Family businesses account for 40% of employment and 50% of GDP in the Netherlands. We act as 'trusted advisors' to such businesses - often successfully due to the initiative of a few confidants - and help them to professionalise their operations. A challenge for the client and for the candidate.
You are needed
It is a kind of love-hate relationship. The company needs you precisely because you are an outsider, but it means you will never really belong. Professionalisation, modernisation, upgrading, expansion, becoming 'lean and mean' - these are often the motivations for attracting a 'manager from outside'. Joost Ouwerkerk, Partner: "That love-hate relationship is very stereotypical, but these processes are often sensitive. For the client and the candidate. On the one hand, the client must be able to work with an experienced manager with academic or higher vocational qualifications. Who has a different way of thinking and working and who critically addresses issues that have been built up through the years. On the other hand, the candidate must also be able to deal with this, for example by clearly seeing and understanding certain relations or resistant behaviour. Our role is to bring these two phenomena together."
Working method
Our working method is typified by knowing the market through and through, understanding which steps the client wants to take, and asking a lot of questions, mainly the right ones. Joost Ouwerkerk: "We dare to enter into the dance with the client, who often already has a very clear idea of the desired profile. In the end we often come to the conclusion, to quote an example, that it is not wise to send in somebody from the same sector. We also play a role in the complete upgrading of companies, particularly when complex processes are involved. Take dairy trading, for example: in the past, people used to phone each other, but now business is done by means of worldwide screen trading. We know which people you need to make such changes."
The right candidate
Our career process involves four steps: Campus, Young Professionals, Management & Professionals and Executives & Senior Management. When you want to take up a key position in a family business, you need to be very well qualified. Besides knowledge and experience, you must be 'mature enough' to deal with different types of relationships. The switch from the corporate world, for example, is generally only made on the level of Management & Professionals. Joost: "That's when you find yourself at a crossroads in your life. You have gained a lot of experience and have built up your career and now you just want to do an interesting job, such as running a smaller company."
General manager new style
One important feature of family businesses is that they are very focused on continuity and on the future, because their successors are always waiting in the wings. Nowadays that means there is an increasing demand for the 'General Manager new style'. That demand is coming from private equity firms and particularly from companies with a Director/Major Shareholder structure or divisions of a family holding. The character of the General Manager new style: visibly successful, up-and-coming, energetic spirit, authentic, growing in span of control and with a proven focus on people and on business results. All of which are needed to manage the transition to (commercial) expansion. For more information: Joost.ouworkerk@ebbinge.nl
