow that they haven't integrated yet yeah so

• Speaker #0

  perhaps your job is to help your clients find their voice yeah i remember it's so true i remember some years ago I was working on myself you know about my relationship with my father and uh and a few few weeks i remember i don't remember a month i think it was a few weeks later a client came a ceo of a family company and he the topic of the coaching was help me deal with my father who is the owner of his my boss perfect yes the system always brings you a client you're nearly ready for Yeah, I was nearly ready. That's true at that time.

• Speaker #1

  Just before we move off this client, there's something, I'm still with this sort of heaviness. And so another question pops up for me is, why carry on trading at all? Why bother? It seems a lot of effort and no one is interested in supporting sales or marketing. It sounds, if you treat... everything as information that sounds to me like the system saying can we stop please we're exhausted or just can you just stop the bravest decision you can make as a founder particularly if it's a family business with three decades three generations behind it is to say our work is going to come to a close or this what we do is no longer required and we'll respectfully find a of thanking everybody. closing it or yeah and that's not a sort of suggestion people expect you to make but of course it's not a recommendation it's just a question what about if you just stopped this why exhaust yourself why is everybody burning out to try and keep this going there isn't enough money there isn't the will for sales have you considered just stopping and that may give permission to bring things to a close or to inject a whole new lease of life into it, depending which way they choose to go.

• Speaker #0

  Interesting. So, John, we've started with the last question. So that's always good. Yeah. And let me return to a question that I really want to ask you. Why a systemic approach, according to you, is important in the business world? Why is it important? What does it bring? And particularly for family business or founders, you've said that a little bit. but would you like to add something?

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, I think we live in an individualistic, orientated world, don't we? Everything is about what an individual can achieve and the force of will and goal setting and all of that good stuff, it all has a place. But if there's something in the system that hasn't been resolved, integrated, included, named, acknowledged... then no amount of good intentions will resolve or move the system forward. The case you were just discussing sounds like one of those. You know, they will have tried all the obvious things and considered borrowing more money and et cetera, et cetera. But that's not really the problem. And it's certainly, therefore, not the solution. So I think why it's particularly important in... family businesses is that unless you take a generational view of leadership and of organizational health you're only ever trying to you know sort of fix the present and in every organization but super important in excuse me family businesses is to look to the past first in order to leave it where it belongs in the past very interesting then you can be present and move into the future. So I often quote this quote to my clients. Every client I've ever worked with, family businesses, founders, even large corporates. There's a woman called Wilma Mankiller, which is a great name. She was the first female chief of a Cherokee nation. tribe. She was a friend of Obama's. She died in, I think, about 10 years ago. And she said, in irrequire society, leaders are required to consider seven generations in the past and seven generations in the future when making decisions that affect people. And that has become something of a mantra for me, for my own business. and also for my clients, that if you think multi-generationally, then things tend to go well. So I suppose the reason for that is that the focus of systemic work is on an understanding of the importance of the human need to belong in systems. And if you take belonging into account in your leadership, and in particular, you take care of the cycle of joining, belonging and leaving, then you're supporting, you're creating the conditions for organizational health. And there's nothing that founders like less than when people leave. Because founders are often trying to create a family on their own terms this time. So founders often come from complex families where they couldn't find their place or belonging. And so they create a founder-led or a family business. This time they say to themselves, I'll, you know, we'll get it right. I'll take care of everybody. I'll show you how you should have led me. I'll show you how you should have treated money. I'll show you how you should have treated people. So these are systemic. perspective perspectives on um well organization and health in general but particularly with founders and family businesses so yes i'm not sure if i answered your question now but very interesting yeah

• Speaker #0

  uh would you have an example uh of something that uh a founder maybe when i mean he we understand through what you said that a lot of founders are maybe unconsciously trying to fix something from their family of origin in the business you know and yes unconsciously creating a new family would you have an example of a pattern something that came well

