The "New Normal" in Family Businesses, Part 5: Drive and Spirit
Last part of the series of articles on the topic of "New Normal" in family businesses: The authors show how the drive and spirit shown during the crisis can be preserved for the future.
How is the Corona pandemic changing our corporate and working world? In a "backward forecast", we look for initial answers. Here is Part 5 on the topic: Credible family businesses are sustainably crisis-resistant.
Through the crisis with drive and spirit
We were thrilled to see how agile and courageous the rather down-to-earth family-owned company Trigema from Burladingen in Germany, led by patriarch Wolfgang Grupp, switched its textile production from T-shirts to face masks in a very short time in March 2020. How Jägermeister donated alcohol for the production of disinfectant. Hansgrohe sent entire shower trucks to help the homeless in urban centers. And how D'Addario, a family-owned New York company, turned the clear film of its EVANS drumheads into medical face masks for drummers - and, in just a few days, used its original strengths to build an entirely new medical-necessities business alongside its music-accessories business.
I wonder how much profit the Grupp family, as the owner of Trigema, could make in the meantime from the new face mask business. I think it will be considerable - especially because the business with masks is still growing strongly. Today, in the summer of 2022, face masks are hip fashion accessories and it's hard to imagine everyday street life without them. We have all become accustomed to them. They come in a wide variety of colors, patterns and shapes. Many - especially young people - use them to express their personality.
The good name in mind
Under the pressure of the Corona crisis, we, like many other family-owned companies, took on significantly more social responsibility and displayed unimagined improvisational skills. And in retrospect, we did very well with that!
We do not want to lose this entrepreneurial drive and spirit, which is focused on the here and now but is designed for sustainability. We want to maintain it in our employees, managers and committee work in the long term. If possible, we even want to expand it, for example by preparing our Corona activities internally as "role models" and transferring them to other areas of activity in our company.
Against this backdrop, we rubbed our eyes in amazement at how clumsily and insensitively to the public mood the major corporation Adidas tried to avoid paying rent in April 2020 - and received an incredible "shitstorm" for it. And how, despite this cautionary example, other companies repeatedly attracted negative attention as "crisis winners" in the further course of the year and properly tarnished their reputations. It's unbelievable how quickly you can weaken your good reputation by making the wrong decisions. And how massively this then also affects the figures in the business.
For us, it was already clear at the beginning of the Corona crisis: If the sensitivity and attention of the public increases, we have to keep a wary eye on our brand - understood as our "positive prejudice" in the market. In times of crisis, any entrepreneurial decision can quickly spiral into a "brand jam" and shatter a sensitive part of the trust capital that we regard as essential and decisive for the future viability of our family business.
Investing the business model sustainably
Fortunately, we were able to credibly demonstrate through energetic action that social responsibility for the community is important to us as a family business.
It certainly also helped that we had always designed our business model to be clean, transparent and sustainable. Based on values we live by. And focused on honestly creating substantial added value for our customers, our employees, the environment and us as owners. There are no systematic irregularities in our company that we would have to fear might one day be dragged into the light of day. We are protected in the best possible way against a sudden "image meltdown" caused by the crisis - as happened to the German meat producer Tönnies from Gütersloh in June 2020.
The fact that we are now benefiting considerably as an employer brand precisely because of our conservative and sustainability-oriented management culture and have been able to hire promising new employees with a progressive mindset in recent months was neither foreseeable nor intended. However, it is a nice side effect that encourages us to remain true to our values in the future and to consistently continue on our path.
Authors:
Christian Schiede has been advising and assisting entrepreneurial families and family businesses to strengthen cohesion, increase competitiveness and secure value since 2003. Contact: www.schiede.com; schiede@shpadvisors.com
Bastian Schneider has been helping entrepreneurs and management teams strengthen their brands from within and lead their organizations and businesses into the future from this perspective since 2000. In more than 30 industries. In Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Contact: www.brandleadership.ch; bastian.schneider@brandleadership.ch
