Hope as a character trait
When your family business experience causes you to wonder, "Will this ever improve?" (Romans 5:3-4)
Family businesses are remarkably rewarding. The chance to pursue your entreprenurial instincts, to be your own boss, to work alongside family members, to make a difference for your employees and community, and to leave something for future generations is immensely gratifying.
Family businesses are also extremely challenging. Surviving as a small business, supporting family members and staff along the way, navigating the terrain of family conflict, planning for succession, and trying to figure out the future are formidable and exhausting endeavors.
The difficult aspects of family business take their toll on everyone. On those trying to lead, on those trying to be heard, on those trying to let go of their role or grab hold of a new opportunity, and especially on those caught in the middle.
It seems too simple, too wishful, to say one should just “hope it will get better” when frustrated with the family business and its participants. Rather, hope for a better future originates in patience. It persists through suffering. It’s rooted in endurance. It comes from taking the long view, what Friedrich Nietzche called “a long obedience in the same direction.”
The essential thing "in heaven and in earth" is…that there should be long OBEDIENCE in the same direction, there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living;1
Eugene Peterson used the phrase as the title for his excellent book about discipleship. And Paul’s version of this long obedience is perseverence: Staying the course. Hanging on. Seeing through the struggle.
In Romans, Paul writes that hope is more than a wish or a desire; it’s part of who you are, part of who you can be: Perseverance produces character, and character in turn produces hope:
Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. (Romans 5:3-4)
What challenges are you facing in your family business? How might seeing hope as a character trait, as an element of who you are — and not simply a wish — help you approach the future?