• Speaker #1

  the thing is that if you're trying well so let's go a bit deeper into that very often founders uh rejected their same-sex parent or somebody else in the family the problem with and so they then and they say well this wasn't good enough you weren't good enough for me i'll show you how to do it better so if i'm a man my father wasn't good enough for example yes and so you'll show him sort of send you yeah yeah how you should have taken care of people in other words how you you should have taken care of me. And so these, I call them... life sentences they're unspoken phrases that are like a like a contract you make with yourself and one of them is i'll show you it manifest um and the problem with that is that everything that you exclude or reject in one system gets represented in the other system so i don't know let's say you have a difficult relationship where you come from a family of six brothers and sisters for example I don't, just in case you're wondering. And you find yourself setting up a company where you appoint a leadership team and there are five members of the team and you as the founder. Unconsciously, you recreate the family, including the sister that you couldn't bear or the brother that you always fought with. There they are around the family business or the founder led. No members of the family need to be there. It's like a constellation, but it's unconscious constellation. So you're not aware that you're doing it, but you'll repeat, you know, we all repeat patterns and those patterns, as we both know, come from our origin story, from our family, our experience of school, our experience of authority, of community, culture, religious systems that we belonged in. So those are sorts of things which as you said in your lovely introduction nothing to do with the balance sheet or cash flow or sales or what you do and they're particularly strong i think in founders and family businesses when they're not strong when when things go well in a family business or a founder-led organization people like you and i coaches and consultants will probably never meet known. because they don't need our help yeah so i think yeah there's so many examples come to mind another key one just sort of staying at the big level is that i think as a coach of founders i notice i'm often accompanying people who are not accompanied as a child so lots of founders were only children or felt like they were. So the feeling of that you don't quite fit into your family leaves you feeling unaccompanied as a child. And therefore you look for good company as you get older to support you, walk alongside you as you create this beautiful new system around this idea you've come up with, which of course is brilliant until you struggle with the organizational dynamics and the difficulties of leadership.

• Speaker #0

  So the coach could be, in a way, on your side, the person that you missed as a child, and you missed and could be a kind of parent figure or parent face.

• Speaker #1

  Yes. I mean, this podcast, if I understand it, is for founders and leaders of family businesses, not for coaches. But yeah, we could do a separate one on that. But yes, as a coach, you need to be very careful. As you know, I've... shared before not well first of all to consider who do I represent for this client and this is and how can I stay separate from that and just stay as me John Whittington you know just as a coach just traveling alongside for a while accept all the projections and use it all as information but don't get entangled now coaches who don't know about that often become part of the problem and they almost become part of the family and then everyone's in trouble.

• Speaker #0

  because you get entangled. The last thing you need is somebody to walk alongside you who secretly, unconsciously wants to join you.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, very interesting.

• Speaker #0

  Anyway, that's a slightly different subject. But yeah, as you said, I mean, family businesses get set up for all sorts of reasons, to avoid something that's difficult in the family, to heal something in the family, to create a safe belonging.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah.

• Speaker #0

  or to create a place for conflict that we can't have in the family. It's too painful, so we'll have it in the business.

• Speaker #1

  Oh, it makes me think of a company with a lot of conflicts.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, or the other way around. All the conflicts in the family, so we'll set up a business,

• Speaker #1

  and there will all be no conflicts at all.

• Speaker #0

  There'll be no conflicts at all. So neither system usually do well, really.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, of course. So as a founder, or as a family business manager, what are the key dynamics that you should look at, that you should be aware of, you know, to make sure you're not stuck somewhere?

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, well, I think, goodness, there are so many. That's why I'm writing a book about it. The first thing to be aware of is projections, I think, onto you. A bit like I was just saying about coaches, but, you know, The word founder is a very loaded word. It has a lot of resonance, especially now. The whole world seems to be turning to, you know, creator economy, founders, entrepreneurs, solopreneurs in particular, influencers. They're all a kind of founder. And, you know, as big business gets consolidated into fewer and fewer. and larger and larger businesses there are masses of other businesses emerging and when you're called a founder it has a an impact i mean if i ask you who do you what who do you think of when i say the word founder what's

• Speaker #1

  the first association yeah i i yeah that's that's wow that's wow you're a founder wow yes yeah almost you're the hero of today you know and yes in the middle ages it was the knights with the sword but today you you are the knights with a sword you don't have those you have dollars and or euros and you you conquer the world you yeah that's it so it comes with a lot of baggage you know it could be a spiritual uh

• Speaker #0

  and uh of a religious movement you know i mean you could say jesus christ was the founder of christianity he certainly would buddha you know they're founders Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, you know, the word founder has got a lot of energy to it. And then there's founders of countries, George Washington, you know, the founder of America.

