Your Business Isn’t a “Family”.

A successful business owner; a past recipient of an Entrepreneur of the Year Award who has built a multi-million-dollar business recently said:

“There is a lot of talk about how [our company] is a ‘family’. That’s just not true. We aren’t a family.”

He continued. “What we are is a team! We work together and fight for a common goal. Sometimes teams have to trade players, and at other times they have to me cuts for the betterment of the team as a whole.”

We live in an age of “company culture”, and that is a very good thing. Both employer and employee are deeply affected by culture and work environment. Welcome to The Experience Economy (Pine, 1998) was a seminal writing that identified that we had moved from a service economy to an experience economy. In the article, published in the Harvard Business Review, Pine notes “consumers unquestionably desire experiences, and more and more businesses are responding by explicitly designing and promoting them.” The vast majority of businesses can’t sell experiences with unengaged employees. After all, would this be an experience economy if only the consumer-side of business concerned itself with “experiences”? No. And we now know that overall employee experience vital. In fact it’s more important than ever, and company culture is a significant ingredient of the new employee experience.

But here’s the thing: in the scramble to have great “culture”, a common theme has arisen, and you hear it in company phrases like, “we are not just a business, we are a family” and “let’s welcome Bobbi to the CompanyCo family!” Now, I know this may be an unpopular opinion, but if you are doing this, please STOP IT. Your business isn’t a family. Even family-run businesses often find themselves at a proverbial fork-in-the-road of “are we going to operate like family, or like a company?”

Families are incredible and amazing, but they aren’t businesses, and your business isn’t a family.

I get it. It sounds like it should feel nice. But unless you grew up in a highly unstable home, there wasn’t likely any risk of being fired from the family for not getting your chores done for three consecutive quarters. I hope that when money got tight, your parents didn’t sit down to decided which child to “let go.” Families are incredible and amazing, but they aren’t businesses, and your business isn’t a family. What you will end up with is a counterfeit message that ultimate hurts culture.

That entrepreneur was spot on: businesses are teams. They share goals, support each other, lift up leadership and empower each other to win. While you always hope to avoid letting someone go, it is a necessary aspect of successful teams that every coach, manager, and business owner know all too well. Healthy teams can look like family in many ways: they build each other up, each member has a voice, and they should both be places of learning and growth. At their core, however, they are different. Fulfillment in a team starts with choice (choosing my team, and my team choosing me), then develops by caring about each others goals, and finally performs by acting to win. Fulfillment in family (hopefully) comes from acceptance, followed by real love, then action through supporting one another.

So, as you look at building or strengthening your business’ employee experience program, think about the team you want your employees to be a part of. Make them want to get out on that field, or on that stage, and to work together to perform. Let them see the rewards and opportunities that come with elevating the team.

Businesses are not “family”, but people can be.

An important final note: many of the people that I have worked with over the years are those that I now consider family. These relationships were often influenced by, or even were the result of, great company culture. Some of your workforce will become family if you are doing it right. The culture of a company can stifle these relationships, or empower people to be their best so that they develop. Culture attracts and retains amazing people, and great people build relationships! I believe it is from here that the confusion often derives: family-level relationships are often a result of great culture, not the theme of it.

“family-level relationships are often a result of great culture, not the theme of it.”

When a close coworker at Jive Communications passed away, she was family to many of us. Those of us that were privileged to know her flooded the chapel where her services were held. The CEO sat next to me in tears, only to stand up and offer comfort to others whom he knew and loved (some of those people were one’s that had even been “cut” in previous years). So, I have a Jive Family long after I have left, and I will have many more “CompanyCo” family members in my future. I hope I never stop developing deep and meaningful relationships with some of those that I work with.

So go on! Create powerful employee experiences for your people. Give them a place to grow and to win so that your customers can have amazing experiences. Just make sure to take the time and do it right.

Tyson works for Qualtrics in Provo, UT on the Employee Experience management platform. The opinions expressed are not necessarily representative of Qualtrics or its partners/affiliates. You can learn more about Qualtrics by going to https://www.qualtrics.com/employee-experience-test/