businesses (and the myths surrounding them) encourage enmeshment, the belief that everyone should think in one way. This stifles the individual's sense of autonomy and sense of personal boundaries. The process of finding one's self starts when the successor can begin to separate and push against the predecessor. Bill Wrigley Jr. started that separation when he realized, “I am not my father. I don't have to lead like him.”
Separating is the process of differentiation, which is the cornerstone of a family business legacy's foundation, and a theme I will come back to repeatedly in this book. Differentiation is the ongoing work of developing a strong sense of self, and harnessing that strength for the growth of the family legacy. Everyone is faced with the task of differentiation, of growing up to become their own person. However, it's especially challenging for successors who bring family legends to work with them every day. The more dominant the mythology and the more powerful the personality that fuels it, the harder it becomes for a successor to downsize the hero and make him human, and to break free of the shadow.
Differentiation is a successor's inner work, and it is a lifetime process. My research shows that successful successors become generative leaders by developing a practice of pursuing differentiation and establishing a strong sense of self. Bill Wrigley pushed the William Wrigley Jr. Company to reinvent itself when he found the strength to push away from his father and lean into his own convictions. At that point, he realized he could do things differently from his father. Bill Wrigley released himself from his father's shadow so that he could focus his energies and his emotion on doing what he needed to do to sustain the family legacy. He moved from emotional inertia to action.
It Takes a Personal Vision
The work of differentiation leads to inner illumination, as the successor, no longer eclipsed by the shadow of a legendary founder, begins to find out who she is and what she wants. The inner light of knowing one's self shines outward and becomes the source for developing a personal vision.
To know one's self is to recognize the humanity of those leaders who led before, as well as the humanity of those within the family and the business. Generative successors perpetuate the family legacy as they understand that their legendary predecessors were mortals with a heroic stripe. Given their flaws, the heroism of founders and their predecessors is all the more remarkable.
Bill Wrigley reflected this understanding when he introduced the motto, “Respect the past, but always do what's right for the future.” This was born out of his recognition that while many of the traits of his father's leadership were core to its success, they may not serve the company well moving forward. His father's drive and authority were why the company grew during an era following the great world wars.
But to lead the company into a rapidly changing global environment, Bill realized he would have to reengineer the organization, and “do what's right for the future.” This is where values meet vision, and successors must craft their own personal vision for the future to carry family values forward, rather than merely emulating what their parents did.
Defining one's success, independent from the way parents, family, and the community define it, is critical in differentiated leadership. What distinguishes successful successors in family businesses is their ability to respect and understand the past, while charting their own path, even in the face of resistance. The strength for defining one's own success comes from the hard work of separation, stepping out of the shadows of the myth: “I am not who my parents or anyone else want me to be.” The leader's vision is formed both by traits shared with his or her parents and traits foreign to them. Leaders who embrace both establish a unique identity. They achieve personal authenticity and political credibility, foundational to establishing a vision of success.
A personal vision is the door that swings between internal and external credibility.
Later in this book we will examine how successors establish confidence in themselves and credibility with others. My research will show that family business leaders who succeed differentiate by building self-awareness, building a belief in themselves, and building the belief in others that they can be credible and generative leaders. This process leads successors to develop a rudder of conviction based on a clear sense of passion and values. Vision then leverages this inner work and turns it outward to the world. Successors have paid their dues; vision pays it forward. Vision is more than how one sees the world. It is also how the world sees a person as he projects himself to the world.
True vision is the extension of one's true self, how leaders serve their core convictions, so others know what matters to them.
Strong leaders can pursue those convictions in the most unlikely of circumstances. Christie Hefner wanted to work on Capitol Hill, but she altered her career trajectory to work at Playboy Enterprises. As different as she was from her father, Hugh Hefner, Christie was able to lead Playboy alongside him. He was its personae, and she was its voice. “I wasn't interested in being a personality, or, God forbid, a celebrity,” Christie says. “I had to chart my own course. As different as my father and I are, he is authentic and true to himself, and I needed to be authentic and true to myself.” The hard work of establishing internal credibility converges into a personal vision of success that makes the business more successful in achieving its mission.
Moving the Past into the Future
If a successor fails to differentiate, the family business most often fails to move its legacy forward. A differentiated leader is able to cast a vision that others can rally around simply because it is a vision that she can take charge of. Guided by her own rudder of conviction as well as her unique talents, interests, and experiences, she casts a unique vision for the time in which she is called to lead. A compelling vision, including shared values, is a motivational force. Values make people stay; a vision gets them going; and the meaning generated motivates people to pursue a larger purpose. It ignites a community and changes its culture. This is what Bill Wrigley did at his family retreat in Lake Geneva with his global leadership team, shortly after his father's passing in 1999. Bill aspired to create a new culture that encouraged the behavior he was looking for from his leadership team and, by extension, all the employees of Wrigley. In doing so, he worked with his team to set the company on a new growth trajectory.
This became apparent the night he gathered 60 leaders from around the world to a company pow-wow. Every element of the meeting was a departure from the past. “We had everyone exercising at 7 a.m., “he says,” and eating foods they had never seen on a plate. We had a session on listening, another on developing healthy company gossip, and at the end of every evening – and keep in mind this was 10 o'clock at night – we passed around a talking stick and participants reflected on the day.” One of the outcomes was a clearer recognition of how each member of the leadership was responding to the change. A player was fully engaged and exploding with energy, a passenger was curious but reluctant. The challenge was to turn the passenger into a player. The prisoners were the leaders who sat with their hands folded across their chests. These were “not the kind of people we wanted for the company we were building,” says Bill Jr.
For the crowning moment of the Lake Geneva leadership summit, he took an old concept and gave it a new meaning. “I wanted to build a microcosm of how this company should work worldwide, and I wanted to do it without flying around the world, as my father had.”
Bill told all 60 leaders to break out by their geographical regions and to discuss fresh ideas for the company. Earlier in the week, the entire group had compiled a list of things that were wrong with the company. “Wipe the slate clean of all that excess baggage,” Bill said, “and take your ideas and go pollinate other groups with them.”
In a simple exercise, Bill had democratized the pollination process.
What his dad had done solo, the corporate leadership was doing as a team. The hierarchy of command-and-control had become a hive of cooperation and cross-pollination.
