How Sustainability Fuels Successful Family Businesses
“Today’s complex world needs sustainable innovation. Traditional innovation approaches are not sustainable because they are not holistic. They are cosmetical, theatrical and cozy”.— Hubert Rampersad
“Sustainability is a holistic and ethical system in which humans and nature can exist in harmony for a very long period of time. It starts with you.”– Hubert Rampersad
“The higher your personal integrity, the better your attentiveness, the better your empathic skills, the better person you are”- Hubert Rampersad
“Empathy is just what is needed to make the world a better place for all animals and humans. Personal integrity is the foundation of empathy, in which there is no room for ego”. — Hubert Rampersad
“There is such a need for a complete rebirth of trust in our leaders. Somewhere along the line they lost their authenticity, humility, and integrity, and in doing so they have lost their empathy and inner alignment“– Hubert Rampersad
Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D.
ESG and SDGs are two complementary frameworks. The Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) framework was originated in the 70s, while the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) framework was established by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015, and focused on 17 critical areas to address economic, social, and environmental challenges by 2030. By the way: “The most important SDG #18 is missing in SDGs, which is GOOD PEOPLE. We need to address the real roots of climate change, not just the symptoms. People’s personal integrity needs to be tackled, which is awareness about their behavior and actions on human beings, animals, and plants. This is the foundation of empathy. Climate change actions need good people. The world is full of bad people, which is probably the reason why so few engage in climate change”. — Hubert Rampersad
Both frameworks operate under the same principle; Pursuing sustainability. SDG and ESG lead to Purpose, which is making a positive impact on the world. Purpose is currently a hype and buzzword, and not sustainable. It’s a concept I discussed holistically in my new book “Eco-Design Thinking for Personal, Corporate and Social Innovation“. Organizational purpose tells you what the
organization stands for and to what extent it makes a sustainable positive contribution to the organization, employees, society, and the environment. Organizational purpose starts with the personal purpose of its employees. In my personal disruptive innovation model, I described in detail how to find your purpose in life and how to live a meaningful, better, happier, and healthier life, in business and private life. In this book, I also introduced a methodology for aligning
organizational purpose with personal purpose for the sake of sustainable employee engagement; by connecting their values and identity with that of the organization, read “Reimagining HR“. This Figure shows how SDG, ESG and Purpose are interrelated.
In this article, I focus on reimagining family businesses by putting my Eco-Governance and Eco-Design Thinking method in the ESG framework; by unifying my eco-innovation, eco-design thinking, “Authentic Governance“ (Eco-Governance), and eco-diversity models
with personal integrity and empathy, to address family business challenges in the 21st century.
This ESG model shows how my holistic concepts of eco-governance, eco-design thinking, eco-innovation, personal disruptive innovation, personal integrity, and eco-diversity are embedded in the ESG framework.
Read further:
Sustainable Family Businesses
Building the Future of Work in Family Businesses
Owing to the lessons learned throughout the COVID-19 crisis, it is high time to design a better world that is characterized by empathy, personal integrity, non-racialism, nature-friendly, smart working, circularity, a changed role of HR, good governance, and ethical leadership. The significant feature of this better world entails SUSTAINABILITY, that is, sustainability in sustainability, innovation, design, HR, leadership, diversity & inclusion, corporate governance, family businesses, oil & gas, and management & design innovation education, as shown in this Figure.
In my article “HOW TO DESIGN A BETTER WORLD“, I discussed in detail how to design this better world sustainably. This article focuses on sustainability in family businesses.
“The first rule of sustainability is to align with yourself, to continuously perceive what you do, and be aware of the influence of your behavior and actions on human beings, animals, plants, and the environment. This is personal integrity, which is the foundation of empathy and eco-design thinking“– Hubert Rampersad. I refer to my article “Design For Sustainability” and my webinar “A New Way to Think about Sustainability”.
In addition to this, designing a better world requires a new way of thinking. Remember what Einstein said: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them”. This new way of thinking is called eco-design thinking. It is the creative process of empathizing with yourself, the end user, and the environment. I refer to my new book “Eco-Design Thinking for Personal, Corporate and Social Innovation; How to Become a Disruptive Eco-Design Thinker Like Elon Musk“. Read the excerpt of this book, which is about reimagining design and innovation.
