I kept hoping my father would mellow. I had been working in a number of capacities for him and hoped that some rapport could be established. There were plenty of successes, but there was always plenty of criticism.
By not joining him right out of college and establishing a career with other companies, I was able to earn a measure of respect and escaped the absolute control that would have been characteristic of an entrepreneurial workaholic who successfully built his own company had I gone right to work for him. Even while working for other companies, I was subjected to his negative judgment.
When I was in creative at JWT, I should have pursued account management. When I became an account manager, I should not have gone to a smaller firm and when I was with a smaller firm, I should have chosen one with larger, nationally known accounts. But it mostly rolled off my back.
On the other hand, employees who work for a self-made man can be treated fairly as long as they work the long hours that are expected, and turn in a strong bottom line. They can survive as long as they do what they are told, don’t disagree publicly with their leader, and devote a certain amount of their time to assuring him he is right in all the decisions he makes, even if they feel some are wrong. This allows just enough self-respect to survive, and helps to assure financial reward.
But as I found out, the relationship changes when the son who has been independent goes to work for a father who achieved what my father had. I was just one of the latest to discover what perhaps millions of sons working in family-owned businesses had already experienced—what it was like to be the son of a boss.
A friend sent me, in mid-1980, an article on the father-son working relationship where the son was working for the father. It appeared in the People section of the Raleigh News & Observer and was written by staffer Angelia Herrin. The point is made that founders of their own businesses are independent people with a drive to control their own environments. And their experiences and drive make founding fathers a different breed, according to Dr. Leon Tanco, head of the Center for Family Business in Cleveland, OH.
There are more than 10 million family-owned businesses in the United States. The spokesmen for Sons of Bosses, Stephen Klein, said, “Many sons of bosses have trouble proving themselves to their dads and taking their place in the business.” He said that statistics show that only 30 percent of family businesses survive into the second generation. Some of the sons quoted in the article said that the dissension frequently spills into social occasions, which the father cannot divorce from the place of work, and that the mothers are upset, wives are ready for a divorce, and children are neglected.
I was still part of the Park Broadcasting division when I came across this article, but I knew that the outdoor operation, under its new managers, was not performing well. Herrin, who wrote the article, pointed out that two refrains that most of the SOBs were hearing from their fathers were, “I made it all on my own,” and “Son, I did this all for you.” There was also the promise that “Someday, this will all be yours.”32 I never heard those quotes and knew that my father had absolutely no intention that someday he would turn the management of the company over to me, or that someday any part of it would be mine. I was just grinding my teeth and doing my job and trying my best to enjoy the work.
Little did I know that in less than a year, I was going to be asked to go back into the outdoor division to clean up the mess that had been made. And my problems would be compounded by the fact I would no longer be working with Johnnie Babcock, who had been so closely involved in the needs and problems of the outdoor division. I would be reporting directly to my father without the welcome management buffer he provided that had earlier been in place.