A Year of Premieres – 2018 Summary
Katarzyna Gierczak Grupińska
CEO at GELG LTD - metalworking industry, Founder @ Fundacja Firmy Rodzinne | Nonprofit Organizations
2018 is over. It has been a very successful year for us in FFR Foundation (PL: Fundacja Firmy Rodzinne, ENG: Family Businesses Foundation). Thus, I wanted to sum it up somehow, and the summary will not come in a brief form. There is a lot to talk about.
We have managed to accomplish a lot, and we are especially proud of our “first times”. On the other hand though, we are happy that what we are doing continuously also gets us a lot of positive feedback among the family businesses.
First Times – Early Warning Europe Forum: A Joint Conference with the Ministry
It was in April, on the occasion of accomplishment of the first round of the Early Warning Europe initiative evaluation, when we, jointly with the Ministry of Entrepreneurship and Technology, organized a conference. PARP – Polish Agency for Enterprise Development – is acting as our partner here. We used the conference to showcase the results of the Polish pilot-undertaking. The guest list included representatives of virtually all institutions involved in implementation of the project in Europe as a whole.
Magdalena Kleim, manager at EASME (Executive Agency for Small and Medium Enterprises) was one of the guests invited. She expressed a particular appreciation when it comes to the efforts undertaken by the Polish mentors involved in the project. EASME monitors the implementation of the project all around Europe.
First Times – The Parliament Adopted and the President Signed an Act We’ve Been Working on Starting from Square One
It was in August last year, when an Act on the succession management of an individual enterprise was adopted. The legal act solves the problem of companies that die with the owner. We pointed out this issue showing it to Minister Mariusz Ha?adyj more than 3 years ago, when Zofia Drohomirecka started to publicly tell stories about her experiences – Drohomirecka is the owner of “Po?egnanie z Afryk?” family business. Had it not been for her conscious behavior when she faced the death of her husband, she would have lost their company.
Along the whole timeline, our presence could have been noted in the process of public consultation and maintaining the dialogue with the administration, on the shape of the newly created regulations that became valid in November. We’ve been already mentioning this here:
More than 100 EWE Mentors in Poland
It was just a few days ago, that we have disseminated a media release showing that the hundredth mentor has joined the team of volunteers supporting the Polish entrepreneurs facing trouble. Today, the exact number of mentors is as high as 108. This is a reason to be proud of. Moreover, it is not the only thing that has made us proud, when it comes to implementation of the Early Warning Europe initiative in Poland.
Our mentor training system became an inspiration for our similar organizations dealing with the project abroad. We’ve been frequently invited to conduct training activities abroad, during which we show how to do it, in front of our colleagues.
Psychological part of working with a mentee has been an innovation introduced on our side. Up until now, this domain has not even been considered at the organizations that acted as the EWE predecessors, which has been mentioned by Pol Vermoere in one of conversations that we had.
More than 500 Companies Asked EWE for Help
531 companies have signed up for the Early Warning Europe initiative. This is the highest number, among all four countries involved in the project’s pilotage. The above means that Poland has overtaken Greece, Spain and Italy as well. We are the leader of the pack.
175 companies in that group have already received support. Those who have used it get back on their feet even after a serious crisis – as it happened in case of El?bieta Ga?kowska who agreed to tell us her story, about her EWE mentoring process.
Our communications, especially across a number of social media channels, has been noticed and appreciated by the project management and by the remaining partners. Our case studies have been a subject to discussions during joint learning seminars in Athens and Torino.
The whole range of activities undertaken in the social media, with regards to the project, can be tracked with the use of the #EarlyWarningEU hashtag.
Fu.k-up Night Early Warning Europe
Success is not the only source of inspiration. Failure stories may be at least as inspiring as the success stories are; and maybe, they could also entail a greater educational value. Failure stories are not easily shared, since people are often only ready to speak about them in a trustworthy group and in the atmosphere of general openness.
We have managed to create atmosphere as such. Thanks to the above, during the July EWE Fuckup Night event, a number of mentors and entrepreneurs invited could hear a number of failure stories that, at the same time, have been a valuable lessons for the storytellers.
During the meeting we have managed to talk to Sylwia Cantillana-Valencia who prepares the Early Warning Europe volunteers for the role of mentors. She explained it in simple words, that time is needed to go through any failure, and that no rush should be happening here.
Kongres Pokoleń - The First Edition
We’ve put a lot of work into the Kongres Pokoleń [Congress of Generations] event organized in early October. Almost 400 persons from 200 companies involved in this event have all been a reason for us to be proud. This is especially pronounced as the event followed an experimental formula. According to the main assumption made during the congress, for the event to be based around a dialogue between generations, one could buy minimum of two tickets, for a representative of a younger and an older generation.
The speakers included leading conference speakers known to the business community in Poland, with the panels seeing involvement on the part of the best known Polish family businesses.
Family Business Tree - 800 Times
More than 800 Family Businesses are now using the Family Business tree. 838, to be exact, at the moment when this article is being written.
We are very much satisfied with that, and we are very happy that pace at which further companies join the “Family Business Tree” Trademark is also going upwards. Starting from 2017 when we were beginning the research concerning the skills for the future among 500 companies using the trademark, more than 300 new users emerged in this group. This translates into an increment of 63%.
If you want to join this group, fill in the form available via our website:
Poles on Family Businesses - Fifth Time
Consequently, since 5 years now, we have been observing the public opinion and the social dynamics related to family entrepreneurship. We always present the results of those observations in the “Polacy o firmach rodzinnych” (Poles on Family Businesses) report. This year, the subheading of that report read as follows:
“Business: Not all About the Money”.
We have found out that the respondents who would like to set up a family business were not driven by the money, in their intentions. They want to have more control over their lives.
Also, rapidly growing reputation of the “Family Business Tree” Trademark is also an important result for us. It is recognized by more than 60% of the Poles now.
The report is available, in full, here:
We’ve Begun Work Aimed at Publishing Another Book
We have visited Ian A. Marsh back in August who, since more than 4 decades now, has been helping the family businesses acting first as an adviser, then legal counsellor, mediator and eventually dialogue facilitator (as he refers to himself now). ?If It Is so Good to Talk, Why Is It so Hard” book has been a highlight of his career. We want to translate it and publish it in Poland.
Ian is teaching the art of dialogue in his book, focusing on the participants’ attitude to the conversation, on the conversation itself, on the assumptions and on the expectations.
The meeting turned out to be a few hours spent on a great, substantial dialogue. Currently we are working on the final details related to cooperation that could be established between us and Ian, within the course of publishing a new book. And this would be the second publishing project of ours, following “Ma?a ksi?ga biznesu rodzinnego” (Small Book of Family Business).
Not Everything Went Well
Two magazines published this year have been a success and a failure at the same time. Our assumption was to publish a quarterly, but we had no time to handle two quarters of this year. However, this allowed us to provide more to our readers in the winter edition.
We also did not manage to obtain grants, for the purpose of implementation of two EU-driven projects, that we have been already asking for. We have not managed to launch a couple of smaller ideas as well.
As in a theater, it is behind the scenes where most of the work happens. We are writing this to make you aware that only a certain portion of our work has been made visible, and only some of our ideas appear on the surface. But we are not going to give up, and we are pushing onwards.