Family Businesses Need a New Way of Thinking
Family business leaders require a new way of thinking, which I call eco-design thinking. The difference between traditional way of thinking and eco-design thinking is shown in this figure. It’s about a fixed mindset versus a growth mindset.
Read also “10 Ways to Kill Creativity, Sustainability, and Innovation”.
Family Businesses Need Sustainability
Research shows that there are billions frozen in family businesses because of disputes between the siblings of the families after the death of the founders of the company. These disputes are caused by a climate of distrust, poor transfer of leadership from one generation to the next, crisis of succession, the next generation not knowing how to carry things forward successfully, the leader does not know how to manage conflicts effectively, no alignment of the family corporate goals with the goals of the siblings, the leader does not know how to manage family organizational change effectively, and unethical behaviors of family members. About 98 percent of the companies operating in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) are family-owned firms. About 33% of these companies are run by the second generation of the family, 15% are managed by the third generation of the family and only 4% of the companies are operated by the fourth generation of the family. There is a need for continuity of family businesses because these companies’ contribution to the GDP is about 22-30% percent. Family businesses should therefore be managed in a more professional, innovative, ethical, and humanized way, by strengthening the entrepreneurial leadership skills, personal integrity, personal innovation, and empathic behavior of the next generations.
Family businesses in Europe, the Americas, and Asia face similar challenges. In this article, I provide a holistic and authentic framework and specific tools to enable family businesses to effectively create a high-performance culture in which eco-innovation, authenticity, integrity, agility, inclusion, and empathy are embedded.
Family Businesses Need Eco-Innovation
Family businesses need econ-innovation to survive in the new normal. “Today’s complex world requires sustainable innovation. Traditional innovation approaches are not sustainable because they are not holistic. They are cosmetical, theatrical and cozy. They don’t fit in my definition of real sustainability: Sustainability is a holistic and ethical system in which humans and nature can exist in harmony for a very long period of time”-— Hubert Rampersad.
Traditional innovation approaches taught at fancy business schools and universities are causing massive damage to society. Eco-innovation consists of personal innovation, corporate innovation, and social innovation, as shown in this figure. I refer to my
articles “The Future of Innovation“ and “The Future of Higher Management Education”. Check also my webinar: “A New Way to Think about Innovation“.
Family Businesses Need Eco-Design Thinking
Family businesses in the new normal also need eco-design thinking. Traditional design thinking approaches are mainly process-driven, focused on analytical thinking and how to follow design steps, cozy meetings, how to complete related tasks in a certain order, and how to use design tools. They do not inspire imagination effectively. There are so many products badly designed due to this. This Figure shows the top 10 causes of bad designs.
In my article “HOW TO DESIGN A BETTER WORLD “, I have introduced a new eco-design thinking model that is more suitable for family businesses in the new normal. It entails an iterative, incremental, cyclic, and concentric process of exploring, ideating, prototyping, and executing, as shown in this figure.
Eco-design thinking is a circular and iterative process that never ends; it’s a continuous process of testing and refining your design, while empathizing with yourself, the user
, and the environment. Check also my webinar: “A New Way to Think about Design Thinking”.
Family Businesses Need Inner Strength and Resilience Through Personal Disruptive Innovation
My eco-design thinking model starts with personal disruptive innovation to understand, explore, and (re)design oneself before solving the design problem. This concept describes how to find your purpose in life and how to live a meaningful, better, happier, and healthier life, in business and private life.
First, you need to inculcate disruptive skills and become innovative and empathic in order to be able to develop innovative designs for the end users. Personal disruptive innovation is based on this model:
Read “4 Steps to Become Resilient and Cultivate a Growth Mindset“. This system unleashes your creative potential, creates new personal opportunities, disrupts your existing target market, and enables you to make a significant social impact. It is based on a framework and roadmap to build resilience, explore and (re)design your life, and develop your personal eco-design thinking brand and personal integrity.
