LAHORE: Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry in collaboration with the QCT and International Finance Corporation (IFC) arranged a day-long workshop on 'Building a sustainable Family Business' here on Wednesday. LCCI President Ijaz A. Mumtaz, SVP Mian Nauman Kabir, Amer Qureshi of QCT, former LCCI president Tariq Sayeed Saigol, Bashir A. Baksh, Mian Misbah-ur-Rehman, Syed Shahid Ali of Treet Corporation, Mehwish Bilal Khan and Mohsin Ali Chaudhry of the IFC, and Hamid Zaman were key speakers.
The topics covered in the workshop were business case for corporate governance and succession planning, the challenges of running a family business, the health check of your business and last but not the least family governance and succession.
The LCCI president said, family-owned business were recognized today as an important and distinct organization in the world economy, adding that family businesses now operated in every country and may be the oldest form of business organization but only within the last decade had their unique benefits been identified and studied.
He said, family owned businesses were the backbone of any economy and cited the example of Rolls Royce which started as a family venture and took off as one of the most important car company.
Business spirits started fading away when business entered into 2nd and 3rd generation, and important part at this time was that business should be handled by corporate experts.
He said that for sustaining the business it was imperative that decision of professionals should be given importance, while family influences for personal benefits and advantages should not drive the business.
For sustaining the family business, he added, it was imperative that company should have a clear vision and a purposeful mission as well as overseeing every step and minute detail of business development was also vital. He said that strong entrepreneurial spirit was actually the backbone for supporting family venture, asserting that core reason being direct contact of employees and founders which bonded their mutual relationship. "In my view attention should be given to this particular point since loyal team members will produce concrete results," he observed.
While, Amer Qureshi highlighted various features of a sustainable family business and how its sustainability could be enhanced. Success or failure of business often came back to business owner and founder.
therefore, businessmen must have a strategy, a good product or service, motivation, determination, a good bank manager, attitude, single-mindedness, an ethic of hardwork, understanding partner and family, foresight, management ability, calmness under pressure and some start-up capital for a successful business.
Qureshi said, "Business planning or planning in general is not only for big corporations and multinationals - it is just as important if not more so, for SMEs; after all, we do not have the resources or the reserves to survive if things don't go as these should be."
Even a small business started from humble beginning like home or dad's garage, a friend's kitchen or the like, he said, in most ventures it took time to build client base, get the businessmen name known and to start producing profits.
The LCCI Senior Vice President Mian Nauman Kabir said that due to ever changing societal norms, increasingly complex business environment and recent corporate collapse of companies around the globe, corporate governance had emerged as an imperative issue at the forefront of organizational concerns.
Tariq Saeed Saigol shared his own experiences with the participants and won a lot of applauses. Mehwish Bilal Khan elaborated why was corporate governance important for family owned business (FOBs).
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