INDIAN FAMILY BUSINESS MANTRAS
Peter Leach and Tatwamasi Dixit
Rupa Publications
280 pages; Rs 595
The authors of Indian Family Business Mantras have impeccable credentials - Peter Leach is a well-known family business expert and a partner at Deloitte UK, and Tatwamasi Dixit is a Vedic scholar and one of India's foremost family business advisors. Management guru Ram Charan raises hopes further by writing on the cover of the book that it takes you "behind closed doors of what actually happens in family businesses."
The 280 pages that follow do open the door, but scarcely offer readers a glimpse of what's happening inside. No one was expecting a "how-to" book for family businesses. Indeed, one agrees with the authors that there can be no such thing because each family business is different, and there are really no standard rules that can be applied across firms.
Where the book disappoints is in its liberal use of banal homilies. For instance, it provides a case study of a well-known business group and then concludes that the group has survived because of "real-life family values" such as care and respect for each family member, candour and transparency, fairness and mutual trust, and so on. Did we need to read this book to know all this?
Or, who would care to know that the "key benefits of harmony" are that it promotes calm and creativity, encourages togetherness and stops unhealthy competition? This is almost like reading a be-a-good-soul kind of sermon, which takes pains to tell you that families that live harmoniously pray together, stay together and eat together.
The book also gives pride of place to anecdotes from Indian epics, scriptures and history, ostensibly to draw parallels with modern-day family business issues. This should have been a novelty, but it isn't because the relevance of most of them is hard to understand. For example, in the chapter "The home-work balance: Striving for harmony" there is a long tale from the Ramayana of how Rama's family members unanimously respected their father, and all his brothers looked up to Rama as the eldest son. It goes on to say how Lakshmana stood by his brother in his exile, and so on. It also talks about how Ravana was respected by his siblings but he never paid heed to their suggestions.
Good story, but the "so what" part is missing and it is not clear what the authors are suggesting - is it that a family enterprise can survive only if everybody looks up to the family patriarch who should choose the elder son as the natural heir, who in turn should take everybody along? No answer has been provided, but it sounds like too simplistic a solution to a complex problem. Family businesses have seen some of the most bitter splits that have cracked Indian industry apart over the past several decades, many of which have seen son against father, mother against daughter, brother against brother and nephew against uncle.
The book refers to the problems and a few recent business spats, but one would have expected more insight. For example, in the chapter on succession planning, interesting issues are raised but the authors seem to be unwilling to ruffle any feathers, so they hurry into the comfort of boring generalisations such as, start planning early on retirement, involve family and colleagues, make retirement timely and unequivocal and other such maxims.
It is obvious that very few family businesses would be interested in such sermons to tackle complex situations. For example, in a recent survey, when chief executive officers of such businesses were asked when they plan to retire or turn over the leadership of their companies, an astonishing 52.2 per cent said they planned to work in their current position till death. In the US, the corresponding figure was 15 per cent.
On professionalising family businesses, the authors recommend: "The decision to professionalise should be clearly explained to everyone in the organisation. It should not be enforced or implemented in a top-down fashion - rather it should gradually become part of the work culture of the organisation." Are readers any wiser?
Some parts of the book are interesting, especially the sections on father-son conflict (so common in Indian family businesses) - how fathers still think the son is ungrateful and treacherous and the latter often sees himself as the victim of emotional blackmail by his father. Also, as the authors say, in India, next-gen family members are often expected to join the family business and commit their working lives to it regardless of their aptitude, talent or inclination.
Some of the real-life examples do offer interesting insights into how business families manage themselves effectively, dealing with conflicts and challenges as a family and the strategic value of staying together as its member. Unfortunately, these insights are few and far between.
The biggest failing of the book is that it does not provide any overarching framework for building a sustainable theme on managing family businesses. This is a pity, considering that even today such businesses contribute 60-70 per cent of the country's gross domestic product and 40-50 per cent of employment. A book on their distinctive strengths and inbuilt seeds of destruction (at least in some cases) should have been a far more interesting read.
The reviewer is author of Business Battles: Family Feuds that Changed Indian Industry (Bloomsbury/BS Books, 2014)
