Devin DeCiantis and Ivan Lansberg, the Managing Partner and co-founder respectively of Lansberg Gersick Advisors, continue the discussion of their new book, THE ENDURING ENTERPRISE: How Family Businesses Thrive in Turbulent Conditions, including the possible consequences of the latest US election on family businesses, 7 stabilizing strategies for businesses and organizations, and weighing the "I" vs the "we".

So we don't really like to on this show get too

political or take sides on anything, but just looking at it

objectively, this book was written before the most recent

US presidential election, and that election is now over, and

it means a change in the administration and possible big

changes to business. Does that change anything in the book for

you, or change what you think the outlook is for family

businesses in the United States? And if so, or if not, what

impact do you believe this will have going forward?

It's a great question Gary and obviously a

sensitive one, but in general, I think it it addresses precisely

one of the challenges that we wanted to write about in

anticipation of not just the US election, but over the course of

2024 more than half of the world, for the first time in

history, went to the polls to elect their governments, and not

just in the US, but in many countries. The outcomes of those

elections were complicated and presented the businesses

operating in those environments with potentially a very

different world to navigate the day after the election than the

day before the election. And part of our aspiration with the

book was to provide examples from other places where perhaps

those lurches left or right in the political spectrum or in

terms of industrial policy might have been more dramatic, but

they're dramatic with an effect. The effect is that you still

need to attend to and think about how you're going to

reposition yourself in the face of, you know, tariff barriers,

or a change in access to to supply chains that are that are

competitive, depending on which countries you operate in, and

the importance of the diversification within those

supply chains, the importance of redundancy built into your

inventory and warehousing, the importance of strategic

simplification in terms of recognizing the impact of

inflation on your on your business model, and the

compression on your margins, all of these issues that are dialed

up to 11 in some environments around The world. You know,

places where Hyperinflation is ripe are still present here,

just not at 11, but maybe at seven on the dial. And most

business leaders are used to a two or a three. So in that

respect, we've hoped, as we wrote this book and in the

selection of the cases that we've included, that this would

be a bit of a new and fresh strategic playbook for leaders

who are trying to navigate what is undoubtedly going to be among

the most tumultuous several years in recent American

history.

The other thing I think this change highlights for

me, and I think the book, certainly it builds on this

concern, is that, let's say you take Elon Musk and have him

moving to government to cut all the you know, inefficiencies go

to speed. And, you know, I'm all for being for having an

efficient government. I think that's terrific, that the

concept is very nice. But before you move in with a with a

chainsaw, you really need to pay attention for why those

inexpiciencies are built into the system, and because if you

cut them all away, you're basically jacking up risk that

the institutional stabilizers, as we call them in the book,

will begin to wither, and before you know it, the US is going to

start beginning to look more like Guatemala, you know, in

terms of its its ability, and for business people, the

implications are huge, like you're pointing out exactly, you

know. I mean, what will the stars do to our game? What will,

you know? What will happen when we can count on, you know, in

theme, to rescue people after a tornado goes by. I mean, once

you take all that away, if you just slash and burn, you're

going to be left with just a skeleton or something that

really does expose the construct of the US to enormous risk.

It goes back to risk and reward again, what's

the risk and what's the reward? And if our world can get to a

spot where we're sitting at the table, whether you're left or

right, and you're fully saying what's going to be the best for

the world long term, that's why we all do what we do, right,

what's a good middle ground that that will be the best for most

people. Learning from all this, you guys have actually come up

with seven stabilizing strategies, and I love lists

that you they can help any organization increase its

resilience and performance. Would you guys mind sharing

those?

Yeah, sure, and thanks Gary for calling it out.

In fact, we didn't develop these strategies, these strategies we

identified as recurring among the hundreds of families around

the world we studied so as we as we went out and tried our best

to understand this phenomena of enduring enterprises and what

made them tick and what allowed for them to adapt to these

tumultuous conditions, we kept coming back to this cluster.