• Speaker #1

  Be careful with the projections on you. Yeah,

• Speaker #0

  so if you say I'm a founder, oh, right, you're almost like a god. No, I'm just a human being, probably coming from great complexity, trying to create a safe space for myself. It's a very different way of framing it. So I think the first thing is to think about what are people projecting onto me and how can I soften those projections by being real with them, being really real and not falling for the sort of seduction of being a founder, being all-powerful, because then you end up more isolated than you were. The very reason many founders start is so they can create a safe belonging.

• Speaker #1

  and then they find themselves repeating the dynamic in their family at school or wherever and feel just as lonely as they did before and and being a founder is becomes your identity you know imagine and you're you know when you introduce you present yourself uh with friends you say yeah i'm a founder of this and then you cannot make a difference between you and this part of of your identity that is only a part yeah

• Speaker #0

  the end yeah very strong identifications I'm sure we'll come to that later, but when a founder needs to leave, that's one of the top reasons why it's so hard. It's become who they are. Persona and person have become merged and there's no separation anymore. I've worked with several founders who would fall into that category where asking them to, you know, being asked to step back or they tell me they want to step back. very, very difficult if... It's like stepping back from yourself. How can I stop being myself? And this is where Constellation is useful, to separate physically with visual mapping and representation.

• Speaker #1

  me and my business or me and my persona or me and my alter ego whatever they call it it makes me think of a a founder that i knew and when he retired i mean he was doing a lot of sport in very good health and a few months after retiring uh he just had a cancer and yeah and probably no link between the two situations. Oh, there probably is. There probably is a strong link.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, yeah. Because it's like dying for many founders. You're asking me to die if you want me to step out of my company because that's all I know. So, you know, this is why several generations later it's important for CEOs who are employed in a founder, what was originally a founder-led organization. And every organization in the world was originally started by somebody or a group of people to respect the price that the founder paid that creates the system that I've now got a job in. So, yeah. So that's the first one. So that's the first thing is resisting the projections. Yes.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah.

• Speaker #0

  So the other thing is to. is to understand what supports organizational health and systems and um that your job as a founder i think is to is to adopt the stance principles and practices of systemic work and you know you've mentioned my book earlier i've written about that for coaches before and um is the whole basis of the trainings and in very short summary that means keeping a distance connected to what we were just talking about to your own system getting in what i call a systemic helicopter so you can get up above the system and see the system from a distance so you can see the whole seeing holes w-h-o-l-e-s yeah is is in one word what systemic perspective is and taking care of the health of the whole Our job as founders is to support flow and coherence and to facilitate that flow and coherence in the whole system, all parts of it, all at the same time. And that's a lot easier if you understand how systems work. So we've already sort of talked about this, but very briefly for your listeners.

• Speaker #1

  That's important. Take the time. Yeah, that's important for listeners.

• Speaker #0

  Yes. The three principles that I'm talking about are time, place and exchange. So time is about looking back in order to clear the difficulties, events, successes, joys and failures of the past. Integrate them, see them, give them all the place and then you can be present in the present and move into the future. places about things like noticing that excluded whatever and whoever you exclude whether in your family of origin or in the business especially when you in startup mode will get represented in the business later and this is the principle of place that everybody has an equal right to a safe and respected place in the system so this is clearly related to the deepest human need to belong And so taking care of the cycle of joining belonging and leaving is super, super important.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah. So when you fire someone brutally or, you know, as it happens sometimes in some companies, it can leave a wound or something like that in the system. It's what you're saying here.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah.

• Speaker #0

  You leave a dynamic in the system. Somebody else will try and occupy that role and they won't be able to. They'll be sitting in what we call the systemic ejector seat because the way that somebody left was not respectfully done. What they contributed was not acknowledged. And even worse, you paid them lots of money to go away and not talk to the press. Those three things together will combine to create a very difficult energy to occupy for the next person who tries to. However much you pay them or however brilliant they are.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah.

