Читать книгу Myths and Mortals - Keyt Andrew - Страница 10

Successors can easily lose themselves when they are caught in the shadow of a dominating mythology. Family 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.