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A spider web of connections:
the role of women working in family businesses
Kamalamani, August 2009

I’m writing this sitting in the garden, enjoying a cup of tea in the late Friday afternoon sun. I can see two spider’s webs, stretching from the acer plant, all the way across to the drainpipe. I’ve also just accidentally walked through a third spider’s web, suspended across the garden seat (sorry spiders, interrupting your afternoon). Seeing these three webs strongly reminds me of an image I had several years ago. The image is that of a spider’s web, which puts me in mind of the family business, and, in particular, the role of women in family businesses; a net of interconnections, strong yet fragile. This image came to mind at a time when I was working full time with family businesses in a number of different roles: in a process consultancy role with businesses going through important transitions and changes, training professionals and advisors working with family business clients and working in my own family business. So let’s see if I can explain how this image came to mind and if it makes any sense to you.

Family businesses themselves can be very fragile ecosystems, echoing the fragility of the spider’s web. Why? Because they comprise of two specific systems: the system of the family and the system of the business. These are two very different systems, in terms of structure, objectives, values and needs. Sometimes these systems work alongside each other in harmony. More often than not, the two systems collide - at some point in the lifecycle of the family and business - with painful results. For example, business needs may take priority over family needs, which can end in strife. Relationships between family members can be neglected, sometimes culminating in divorce between the owner-manager and his husband/wife, or problems for the children of the family, lacking sufficient quality time and good enough parenting. Sometimes family needs take priority over business needs, for example, when a member of the family in a key role in the business becomes ill, and the focus on the business is lost, to its detriment.

Effectively balancing the needs of the family system and business system is a complex business in itself. The family business also interacts with other systems: the community in which it operates, the sector(s) in which it trades, membership organisations of which it is a part, and so on. And, of course, the family business is operating in the macro context of an increasingly complex and competitive global economic system, which, as we have recently seen, can have a huge effect upon individual businesses. 

So the successful owning and running of the family business and the healthy running of the business family is a tricky balance. This is where women in the family business come to mind from what I’ve seen happening in many situations. Very often, women have a key part to play in this ongoing balancing act. This requires the managing of multiple-roles, multi-tasking and on occasions, on-site conflict resolution. Women in the family business are in multiple roles, quite accustomed to wearing multiple hats in the course of the average working day (if such a thing exists!) They are often wife or partner to the Managing Director/Owner-manager, Company Secretary, employee, co-owner, sister or sister-in-law to other family members of their generation, Mum and/or Auntie to the next generation working in the business, Mum to the next generation at school, often being groomed to run the business, as well as having responsibilities in their particular functional area of the business. That’s a lot of hats to wear before you even reach your desk of a morning!

Fortunately, it is said that women are adept at multi-tasking, and this seems to be demonstrated in the case of many family businesses with which I have worked. Women tackle different tasks and jobs according to which hat they are wearing at any given time. Of course, it is true that both men and women occupy multiple roles in the family business and are required to multi-task. One of the key differences is that very often, the nature of the work of the women with whom I have worked in many family businesses tends to focus on the emotional, relational work involved in the smooth day to day running of both the family and the business (in addition to their actual functional role).

It is not uncommon to find women in the family business context in the interchangeable roles of peace-maker, mediator (for both family and non-family staff and at home with their own family), providing the main emotional support to the owner-manager, spending more time investing in building relationships with clients and suppliers, as well as often being involved in people management and the welfare of staff. This emotional, relational work also tends to happen ‘behind the scenes’. This might be at the beginning or end of the working day, over lunch with a valued staff member, or pillow talk late at night, over breakfast or during Sunday lunch with partner or spouse. Given that it is emotional and relational in nature, rather than tangible in a measurable, quantitative sense, this work tends to be given less formal recognition, for example, in terms of outward business success and performance, even though the maintenance of effective relationships is absolutely vital in the business and family systems.

This is where the spider’s web image starts to come into play in my mind. The controlling owner-manager sits at the centre of the web, prominent, visible, and ready for action. Very often, the owner-manager of the average family business in the UK still tends to be a man, supported by his partner and wider family and non-family employees, and a network of relationships with customers, suppliers and trusted advisors. Of course, there are exceptions to this male owner-manager stereotype, although many family businesses are still fairly traditional, particularly, it seems, the more successful and long-lived ones, which often build their success around the transmission of traditional, timeless values and business acumen developed over decades. In fact, in recent years, we have seen how some family businesses tactically and visibly use this sense of values and tradition as part of their marketing strategy.

So the spider at the centre of the web (the owner-manager) is supported by this beautifully, intricately woven web. The weaving of this web very often reminds me of the ‘behind the scenes’ (or even, invisible) relational work of women in the family business. The weaving involves keeping the lines of communication open and connected, managing multiple roles as seamlessly as possible, easing the tensions between family and non-family staff, and managing the inevitable interconnection between the functioning of the family and the functioning of the business.

Of course, this symbol doesn’t work for all the family businesses I’ve ever encountered. Sometimes the spider at the centre of the web is a dynamic woman, or mother and daughter team. Sometimes the disenfranchised wife of a workaholic owner-manager does anything but mediate and communicate harmoniously, as her frustrations (not surprisingly) spill out into the workplace. Sometimes the second-generation daughter of the founding owner-manager is way more focused upon making her mark in taking the business forward in a particular way, with a particular product/service, to expend much energy on relationship-building.

On the whole, in my experience in this arena, women have a vital role to play in terms of providing emotional support and emotional intelligence in the family business. Now I have some cautions and mixed feelings in saying this. The first reason for this is that I’m aware that I’m generalising hugely, and the role of women will vary, according to conditioning, age, cultural background etc. Secondly, I have reservations about women being somehow assigned this emotional role, given that there’s the danger that this means women in the family business may remain invisible in terms of not realising their whole work potential, subsumed by being the emotional barometer of the organisation. Thirdly, this acknowledgement may simply uphold traditional roles and values, for the sake of keeping the status quo in tact. In many situations, it would perhaps be growthful for the emotional and relational work to be more evenly spread.

We’re living in interesting times with regards to family business ownership, leadership and succession. An increasing number of women are taking over family businesses (changing the traditional father-son succession pattern to that of father-daughter, with a whole different set of implications), more and more family businesses are being succeeded by siblings or teams, rather than one controlling owner-manager. Given that an unprecedented number of women are starting up their own businesses, there will, presumably, be an increasing number of women owned and managed family businesses being handed onto the next generation. So it’ll be fascinating to see how these factors start to influence the culture and organisation of family businesses of the future.

So I’ll end by returning to the spider’s webs in my garden. All three of these webs remind me of different family businesses I have worked with. The first web was the one I accidentally walked through. Like so many small family businesses, this web was swept away be external forces: competition, market saturation, poor management, inadequate funding, unprofitability etc. This being ‘swept away’ is, sadly, a common phenomenon amongst small businesses generally, with approximately only one in three surviving the first three years of trading. The second web is lop-sided, with a great big whole in the middle. The business is hanging in there - just - but the connections are weak, perhaps between staff and customers and suppliers and the centre needing strengthening and re-structuring.  The third web looks like one of those archetypal spiders’s web, the sort a child might draw. It has well-proportioned angles and interconnecting threads. This is the well-functioning, sustainable family business at its best. It is balanced, well woven and strong, serving the needs of the family business, the business family and the employment needs of the local community.


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