I had the pleasure recently to participate in a panel discussion of owners of family businesses. The family business conference was attended by roughly 150 interested individuals. Based on that level of interest, thought I would share my answers to some of the questions the panel addressed. One such question was: What motivated my family members to plan for leadership succession?

My grandfather started the business and when he recruited two of my uncles and my father to come back into the business, it was solely workforce development. My uncles and father all had engineering degrees and since the company was young, it desperately needed this talent and skill set. For the most part, they were not given a choice, but an instruction that they were to return to the family business and help it succeed. Also, being such a small group at the time, did not require much in the way of formal planning, just their internal positioning, which fell to the basis of being most senior in age, to determine organizational rank.

In my generation, no formal planning was conducted until I showed both interest and aptitude. Even then the planning was informal. However, I do feel very fortunate the way I grew up in the business. During summers of high school and several during college, I worked in maintenance, production and doing whatever needed done. Then during my last summer of college, I was assigned to troubleshoot a specific process. Once I proved successful, I was recruited to return and add value to the organization. Ultimately, it was my choice to work for the family firm. I literally worked my way from the back of the plant to the front and started at the beginning of the production process. My first promotion was to increase my engineering responsibility from just one area of manufacturing to the entire manufacturing floor, which allowed me to interact and improve some portion of every functional aspect of the business, including support groups. This was extremely beneficial, because having worked throughout the business, I understood thoroughly how it worked and was able to build my own credibility. I knew lots of individuals by first name and they new me. Consequently, my cousin entered the business as part of the accounting group and was isolated both in his interactions with employees and exposure to operations. He had to work much harder and longer to build his credibility simply because people did not know him, nor did they see his accomplishments. In the end, most of the formal planning was my own. Based on my own ambitions and goals, I set forth personal growth objectives and challenged my father and uncle to allow me the opportunity to lead. It was in conjunction with my persistent requests and their guidance that we made the transition from the second generation of leadership to the third.