Ep. 6: Outsiders Contributing to Family Businesses: a Cultural Perspective
Posted on: August 20th, 2020
There are as many good reasons to bring large company thinking to privately-held smaller businesses, as there are ways to make that work, or not work. Carlos had a long and impressive career with IBM and as CFO for Purina in Mexico, has written on social responsibility and management systems, and was both the insider hiring outsiders, and the outsider brought in to create change. In this podcast Carlos shares his experiences, and tips on how to work with outsiders as an insider, and with insiders as an outsider.
- 6:30 – technocrats vs. people managers/leaders… it’s important to mix social responsibilities with internal controls/routines, which requires both soft skills and hard skills…
- 7:40 – you cannot have “policemen behind each employee, you need to have a culture in your business to protect the ethics and the good practices”
- 14:29 – each initiative needs to have a champion; we discussed two perspectives on whether an insider must be the champion, or an outsider can be designated as champion by an insider, and how that affects knowledge transfer
- 17:10 – insiders can use outsiders to get a project completed, because the outsider provided “cover” and acted as the messenger for organizationally unpopular change, or because the outsider brought a skill set that was lacking
- 22:43 – if you had a magic wand to implement change, what would you ask for? Carlos answered it’s all about understanding responsibility, in 4 areas:
- To act according to your own and company’s VALUES
- To be responsible for the CONSEQUENCES of your actions or inactions
- To act in HARMONY, congruent with values (“walk the walk, talk the talk”)
- To DELIVER, fulfill the mission, get it done
- 26:09 – Utilize outsiders to be the messenger for what is difficult to sell internally
- 27:40 – hire outsiders to help in your weak areas
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