• Speaker #0

  So that's a good example of systemic dynamic, you know. And then the third principle is the principle of exchange, the principle of giving and receiving. And in family businesses in particular, love and money are often very mixed up. For example, the parents in a family business, the first generation, let's say, may make their children shareholders in the company, but they haven't got a role or they give them money. to placate them or to keep them out of the business this all makes things worse and worse and the children get weaker the next generation of leaders can't lead the whole system can grind to a halt i mean this is a this is a huge subject and it reminds me of um you know the the importance of when you've got a hierarchy in a family that's different to the hierarchy in the family business you can be sure that there will be trouble. So if the youngest sibling, for example, is appointed as the CEO, without due process, and I mean respectful, dignified, systemic language and process to communicate really clearly why that decision has been made, you'll end up with a couple of generations later, maybe, or even sooner, fighting siblings. in both the family and the business. But family businesses tend to think that they can pay their own children and grandchildren off. We'll give you lots of money to stay out of the business. Or look, we'll make you a shareholder and you can benefit for life from the dividends. As a way of not doing or saying something else, that makes it very complicated. And here we're in one of the most tender, complex... areas of succession and family business transmission. And this, again, is a why I love working in this area, because, yeah, it's an art, not a science that requires, you know, go slowly and lots of nuance and systemic insights and information. And also why I love constellations as a method for surfacing what would be a better way of doing this. And whether you're working with a client or a whole family at the same time using tabletop constellations or they come to a workshop, it's a very powerful way and a very respectful way of clarifying what hierarchy needs to be respected, what hierarchy needs to be included in the business and how can we move forward. You know, succession is both the most important. thing to pay attention to for a founder and a family business and the most difficult to do well yeah and you know like you i'm sure i spend a lot of my time yeah post merger or post succession trying to unravel what's been done badly and put it back in a more respectful order what

• Speaker #1

  would you do then to prepare a succession and concretely as a ceo and to to run or organize this this succession is there i mean a few key things i mean it's complex of course but the things that come to your mind well the the reason that successions succession often doesn't uh

• Speaker #0

  work is because money is prioritized over love oh my god yeah and you know in a family business even though they're all shouting at each other let's say this what they're really doing is protecting the love that exists between them. It's a matter of blood and love, if you like. And the importance of honoring the price that the founders, let's say it's a man and a woman, just as a sort of generic heteronormative example, a man and a woman, a married couple start a business together. Although, of course, that's a whole subject. who started it and whose idea was it that's a hierarchy in itself but for another time and um they decide they want to pass it on um and let's say just to keep the example simple they haven't got any children and so they pass it on to an employed ceo now that employed ceo is taking on a very delicately balanced system um that frankly is quite hard to do unless you've got a systemic awareness and a touch in your leadership and you you understand how systems work. And the most important and just the starting point, really, for this process is to spend more time than you imagine would be useful, honoring and acknowledging what the founders started and how they started it, and really spending time with them. Tell me about your origin story. How did you decide to come together as a couple? How did you decide together to bring the business? How did you, you know, their...

• Speaker #1

  their baby in this example is the business and that's so asking a lot of questions and deep questions is a way to honor the the yes the founders and of course asking those questions can be challenging in itself and this

• Speaker #0

  is where you know somebody who's walking alongside that process can be very very useful because mostly they wouldn't think to do that themselves they're just oh okay you want me to take on the business you know show me the cash flow show me the sales and they've completely missed the point of this is a much more delicate process than that the business will take care of itself if you get this part right yeah so but more more common perhaps is a family business that is transmitting and let's say they've got three children and one of them is really keen to take on the business and the others aren't that's Very common. I've seen that many times in constellations or some combination like that. So giving everybody their right and true place in the family and returning to them the dignity of that true place and seeing that in a constellation, in a visual map represented in space is very, very powerful because it's an embodied process.

• Speaker #1

  So concretely, what should you do? Should you organize a constellation with a coach? All right.

