The foundation of a family business is not just the history of a specific family. While a family founder or founders may have brought together their shared efforts, their resources and their shared history and culture as a family to create something. That's not the source.
Family social capital is powerful, and that's part of what allows family business to employ 60% of the workforce in the United States and to get the advantage when it comes to return on investment, and profitability. But the essential character of family business comes from something deeper.
Family business is hardwired into humanity.
Up until the end of the Roman era, the only kind of business that existed was the family business. It was only then that business which didn't have it's roots in a family heritage emerged. And while the fisherman that Jesus called may have been part of a coalition of fishing businesses, they were all still local families keeping the nets repaired with long nights on the water.
Family business goes much farther back, when the only occupations on the planet were family and work. The two purposes were intertwined as our ultimate progenitors lived in a place we call "The Garden." Their purposes were to build a family and to cultivate the created beauty they have been given.
Family and work went together. Every family had work, and the only work that got completed was done by families.
In the beginning, there was purpose and people, fully connected.
The foundation of family business is found in the design of humanity. We were created in families. It's not only a biological reality, it is intentional. Humans were designed to function within families. If we want to understand the real nature of family business, we have to start with an understanding that this essential characteristic, the fact that we are born into, nurtured by, and organized in families, is part of how we were created.
Family business finds its origin in the image of God. He is the Father, creator, imaginer of humans. And we have families because it mirrors the relationship that we can have with a heavenly father.
That's not to say that every, or even most family businesses, reflect that original image. The culture, and human failings have eroded our understanding and our experience of family. Many come to business with a horrible family of origin experience. They cringe when they hear the term "family business."
Who would argue against the idea that we've royally messed up the family? But the next part isn't true - believing that it's not the foundation for culture any longer, or the basis of business. The fragmentation, distortion, even reaching to the de-gendering of humans distorts the image. But none of that erases it. That's because it wasn't our design to begin with. It's Gods. It's like any other foundational principle that we try to suspend, like hovering in a helicopter to defy gravity. In the end, the principle still holds.
That means for the 75% of businesses that started with family help, or the 25%+ of businesses that are family owned, whatever is distorted can be restored to beauty. And it means for those who want their business to reflect this core human reality, their economic family can be healthy and thriving, too.
Here is the promise:
Wherever the creator's presence is invited, one of the outcomes you can count on is the formation and restoration of family.
The organizing principle of family is found in a Heavenly Father, and so is its health. The founding principle of humans organized in families attached to meaningful work still holds. For those who have strained family relationships in their family business, "He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents."1 For those who find themselves without family, or in a lonely business landscape that is barren of any semblance of family love, you can know that "God places the lonely in families."2 If you've never experienced what a healthy family is like, ask Him, and He'll put you in one. If your family business is fragmented, rediscovering the source is the path to making it right.
1. Malachi 4:6 New International Version
2. Psalm 68:6 New Living Translation
