My daughter has a morning routine she loves. Chelsea, my wife, puts out a blank canvas on a small table for our kids every evening to prepare for the next morning to direct all the wonderful energy of our kids. My daughter races to the little art table. She loves art. She gets to work every morning with the courage to face the blank canvas and shares what’s in her heart and in her mind. In family…
I was sharing with a group of family business CEOs recently how we Think In Centuries at Century. We all agreed on something: family business is a gift wrapped in suffering. We had some chuckles. The kind you laugh at because it's true. It's a gift when we remember the game we get to play, and that we get to choose what to optimize for. We don't have to play the game our competitors play. We're…
This is the room that needs no introduction. This is the room where the action happens. Operations is the field of play. It's where the magic happens, and where nearly all the attention in business resides. Most business books are written about this room in some fashion. A couple of my favorite authors: Gino Wickman, Jim Collins, Michael Gerber who write for the operations room. The world is…
The summer before my sophomore year of college, my mom took me to JC Penney to buy my first big-boy suit. She found a screaming deal. Buy one, get one free. I picked the charcoal silver for my first board meeting. I was invited by my grandfather to sit in the corner and listen. A silent visitor. I remember the suit. I don't remember a single word that was said at the meeting. That was late May.…
The owner room is a difficult room to talk about. It's difficult because without a strong foundation of character, this room will crumble. I've seen two common themes from highly functioning legacy families over the past decade: Family members are equipped, empowered, and educated as shareholders (the family room prepared them for the owner room). The operations receive appropriate capital support…
“I’m a maker, Dada.” My three year old proceeds to dip a dirty cup into a dirty bucket of water on the driveway for me to drink. I pretend to drink it. At the end of the day, I think we want our children to be makers. To be creators. To leave things a little bit better. Produce more than consume. When we zoom out on life, I don’t think we’re going to care about the acquisition, the revenue growth,…
“Stop jumping on the sofa!” “No eating in the living room!” “Do not draw on the walls!” I keep trying to remind myself of one thing. Assume everything in our home is already broken. (we’re in the toddler years right now…) I keep trying to think: the couches are already stained with food. The walls already have marker on them. With young kids, keeping the house in order is a losing fight, and I've…
A couple of weeks ago I sat down to lunch and realized my favorite college basketball player of all time was sitting next to me. Jay Williams. Duke. Coach K's point guard. After lunch he shared his thoughts on leadership right here. Of all the gems Jay shared, one stuck. It wasn't about a game. It was about his father. Before Jay ever played a game at Duke, he sat in an empty Cameron Indoor…
My wife couldn’t resist. I’m so glad she didn’t wait. My daughter dictated her very first story, word by word, so it could be written down and saved and handed to me wrapped on Sunday. Then my wife saw me after the kids were asleep and the dishes were put away and caved. “You have to see this.” I am the biased father that got a sneak peak and I am struck by not just the cuteness but the lesson…
I recently had one of Century’s leadership teams give me an “SSC.” (Start, Stop, Continue) (It’s a great exercise to hopefully make everyone feel safe enough to bring up real issues and provide direct feedback to get better. Real feedback is a gift.) One of the findings that came out to me is that I like being comfortable. If I'm being honest, my favorite meetings are the ones where I'm…
I had lunch last week with the CEO of a great bank. Mid-conversation, between bites, he said something that has not left me: "If it grows like a weed, it probably is a weed." Wall Street worships growth. The narrative bleeds onto Main Street. The faster, the better. Unicorns are the gold standard. But Main Street has a different option. Durability. We don't need supersonic speed. Nature suggests…
My grandfather, “G-Dad,” wrote me a letter when I turned 16. A gentle invitation to spend the summer working in the family business. My response: Hard pass. I loved hoops. Nothing else. The summer was all about basketball. There was no follow-up. No second letter. No nudge from my parents on his behalf. G-Dad let time pass. He knew that pushing would have ended it before it began. Years later,…
I was driving the other day with David Senra in my ear when he asked Marc Andreessen, one of the most successful venture capitalists alive, about his relationship with introspection. Andreessen's answer stopped me at a red light. "Yes. Zero. As little as possible." Zero introspection. If you and I ran our family businesses that way, we'd break them in months. Maybe weeks. Timeless Truth: Complex…
It was a scary night. Rain that didn't stop. (Literally flooded the basement.) Thunder that rattled the windows. Lightning every few seconds. Wind that bent the trees sideways. The next morning, I opened my daughter's blinds. She walked to the window and froze. Then she turned back to me, eyes wide. "Oh no." "Why did God knock down the tree?" The big one across the road. Gone. A classic Dad…
Sunday afternoon in my daughter’s room. She is three kneeling in front of a DUPLO tower almost as tall as her. Wobbling, eyes locked, and building something as tall as her. She was building this tower over and over full of laughter and squeals of joy. If I had handed her LEGOs this Sunday afternoon she would have been full of frustration and tears. Not because she isn’t capable. Because the pieces…
I was across the table from someone I’d trusted as an advisor. I’d come with a real question about the business. His answer was the kind of thing that makes you smile, nod, and then sit in your car for ten minutes afterward wondering if you heard him right. The gist of it: optimize the family’s take. I was kind of shocked that the advisor was so off the mark. But then I realized a family business…
I've always wondered: How did Hitler rise to power? There's a lesson for us in family business in this horrendous rise — one that did not represent the spirit of the German people. After WWI, Germany was struggling. Long breadlines. Exploding unemployment. The Allied powers imposed crushing economic sanctions and installed an unfamiliar democratic government — the Weimar Republic — via the Treaty…
You probably don’t know this origin story. (I sure didn’t.) But you absolutely know the horror it becomes. The story of a little boy with so much hurt: A boy born in 1889 to a large Austrian family. His father beats him constantly, his teachers berate him, his mother, the only person who seems to care for him, dies when he is eighteen. He becomes sullen, withdrawn. He drifts... Over time, he…
I had it wrong. For years, I've kept a poem in my notes attributed to the wrong man. Turns out, so has most of the world. William Henry Channing wrote it — Chaplain of Congress, friend of Thoreau. He died in 1884. Never corrected the record. Because the Channing family made it nearly impossible to trace. Three prominent Williams. One uncle. One nephew. One cousin. One poem bouncing between them…
God didn't hand the crown to King David. God handed David Goliath. That's it. That's the whole story of real leadership. The crown was never the point. Goliath was. The dips, the sleepless nights, the moments you wondered if you had what it takes. Batman didn't become Batman without the Joker. And you won't become who your family business needs without the cost that come from the journey you and I…