• Speaker #0

  You know, I think that is, I would say that, as it were. But yes, I think it's not just a conversation. A way of visualizing it is really important. But let's take another example. The founders died 20 years ago, and you're the third generation CEO. How might you take on the business in a way that it will prosper? So not only have you got to... attend to all the things we've just touched on. You've also got to establish what was the original purpose and intention of the founders in setting up this business. Because if you try and change it without permission, you will get unstuck. And then perhaps this is connected to the client question you described earlier, the one coming up to its centenary. an employed CEO will normally make the mistake that the invitation is to make it my own, you know, as if I was the founder or as if it was my business. Well, yes and no. And the no part is have you checked whether you have permission to do that energetically? And how can you do that? Well, one is, you know. the ritual nature of a constellation where this employed CEO comes to a constellation workshop in a group of 20 strangers and I would ask them to choose somebody in the group to represent the founder or founders and they say oh I never knew them but I've got a sense of okay doesn't matter obviously you didn't know them they died before you were born sometimes just choose two people in the workshop And we ask those two people to stand up and then ask the CEO to stand in front of them and just to, with no words, just to look at them, just to look into their eyes and look from one to the other and find a distance that feels true and respectful. And then, as you know, because you've done several constellations yourself, the representatives for the founders will often surface. something completely unexpected, unexpected to me as a facilitator, to the group, to the CEO. And they, I don't know, I mean, they might say anything like, we're so pleased to see you, or who the hell are you? Leave our company alone. Whatever they say is usually very useful and very enlightening. and changes something in the body and breath of the client. They might say something like, I'm so sorry to see that our... grandchildren or great-grandchildren a lot are not the leaders of the company. In other words, they're telling you, they're calibrating the level of permission you've got. And it might be that I would ask the actual CEO who's employed, who's standing there in this rather unusual way of working, but incredibly useful way of working, Constellations, to ask them for permission.

• Speaker #1

  to do things a bit differently than they did please smile on me if i take the business in this direction i want to move into i don't know pharmaceuticals instead of just research or whatever and uh yeah yeah and what you would add because i've seen you several times doing that john is first you would you would ask the ceo to acknowledge you know to the the founders that they are. you are the founder and i'm i'm just i'm just you know and thank you and for the legacy or things like that and and and and that's the first part and then and then and then of course what you just said uh smile on me if i make all the choices because the context has changed the market has changed and the company the legacy and the the company needs all the choices today thank you for your for smiling at me or accepting that I'm making all the decisions today.

• Speaker #0

  Or even I see I have no permission. And so I'll step out.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah.

• Speaker #0

  And even even that, which sounds strange, but of course, it may not be that they need to leave. It's just they need to step away from the direction they were traveling in. Yeah, you're absolutely right. That's beautifully expressed. It's about acknowledging what the founders started. hearing from them about their original intention and asking for permission. Quite often, the sheer impact of standing in front of the founders for a CEO or subsequent family member, maybe it's their great grandparents, is so profound just to stand there. They'll never forget that. Their leadership has changed in that moment because their whole body and breath has changed. They've gone into the past, seen it, honoured it, perhaps there's a bow over the head or a few words, and then they're able to turn to the future with a completely different view of what their job as a leader is. Very powerful, isn't it?

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, I've seen that. I remember a situation where the grandchild, you know, she was talking to the founder. I mean, he was not alive anymore, but in the constellation she was, and she had a lot of emotion, you know. acknowledging and thanking the founder and talking about the legacy and how she's trying to give her best to make the company continue its journey it's sort of beyond words isn't it the privilege

• Speaker #0

  of witnessing that kind of process so i think of it as transformation as in coming out of the trance of it's all about the future and actually Peace. Looking to the past and seeing what's in your peacock tail feathers of the organization, and in this case, your own family, and where the two are combined. It's super powerful. And often we just ignore the past and assume the past is in the past. It only stays in the past when we look at it, acknowledge it, honor it, and live fully in honor of what was and what was not possible for our ancestors.

• Speaker #1

  Do you have other things to do in the transmission process? Do you have other... All the things that you think should be done in the process? Because a lot of transmissions don't really work. Why don't they work?

• Speaker #0

  Can you give me an example of why they don't work?

• Speaker #1

  Yeah.

• Speaker #0

  What I've described is the foundations. And then, yes, there are thousands of other things to do. But if you get the foundations right, they tend to be easier to sort out. But give me an example of what you're thinking.

• Speaker #1

  yeah I have a friend who bought a company many some years ago and the founder continued to work in the company as it is usually for a few months or maybe one year it's part of the negotiation just to pass on all the you know projects and informations to the buyer the new CEO so he was not my friend was not part of the family he was just buying the company and and it didn't work at all i mean it seemed that he didn't have any authority in the company that people were not listening to him and the problem was that the founder was and was still in the company which is probably a big mistake but at the end i mean the the business went down after two years and he had to sell the company because he went he went bankrupt and what happened is that the the seller the founder bought the company back

• Speaker #0

  I mean, to try and get an employed CEO to lead a company when the founder is still there is probably one of the hardest things you can try and do. Unless the founder has already established a good working relationship with them and they're very respectful of what the founder started. But yeah, I've worked with a guy a couple of years ago who bought and sold his own company three times.

• Speaker #1

  No.