Family Businesses Need Personal Integrity and Empathy
The one thing missing from the board of directors in many large family businesses is personal integrity. The essence of leadership within family companies is personal integrity and empathy. This involves finding the proper balance between your personal ambition and your behavior and actions (alignment with yourself), as shown in the below Figure.
Eco-design thinking also entails aligning personal innovation with corporate innovation, alignment with yourself (to enhance personal integrity and empathy), and alignment with your design team (to enhance the designer’s engagement), as shown in the above Figure. How to align with yourself, is described in my article “Reimagining Leadership“. Read also “
How to Cultivate Empathy”.
Family Businesses Need Eco-Governance
Many large family companies have very nice good governance rules and very beautiful codes of ethics implemented by very expensive Big Four Firms that created a very stable basis for more corruption. They need a more sustainable approach to corporate governance, with personal integrity as a basis. I refer to my article “Reimagining Corporate Governance“.
Family Businesses Need Eco-Diversity
There is no room for racism and discrimination in family businesses in the new normal. The new normal requires empathy. Leveraging diversity, inclusion, and belonging is key to developing empathy. I refer to my article “Eco-Diversity“.
Family Businesses Need a New HR System
There’s such a need to move the traditional HR focus in family businesses on compensation, rewards, benefits, payrolls, hiring & firing, and bureaucratical policies, and instead focus on fostering a sustainable culture of innovation in which personal innovation, personal integrity, trust, inclusion, belonging, passion, love, and employee alignment & engagement are embedded; by doing so happiness and productivity at work will increase and stress will be reduced. It is about time for HR managers in family businesses to understand that happy, ethical, and smart employees make happy customers. In my article “The Future of HR“, I introduced an effective methodology to realize this new HR sustainably. In this way, you will realize the best fit between family members and family organization, resulting in increased engagement and retention.
Family Businesses Need Female Innovative Entrepreneurial Leadership Branding for Daughters
This unique approach described above creates harmony, peace, and trust between the siblings of the families and a stable basis for the continuity of family businesses. Until recently, a family business in the Middle East would follow the law of primogeniture – that is, it would be passed down to the oldest son. Nowadays, succession is possible via daughters, as well. My program “Female Innovative Entrepreneurial Leadership” is specially designed for daughters. The current 
generation is not necessarily following in the footsteps of the previous one, instead choosing to follow their own career paths (which may not involve working in the family business). This leadership branding program will help them to make the right choices in their life, based on their dreams and align these with their passion. It will also focus on empowering the next generation effectively to carry things forward successfully and pass on the torch correctly to enable a smooth transition.
Family Businesses Need an Innovative Family Charter and Smart Family Members
Family businesses in the new normal need a family charter in which the family’s ambition (vision, mission, and core values) are aligned with the family business’s ambition, as discussed above. First, each family member should redesign, measure, and manage their life to become a smart and better human being, based on my methodology described in “Redesigning Your Life“. The transfer of leadership of a family business from one generation to the next will be much smoother based on this new innovative approach. It will ease the transfer from one generation to the next.
Live Webinar: A New Way to Think About Family Businesses
Online Training for Family Businesses:
This training entails the above-mentioned ingredients and is designed to accomplish several key objectives:
- How to manage family businesses effectively in a professional and result-oriented way.
- Building the future of work in family businesses in which sustainable innovation, integrity, agility, inclusion, and empathy are embedded
• How to enhance the competitiveness of family businesses in a sustainable way by putting employees first, customers second, and shareholders third.
• How to create a climate of trust, harmony, peace, love, passion, integrity, and performance within family companies.
• How to transfer leadership of a family business from one generation to the next effectively.
• How to prevent a crisis of succession.
• How to empower the next generation effectively to carry things forward successfully.
• How to draft an innovative family charter. - How to develop entrepreneurial leadership skills.
- How to develop an ethical business culture and strengthen corporate governance.
- How to manage conflicts effectively.
- How to align the family corporate goals with the goals of the siblings.
- How to implement and manage family organizational change effectively.
- How to practice change leadership and personal skills that make it easier to foster buy-in to change across the family company.
Center of Excellence in Eco-Family Business
Orlando, Florida | tpsi@live.com | skype: h.rampersad |WhatsApp: +13053992116
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