Team work in family governance
THE family home is most certainly the haven where governance values — from the personal and institutional to the social — get to be practised and observed, and in the case of the children where they are first learned. It is in this light that the truism about the family being the basic social unit takes on special force: for it is easy to see that a well-governed family becomes an important constitutive building block of a well-governed community.
The family may be made up of only a few members; but it certainly is a community, and it deserves a special place in community-building. It truly is a building block, a basic governance unit of the community.
But precisely because of its relatively small size, another way of looking at the family is to regard it as a team: small, cohesive, united, and a haven for an effective division of labor. Thus, it may also be said — and this is important from the standpoint of enterprise governance — that the family serves as a convenient laboratory where team work can be practised and observed, and where it can be honed up to perfection. The key elements of a good governance of a family working as a team include:
• Family visioning. This starts with a choice of family core values and an identification of the ‘mission” that the family must carry out in the wider community. It articulates a shared dream or shared value that the family aims to realize or attain within a reasonably long period of time (say 6 or ten years).
• Family house rules and road map. These are basic guidelines for behaviour for all members of the family to observe. They also set out a few strategic themes and objectives that the family must pursue so as to realize the family vision.
• Inevitably, personal scorecards for each member of the family. These are the targets of accomplishment, taking into account key facets that the family considers most important. Scorecards demand regular assessment and several practices by which to assist each member to get an “all-green” report in the color-coded family report card.
These elements mirror those of any working team in an enterprise. Thus, these two concluding observations regarding family governance, which are:
• The family home can be a most effective learning center where individuals can train themselves to become great team players. The good practices of family governance train individuals to observe those same practices when they come to work as members of the team. The adage does hold: great members of the family are also great members of any working team.
• Enterprises with a governance and transformation program to sustain and strengthen would do very well in undertaking a family outreach program. This should be designed to provide assistance to individuals who work within them to hone themselves up with their personal scorecards and personal governance practices. They also get practical training on how to become much better team players. Inevitably, the general principle becomes even more true: you get as much (if not more) as what you give. Those enterprises that support family governance get back so much more benefit by the much better team spirit individuals bring back to the enterprises from their practise of family governance.
Support for family governance is deservedly a basic component of a governance and transformation sustainability and strengthening program. It steeps individuals who work in enterprises in the observance of solidarity and team work. It thus helps teams become the ultimate performance delivery units of the enterprise.