• Speaker #0

  Because he couldn't, each time he couldn't bear that somebody else was. a telling him what to do during the earn out period and be taking the business in a different direction i mean he was only in his late 40s early 50s so he could afford to do that but it's it's that's why i've said on the front of the my book i haven't um you know i always start with the front cover it's um it says the origin story an existential guide you the solopreneurs, founders, family businesses and those who walk alongside them because it's existential for a founder to let go as we talked about earlier it's you know like you're asking me to give away my child no one's going to do that so it's a very difficult move to make but not impossible and founders will do anything and to make sure it doesn't work And you've just given an example of that. It's very expensive, but money doesn't matter because it's existential. It's about, will I survive? Founders are very often really caught up at a very unconscious level with death anxiety, something that we all have as human beings. And death anxiety, you know, there's a story going around for many years that Rupert Murdoch was asked. what his plan for succession was 20 years ago do you know what his answer was no not dying great so that was a little glimpse of his unconscious that actually he thinks as many founders do I have started something and it will last forever therefore I will last forever yeah and then they're shocked to discover that they die too so yeah well yeah

• Speaker #1

  So let's come back to the three principles. And I'm wondering, you know, what can you do as a CEO? You understand, for example, do you have to ask for a coach? It's time you have to, you have a problem in your organization. I mean, something is repeating in the department of your organization. And what can you do, you know, using a systemic role? What could you do as a CEO? I mean,

• Speaker #0

  I... Yeah, I mean... that's why i'm that's why it's taking me a while to write this book because i've written a practitioner book before for practitioners like you yeah and yeah and coaches yeah i'm trying to write the book actually for founders and family business leaders so they don't necessarily need to get a coach so yeah you know i'm always trying to give it away so because i've been saying for 20 years, systemic knowledge should belong. in the system, in the organization, not just with coaches. Of course. Our job is to make ourselves redundant, to teach leaders, particularly founders and family businesses, what these principles are and what a healthy organization feels and looks like. And that sounds a bit reductionist. It's just three principles. It's a lot more than that. But I would say that... One of the first things they can do is to pay attention to the cycle of joining, belonging and leaving and to understand how important belonging is. And to do that, they need to perhaps look at their own relationship with belonging and understand why really they've set up this organisation. What is it that they're trying to protect or get recognition for? Or, you know, how are they attending to them? belonging, how are their needs to belong in their family, school and social system as a child and young adult met and not met and how are What are the implications of that in the way you've set up your business?

• Speaker #1

  Today. Today, yeah.

• Speaker #0

  But that's the first thing, is to come back to your origin story. That's what I spend all my time doing as a coach, working with people at a very personal level in order to leave the leadership of their business to them, but with much greater sight and clarity. And the other thing, I mean, just one other example that I often use. I call it an equilateral triangle constellation. You could just call it a triangle. Invite founders and leaders of family businesses to set up three bits of paper on the floor in a triangle, one with money written on it, one with control written on it, and one with success. So to explore your relationship with control, money, and success, and to stand in that triangle and to move around from one bit. bit of paper to another noticing what your relationship with each of these is like because i'm always interested in how could i distill i don't know 25 years of you know learning myself as a founder and a family business owner and coach of others and and this is one distillation joining belonging and leaving is another one but If you can really explore your relationship with money, control and success and have that alive in your consciousness, things will tend to go a bit better for you as a founder because you'll then be able to lead with more clarity. If you don't know what your relationship with money is really about, what the dynamics are, it'll take over the business. If you don't... know what your relationship with authority and control are it will take over the business if you don't have a clear definition of what success means for you as a human being and in your business you'll probably never reach it and you'll you'll burn out you'll burn out trying to get somewhere that is all a bit hazy and foggy and it's useful to clarify that and that's where you know i hope this book and

• Speaker #1

  coaching and all of that so be aware of yourself or where you come from of your own patterns of your own blind spots be aware of that do your work on yourself because it will give you a lot of freedom in the way you run your own organization exactly very interesting and imagine there's a problem on the floor in a particular department they are i don't know producing a special type of product and there's a repeating pattern a repeating problem there what would you do as a ceo you would go there i i know a ceo who goes there and and and he's trained with constellations and but he he goes there and he he's what would you do he's he i mean i imagine he would he would ask about belong uh joining belonging and living in this department the history of this department and and And how this department was founded at the beginning, who was the founder and what was the history and what were maybe the accidents or the persons that left in a maybe brutal way along the history.