There were more than seven at one point, but we distilled it

down to these seven because these were the seven most

recurring caps. Patterns, and we dedicated in the book one

chapter to each of these strategies, and included an

iconic case study that exemplified each of the

strategies. So, you know, I can list a couple of them here, but

things like, like redundancy, which feels, again, we use that

term almost pejoratively, like, oh, that's redundant. We don't

need that extra infrastructure in order to be able to do what

we do. But to Yvonne point just now, sometimes efficiencies are

actually essential for the viability long term of an

enterprise. And the iconic case that we use in the case of

redundancy is as a hotel operator, a family controlled

company in Haiti that's been this at the epicenter of every

possible social, political, economic and environmental

disaster you can imagine, over their 50 year leadership of this

enterprise, and in the face of that, recognizing that at any

moment, any one of the essential systems that allow for them to

continue could break down. They have backup generators for their

backup generators. They have backup communication systems.

They have backup internet infrastructure. They have backup

security teams. They have backup in your warehouses of and

stockpiles of all the essential needs that their that their

guests might might desire, not just for the time at which

they're there, but in the event that the entire society

collapses, as it had in the wake of the big earthquake in recent

years and now with all sorts of Roman gangs circling through

Port au Prince. So you recognize that with examples like this,

that redundancy actually becomes a strategic asset as a pro as

opposed to a, you know, an expense that is frivolous and

that needs to be that needs to be reduced. Similarly for

strategies like migration, it's really about resources at some

point, in some circumstances. And we use and highlight a case

from from Syria of an enterprising family whose assets

were essentially expropriated by the government in in the 1960s

and they had to migrate. They essentially were, were forced to

either, you know, live as civilians in country, but not

with the possibility of of continuing to operate, or

migrating to neighboring Lebanon and starting back up from

scratch, using their social capital, their intellectual

capital, to rebuild an empire that ended up becoming a

regional champion once again, but in the face of a hostile

environment that's no longer receptive to your ongoing

presence there, in some points, you just need to pick up and go.

You need to know when to hold them and when to fold them and

when it's time to fold them. You need to pick the appropriate

destination for that journey, and I say that with a smile,

knowing that you live in in Vegas...

Haha, I was just thinking that. But, you know, I

think one key point Gary is, is that it runs through all of the

strategies. None of them come for free, and business owners

are so focused on their operating models appropriately,

right? So you know you're running a company, 90% of your

attention is making sure you know the product is out the

door, the service is provided, and everything is done in the

most cost effective manner possible. But if you overlook

also pausing and asking yourself, what risks are we

taking and what measures might we built into our operating

models to be able to cushion uncertainty which will come your

way, one way or another. You know, whether it's 911 whether

it's COVID, whether it is you know, the new administration,

whatever it is, something's going to affect and touch your

business. You better be ready for that, and understand that

any one of those measures, like a spare tire in a car, you know,

will take some resources, will occupy space. We'll weigh you

down a little bit. But in exchange for that, you're upping

the chances of continuity, which for most family enterprises, and

very much in tune with your legacy construct is key. That is

a key priority. So if you want to continue, you better be

attentive to risk.

So as you guys know, our insurance companies

call Southwestern Legacy Insurance Group. Thus, Let's

Talk Legacy. Legacy is such an important part to what we do

every day, and when a person purchases insurance, it's

because they want to leave a legacy for somebody behind. It's

always an interest to us to understand what legacy means to

each and every person that we speak with every day. And I'd be

curious to each of you guys, what legacy means to you.

That's a great question. And I'd be curious to

go back and hear how your other guests have answered. In my

perspective, when I think about legacy, I think about bringing

forward into the present and carrying into the future those

aspects or elements of our shared heritage that we want to

celebrate and that we want to sustain. And it's also

recognizing. The world around us is changing, and the world in

which those legacies were first established isn't necessarily

the world of today or the world of tomorrow, and so that we need

to also adapt that legacy and bring forth the elements that we

truly appreciate but embrace, perhaps some novelty and

innovation that wasn't ever conceived when when the legacy

was first established.

