Running a family business without the relevant skills

“At times when inheriting a business one is faced with the challenge of dealing with the existing customers who always want to have their say on how things were done in the past. Therefore, a business person has to carefully devise a way of handling such customers without necessarily having to compromise the business ethics,” says Mr Mwenda.

An inherited business comes along with existing employees who in most cases the new owner never had the chance to interact with before he/she undertook management of the venture.

In other cases he/she may have worked with such employees in the same company as colleagues and not necessarily their boss.

“Sometimes I had a situation where some of our employees had been in the company long before I joined and I was suddenly thrust into the ownership of the business hence became a challenge to change the working relationship from being a colleague to a boss but fortunately they were very supportive,” says Mr Amin.

Therefore when inheriting a family business one needs to study the past vision of the venture in comparison to his/her vision in a bid to establish the ideal expectations from his/her administration of the business.

This forms the basis upon which one can work out a strategy to meet the expected level of performance; which for most business people is a challenge striking a balance between their own pace in management and comparison with the former management.

Challenges in inherited business may also arise from within the family where clear guidelines as to who does what in the business are not put in place.

These include the values in a particular businesses that would define if the in-laws and extended families are part of those inheriting the property.

The challenge is striking a clean list of those to inherit the family business at the same time maintain the support of the other family members who are left out of the business.