• Speaker #0

  All of those sound useful. I mean, it depends what the problem is. Exactly. So let's say at the generic level, I would say, I would ask, to what question is this problem the answer?

• Speaker #1

  Yeah.

• Speaker #0

  So very interesting.

• Speaker #1

  Let's, let's repeat it. So what question this problem?

• Speaker #0

  Yes. So you have a problem in a department. I don't,

• Speaker #1

  and let's say problem of efficiency. Efficiency. Yeah. Okay.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah. So there's a consistent pattern of inefficiency.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah.

• Speaker #0

  Okay. So now I know it's about efficiency. I might ask two questions. One would be, what's the question to which inefficiency is the answer? It's a sort of tautological question which confuses people. They go, sorry, what do you mean? You just leave them with it. And they'll, you know, it could be, as I say, days or weeks later, they go, oh, I know what it is. Or who would be pleased to see you being so, as you describe, inefficient? Oh, well, the previous boss who left in a terrible way. And she'd be really pleased because secretly she wanted to slow. slow down our workplace and work less she would she burnt out or whatever the story is i don't know i'm sort of making up um things that it could possibly be but if there's Yeah, it depends on the question. Obviously, they aren't just sort of random answers. They've got to be in the field of the question. So if you get a bit more specific about the question. Yeah,

• Speaker #1

  of course. Yeah, its situation is unique to me.

• Speaker #0

  But if you're looking systemically, as a systemically orientated leader, your first thing you're looking at is what are the patterns? what patterns are there and what do they serve what are they in service of what's inefficiency in service of and they well actually it means you know none of us get burnt out like the previous theme did yeah okay yeah so it's in service of staying healthy thank you yeah great staying alive how could you stay alive and healthy and be maybe 10 more efficient oh we've got loads of ideas about that now you've acknowledged what the hidden dynamic was behind the pattern so yeah it's a good example yeah yeah it's just a different way of looking whereas in many organizations say there's inefficiency right work them harder pay them less or pay them more or put a different manager in or fire them or they're all binary hire a consultant to hire

• Speaker #1

  another to let me work with it yeah get them a code yeah yeah and if you uh yeah if you get a systemic coach then they'll ask sort of strange questions about patterns which is usually much more productive than how can i coach you to be more efficient and much more respectful to much more respectful to what is yeah yeah big subject isn't it so it's it's what you're saying john is that uh founders and and and family ceos or family business ceos would would would have great you interest or would it would be very useful for them to gain to to have this systemic approach and to develop that and to uh how much how how much time would that take i mean in a role in a typical founder's role or or or family business ceo's role um i mean well this is the great the great problem isn't it is that you know i'm busy running a business how can i take on this perspective because because i met this guy you know and he said no but that's that's my main role i mean he's he's maybe uh an original guy maybe a very special guy maybe but he said yeah i've delegated i've gave i've given all most of my tasks and uh i i spend time i spend time I've delegated most of my tasks and I... I spend time listening to the system. And when there's a problem somewhere, I go deep. I go on the floor and I talk to people and I try to understand where the system is stuck here and what's happening.

• Speaker #0

  Wonderful. Are you coaching him?

• Speaker #1

  No.

• Speaker #0

  No, he doesn't need a coach.

• Speaker #1

  He doesn't need a coach. Exactly, yeah. I don't think he needs a coach anymore. He probably worked with a coach in the past. Yes,

• Speaker #0

  job done. Well, I mean, I said it earlier and I'll say it again because I really believe this, that the knowledge we have as systemic coaches and facilitators needs to be transmitted into the leadership of organizations, teams, family, businesses, founders, solopreneurs, because it's they really who have the power and authority to look systemically. But yes, your question is a good one. How do you, in the busy day-to-day of running a... organization or even being a solopreneur how do you have time for the systemic perspective or you know my book is a tiny contribution to that huge huge question and your work and lots of other people's work is is all really important because that's the job i think not to protect the world of coaching and consultancy but to pass our knowledge into the system themselves Thank you. and a fast and rather effective way of doing that is using constellations because it's embodied and people never you can't unsee what you see in a constellation you can't not experience it so it's a whole body uh

• Speaker #1

  way of learning and embodied learning is the kind that stays you know longest and how could you learn as a ceo i mean you're not going to do the full practitioner uh

• Speaker #0

  No, you don't need to learn how to become a systemic coach, but you need to.