And to me, it, you know, I became a grandfather

seven years ago. And to me, that is, you know, a very important

motivation to try and reflect on, what can I pass on to my

grandchildren that will endure. You know, what are the stories,

what are the values, what are the strategies that have, I've

seen worked, and that this work actually reflects, you know, an

inventory of that could be useful to them as they will

tackle the world they will inherit with full knowledge that

that world, as Devin suggests, will be quite different from the

one I've lived.

Absolutely. Do either of you feel that your

personal legacies are any different than your work

legacies?

It's a great question.

Great question.

I mean, I think they're inextricably

intertwined, certainly at this age and stage in my in my

career. You know, they're they're inseparable, although, I

will say, you know, to the extent that we have personal

lives outside of our professional lives, our most

authentic selves will will align those, those elements of of your

person that may be distinct from what's useful in your work, but

it ought not to run across the grain, otherwise, you're

probably in the wrong profession.

The reason that I asked that question is I've seen

so much lately, so many famous business people, athletes, even

executives and companies there, for the first time in years,

start to build their own individual brand, even within

that company, and it's them letting the world know who they

are, what their legacy is in the combination of the company or

the the environment that they're in. That's why I asked you guys,

do you have some personal legacies that you'd like to see

accomplished?

Yeah, I know it's a great question, and I had two

thoughts on that. One is, you know, there's something so

important in families, because you're constantly managing the

relationship between the I, who I am as an individual on the we,

the identity that we hold together as a group, right? So

that tension is inherently built into into families. The other

thought I had about this was a story that I think Warren

Buffett tells about, you know, some sometime they ask him, so

how do you define success? And then he says that the person who

dies with the most friends. And then they asked him, so how do

you define a friend? And then he says, Well, a friend is and then

he notes a friend of his who went through the Holocaust,

right? And says, A friend is somebody who will hide you,

meaning somebody who will take have enough conviction and

commitment to you to take a personal risk on your behalf. An

advocate, basically, an advocate, right? An advocate who

will protect you when the time comes. Our emphasis on family

unknown, on unknown risk, basically, in the book, it

really comes from, you know, being exposed to families

worldwide, in the US, in Europe, in Asia, in Latin America, in

Africa, that are just exemplary at managing that tension and

being able to call forth a collective identity that allows

them to get you know, that gives them the resiliency they need to

cope with it, the challenges they face.

Well, you guys have your new book out now, the

enduring enterprise. Tell us just briefly about the book and

where people can get the book, and then also how they can reach

the two of you if they want to learn more about your company

and the work that you do.

Well, thanks, Gary. Should at this point be

able to get the book pretty much anywhere, or is, you know,

there's bookstores and Amazon and audible and Kindle and all

these other formats. At the end of the day, our aspiration with

that was to get these ideas out to as many people as they could

possibly benefit. We captured the ideas in the book to

introduce these counter intuitive notions and to

establish not only family businesses, but emerging in

frontier economies as sources of inspiration for business leaders

everywhere, and we really do hope that over the course of

this the conversation, as well as if folks end up picking up

the book and having a read or taking a listen, that they are

inspired to embrace some of these approaches. And if they

ever want to reach out to us to talk about them or to think

about how to apply them, they can reach. Said at LGA or via

LinkedIn, or many of these other mechanisms of of connecting. But

most, above all, we really hope these ideas are valuable and

that folks are able to take them and do good work out there in

the world.

Yeah, we believe in the power of ideas, and the

book is really our attempt at trying to summarize that

experience and share them with with others. You know, as we

often think about this, it's it's continues to be a work in

progress. We don't pretend to have all the answers here, but

we do want to get people curious about how important continuity

and resiliency are in building legacies.

Is there a website or a phone number that they can

reach you all?

Absolutely, at LGA.global, you can reach our

team. We've got about 40 of us around the world who are wise

and caring advisors to the world's leading, enterprising

families, and would love to hear from anybody who wants to

discuss these topics.

Awesome. Well, I thank you guys for your time so much.

Thank you, Gary.

Thank you Gary.