I was recently honored to speak with a group of women entrepreneurs who were visiting the United States with the International Visitor Leadership Program. This particular group was from the Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA). Of the 12 women, about half spoke English and the rest had the benefit of an Arabic translator.

In the short 90 minutes I was with them, it was amazing the connections we were able to make. From cultures that are light-years away from each other, we found common ground in growing our businesses and, for many of them, trying to raise a family at the same time.

An interesting business question came up that I thought was worth sharing: what should you do when you’re working your way into a business that has been in your family for years? I believe the advice we discussed is applicable to anyone stepping in to take over any business, whether a family business or not:

1. Watch and listen. Before you go in and make any sweeping changes, take a couple months to really learn about what is going on in the business. Attend meetings and say nothing. Walk the halls and listen to the conversations that are going on around you. Tune your antenna in to anything and everything that is going on in the company and take special note of talk around the water cooler.
2. Make a list of what is working. From your observations, determine what is good about the company. Even if the company is in trouble, there is generally some good in there. Rarely would a company still be in business if there wasn’t some reason they were still bringing in money and servicing customers. Be careful not to throw the good out with the bad.
3. Change what isn’t working. Some people subscribe to the idea that making fast, swooping changes takes advantage of the shock affect and is better in the long run. From what I have seen, unless you’re bringing in all new people, this approach can have a negative effect on morale and, as a result, the company. Unless there are problems that are draining the company of cash or customers, it is better to take a gradual approach and work to get the buy-in of existing staff members.

As Jan B. King described when I interviewed her about her experiences taking over Merritt Publishing for The ParentPreneur Edge, taking over someone else’s business is like adopting an older child. There are some habits and attitudes that may be hard to extract, but by taking a gradual and thoughtful approach to it, successful change can be obtained over time.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 8th, 2007 at 5:40 am and is filed under Business Growth, Entrepreneurship, business success secrets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.