• Speaker #1

  They can read your book in a few months, maybe. I don't know when is going to, when can we?

• Speaker #0

  Early next year, I think. Early next year. Yeah. Early 2027.

• Speaker #1

  Okay. But how can you learn? Waiting for your book, how can we learn?

• Speaker #0

  Come to the workshops.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, so you should come to a workshop, like the one you're doing in Paris in June. Yes, I am. Unfortunately, I mean, it's full. There's no more place. I didn't know that. Yeah, and it's about founders and family business. You could definitely, as a founder or as a CEO, come to... As a family business member, just come to one of these workshops. That's what you were saying. What else could you do? You could work with a coach and look at what they do and learn. Yeah. Yeah.

• Speaker #0

  Work with you.

• Speaker #1

  Thank you, Joe.

• Speaker #0

  Here's a commercial break.

• Speaker #1

  That's a commercial break.

• Speaker #0

  Thomas, them and coach.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah.

• Speaker #0

  Unexpectedly available. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I suppose that's why I'm writing the book, because there are so many people, so many, many more people now becoming founders that I feel like a systemic perspective, i.e. how does life actually work? What does being human mean in an organizational setting that you founded yourself? What is it? what does it mean goodness knows there's enough need for it in the wider organizational field of you know corporates and large businesses that are not connected to at least explicitly to a founder or family business but my specialism increasingly these days is is that this particular sector because i've really only worked for founders and family businesses all my coaching clients now for the last 10 years at least. are founders, solopreneurs, founders and family businesses. And the more I work in it, the more complex I realise it is. And I have never got all the answers, but I have access to a methodology which will always answer the next question.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, yeah.

• Speaker #0

  And some, you know, it's underpinned. It's an applied philosophy, constellations. It's underpinned by some principles which we've touched lightly on today.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah. So what we're saying, John, today at the end of this episode is that this systemic approach is so important that you cannot outsource it in a way. You need to have it inside your company. You need to learn as a founder or as a CEO. You need to have this skill on board because, I mean, it's useful every day or it could be useful so often that, I mean, you can. You need to have it with you and it will help you solve a lot of situations and create the conditions for your company to be in good health. You know, respecting the principles that you talked about, time, place and exchange. Yeah. And the balance of exchange in your company. Yeah.

• Speaker #0

  Yes. I think that phrase creating the conditions for organizational health is a lovely way of summing it up. That's what my work. I feel is in service of how can we create, how can I support you as a founder or family business leader, create the conditions for the organization to flow and have coherence?

• Speaker #1

  Yeah.

• Speaker #0

  And that's a huge question. Yeah.

• Speaker #1

  So that your company can become more alive and yeah, and free to go and not stuck with things for your. from the past that are invisible but sometimes are there and are are slowing you down or sometimes even blocking you yeah to move forward yeah invisible ties of the strongest thread there's a famous quote uh Nietzsche quote that's so true yeah well Johnny it's been more than an hour now and thank you it's it's it's yeah I didn't see the time time going time flowing but uh It's time to end this conversation. And is there a question that I didn't ask and that is missing here? Or just trying to have you with me with one more minute, just trying.

• Speaker #0

  I think there are so many questions. You could say no. I think there are so many questions one could ask. And it's a process of just continuous questions for founders and family businesses. And that's where this work is so... so useful because it can take you out of your head and into the body of the work and the field of the system and yeah i mean it's there's a quote by um the former estee lauder is that how you say it's it's estee lauder oh it's still out there yeah yes the ceo of that company uh yeah leonard lander who retired many years ago he said there are two things that can destroy a family business the family or the business yeah i like that because it's sort of good you know with a light touch it says yeah there are dynamics in both the business and the family and my focus is on the origin story of both and i think if you're looking in that area you'll resolve most things in the present by resolving and integrating what's not resolved in the past thank you john from my heart

• Speaker #1

  thank you so much for you're welcome spending this time with me today it's it's great i'm sure that our listeners have had a great moment too thank you for joining this episode you who are still listening to us right now after an hour more than an hour it's been a it's been it has been a long episode but uh very interesting and uh i wish every one of you a wonderful journey with this systemic approach in your organizations. Thank you. Have a good day and talk to you soon. Bye-bye.