Family matters

Myles Hougen believes he’s got a future in business. But he’s still deciding whether that will involve joining the family enterprise his grandfather founded in the Yukon in the 1944, or starting a new venture all his own. “I’m talking it over with my family and weighing my options,” says Mr. Hougen, 19, a management student at Dalhousie.

While communicating openly about the business and their future intentions comes easy to the Hougens, who own and operate a variety of businesses in retail, auto sales and real estate, many families continue to struggle with the sometimes volatile dynamics of family business. And that’s something Dalhousie’s new Centre for Family Business and Regional Prosperity will address.

“Family businesses are often very private affairs,” says the centre’s Executive Director Elaine Sibson. “The challenge is that they can be affected by all kinds of powerful dynamics – sibling rivalry, interpersonal relationships and an unwillingness of the founder to let go.”

Most family business founders want to hand the reins to a family member when they retire, says Ms. Sibson. But it’s not easy – she estimates that only about 30 per cent of family businesses survive to the next generation.

BMO Financial Group support

But the successful succession of family businesses – which by some accounts comprise as much as 80 per cent of all business enterprises in North America – is critical not only to the families themselves, but to the future prosperity of the region, says Professor Larry Smith of Dalhousie’s School of Business Administration. “Family businesses are dominant in Atlantic Canada and employ a lot of people,” he points out, referring to well-known business families such as the Irvings, Olands, Braggs and O’Regans.

The link between the success of family-owned enterprise and regional prosperity is behind a $1.5 million donation from BMO Financial Group to Dalhousie’s Faculty of Management to support the centre. “The benefits of the training programs and resources for family business will be fantastic and can only contribute to the economic strength of the region,” Steve Murphy, BMO’s senior vice-president for the Atlantic Provinces, told The Chronicle Herald earlier this year.

While family businesses will benefit from the programs and services offered, they also played a crucial role in shaping the centre, which was established with funding from the Business Families Foundation. The foundation is a philanthropic arm of the de Gaspé Beaubien family of Montreal, who founded Telemedia Inc. To date, five such institutions have been established – at the University of British Columbia, the University of Alberta, the University of Western Ontario, McGill and most recently, Dalhousie.

Taking active roles

“The family invested a lot in finding the best advice they could on how to deal with family business issues,” says Ms. Sibson. “They wanted to make that information and training more widely available to family businesses and the professionals that serve them.”

People who work with family businesses say there’s a growing need for better information and support. Roughly half the students enrolled in Prof. Smith’s family business course – including Myles Hougen – are there because they are actively considering entering the family business, he says. In fact, Prof. Smith points out that unlike their reticent forbears, today’s successors are taking a more proactive role in the succession plans of their family enterprises. “The students benefit from sharing experiences and addressing challenges that are common to many family businesses.”

Scott Flemming, vice-chair of the centre and co-owner of Ocean Contractors Ltd., a Dartmouth-based construction firm his father started in 1974, says many successors are hungry to learn more about family businesses and also to share their experiences with peers.

“It would have been extremely beneficial to have taken courses specifically in family business when I was in university,” says Mr. Flemming, who joined his brother and father at the family firm in 2004, after stints as a project manager at the UN in Switzerland and a large construction firm in Vancouver.

The centre will provide a safe place for family business people to share their experiences, learn best practices and access outreach education opportunities in such areas as financial and success planning and facilitation.

“We want to be a centre of excellence for family business, and give back to the community by addressing some of the most pressing needs of family businesses,” says Ms. Sibson.

One of those needs is enhanced training for professionals who work with business families, says Allan Shaw, chair of the Shaw Group, and a director of the centre. “We’ve all heard the stories of families that go from rags to riches to rags in three generations,” says Mr. Shaw. “Accountants, lawyers, investment people and bankers can provide business families with a lot of support and advice, and we want to help them do that.”

The centre’s staff will also focus on gathering solid data specifically related to family business in Atlantic Canada. “A lot of the statistics we have are U.S.-based and not necessarily applicable to our market,” says Ian Wilson, president of Wilson Fuels, an eighth-generation family-run firm and the centre’s chair. “We want to gather research about family businesses in our region so that we can support them to succeed.”

To date, the centre has hosted a number of family business dinners in which leading business families, including the de Gaspé  Beaubiens, one of the oldest merchant families in Quebec, discuss challenges and share best practices. Already, the sage advice from these family dynasties is spreading. For instance, when discussing the value of working outside the family enterprise, Mr. Flemming references a policy the Oland family shared during a recent dinner hosted by the centre, which states family members must have three years “outside” experience before coming to work for the family business.

“It’s so important to be in a position to bring ideas back into the family business,” says Mr. Flemming. “That’s how the business will continue to grow and compete.”