Outreach from families
THE outreach to families should facilitate movement up a good governance pathway for each family; and among the many benefits such a movement delivers is the deepening of an ethical culture, starting from within a family. Through the practice of parent leadership, the nurturing of a loving and mutually supportive relationship between spouses, and the upbringing of children as they grow up under dynamic and challenging circumstances, one very important result gets delivered: proper discernment between what is proper or improper; between what is right or wrong; and between what is good or bad. While life and its dynamic circumstances may present many shades of grey in between, still everyone in the family should know that a dividing line has to be drawn somewhere. Where that line is drawn would depend on an external authority: convention; custom; civil law; moral precepts; and for persons of faith, a deep personal relationship with the God, who is father of all.
It is in this light that the family is looked upon as the cradle of an ethical culture, and on the basis of such culture, it becomes a school of actually observed values, i.e. of virtues practised. The family, then, is a great ally that complements and strengthens the enterprise culture, which the good governance of the enterprise demands should be founded upon a bed-rock of ethics. If for this alone – although there can be many other reasons for undertaking the initiative – it is well worth the time and expense on the part of an enterprise to direct its primary governance outreach program to the families of the individuals who work in it.
Families, however, do not stand alone on their own. They relate with other families, particularly those with shared interests and similar governance orientation. They naturally form networks with other families, and through such networking they give rise to pocket communities, which form part of the larger community.
The enterprise outreach to families should take such networking and pocket-community-forming tendencies into account. Where possible, such tendencies can be facilitated and even provided effective impetus to move forward. Three possible ways by which such effective impetus can be provided, and more concrete ways may be specified under different situations:
• Sharing of experiences, with a good, properly trained facilitator provided, on gender-specific parent leadership; on the nurturing of proper spouse-to-spouse relationship; and on age-appropriate best practices in the upbringing of children. Such a sharing of actual experiences may fall under the continuing values formation program for sustained family development.
• Savings mobilization, which instils the habit of setting aside some savings as often as every week on the part of each member of the family. Each family may conduct a weekly family circle meeting, similar to the value-aligned circles in the enterprise, and may use such meetings to specify the many small ways by which the discipline of savings can be made a habit.
• Social enterprise development, which opens the horizon of each family with a savings discipline, to engage in a family enterprise, which sharpens the entrepreneurial skills and proclivities of the different members of the family. Solidarity in promoting a common enterprise -- that of the family business -- can take on a very concrete face, especially if the enterprise is undertaken in mutual support of the other family enterprises (those within the pocket community).
The broad outlines for each family undertaking an outreach program to other families can be made more specific in many different ways under very different situations. In every instance, however, for sustaining the transformation program of an enterprise it is critical to undertake a governance outreach program to families, and one which gives impetus to each family to reach out as well to other families.