If your family has owned, and successfully run, a $300 million company, Louis Padnos Iron and Metal, for 102 years, its culture is very much a function of the family MAP.

So, what do you do when the current generation wants to ease back, the next generation are only in their teens, and the management bench’s MAP is totally different?

How different? Night and day.

Whereas the thirty-something managers “are mostly conservative, from Protestant backgrounds with working- class roots, and have spent much less time outside Western Michigan;” the Padnoses “are politically liberal, Jewish and, having grown up wealthy enough to travel widely, they are worldly…view themselves as part entrepreneur, part social worker…And it is the latter quality they seem most anxious to pass along to the managers.”

Fortunately, the family recognized that their MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy)™ was a function of their upbringing; rather than lecture the managers, in 2005 they hired a local philosophy professor as mentor and committed the funds necessary to expand their team’s MAP.

It’s moved forward, but both sides are still struggling, although with different issues. The young managers chafe at the education, feeling that they’re ready, while the Padnoses have their own issues in sharing information, such as the company financials.

Will it work out? Only time will tell, but they’re certainly off to a good start.

At the end, everybody’s MAP will have changed, expanded, and grown, probably in ways no one was expecting, and that can only be good.

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This entry was posted on Monday, February 26th, 2007 at 9:42 am and is filed under Business info, Culture, Leadership, Retention. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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