FAMILY businesses are entrepreneurial and form a "significant backbone" of the Scottish economy, but the challenges they face are complex and sometimes not understood.
Mairi Mickel, scion of the famous Mactaggart & Mickel housebuilding dynasty, shared her experience of life in a family business ahead of a lecture at the University of Strathclyde last night.
Ms Mickel, who was invited to speak by the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship, said: "I don't have the statistics to hand... but I think it's around 75 per cent of all private business in Scotland is family owned. That's a significant backbone to the economy.
"But also I think we are entrepreneurial. I think as a nation we are entrepreneurial and sometimes that entrepreneurialism can be handed down through the generations. I think that's what makes us successful over the long run."
Ms Mickel left the business in 2012, having held senior roles such as head of sales and marketing communications director, but remains an owner of the 100 per cent owned family enterprise.
Now she splits her time between running The Mickel Fund, a charitable foundation and as a business coach and adviser to family businesses.
Ms Mickel said a key motivation in her role as an advisor is to give other businesses the benefit of her experience and insight into how MacMic responded to the complex challenges that family enterprises face. She said: "I wanted to take the unique experiences I had and turn back to the industry and help other family businesses to flourish.
"The main things I ended up to talking to family businesses on and advising them on is helping them get a better understanding of their own business culture and their own family culture, and how that give opportunity and challenge to owners and leaders of a business.
"Culture is important. Governance is another piece that is important - helping them think about what structures or processes might be boundaries around the family piece and the business piece too to run the business more successfully.
"I also talk about influence, which is a key thing in leadership at the moment, specifically helping next generation leaders how to use influence in the strategic direction of the business. Those are definitely common themes that come up."
With MacMic famous for the tenements in Glasgow's west end it built in the early 1900s, celebrating its 90th birthday this month, Ms Mickel "one would hope" that it qualifies as a family business success. But she noted that it "has had its difficult times".
One positive move it made fairly early in its history was to appoint non-family members to key leadership positions. While the firm is chaired by Ms Mickel's father, its current chief executive is an outsider. Ed Monaghan originally joined the business as an apprentice painter and decorator aged just 15, and has since worked his way up through the ranks to the top job.
Ms Mickel noted: "I think the business has had its difficult times. We've had no-family leaders in from the second generation, which I think has been very good in professionalising and modernising [the company]. We've had some excellent family leaders as well. And the business is still 100 per cent family owned."
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