Games Families Play

I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.” Oliver Wendell Holmes

As we survey the family businesses we have worked with over the years, it seems that a small handful of reasons explain why these businesses fail to survive generational transitions.  None of these reasons is inherently structural – the causes of implosion are not fundamentally rooted in poor planning, misguided legal arrangements, or internal business organizational decisions per se (though these are often symptomatic of the deeper problems). Instead, the failures arise from a more elemental place – from what we might think of as qualities of human nature and the peculiar dynamics of family systems.

This is not to suggest that legal, tax and organizational structures play no part in these transitions, only that the role of these things often looms larger in the minds of professionals –whose stock and trade is in thinking about these kinds of structures — than in the reality of what actually undoes business transitions on the ground.  While it is clear that poor planning is costly and occasionally even fatal, if that is the only problem and the systems are otherwise healthy, the trauma can be deep but is often quick and survivable.  The other, deeper causes – the many paths of human folly that plague business families – is, by contrast, often slow, painful and, in retrospect, seemingly inevitable.  The ways in which this parade of folly plays out often look like a classic tragedy filled with human character flaws and blind spots, seemingly impossible situations replete with double binds and the predictable denouement that everyone but the characters involved seems to have seen coming, but that no one could stop.

Power and Games

In these dynamics of disintegration, it is often the way power operates that undoes the family enterprise.  Power (in both formal and informal forms) is inherently a systemic issue.  It reflects a core aspect of how communities of human beings (systems) achieve individual and collective purpose.  Unfortunately, power in human systems is inherently hard to understand – these systems are complex, messy and tangled webs of relationships and interactions with deep history embedded in nuanced cultures.  One thing that is required for those who work with family systems either from within or from the outside is to find the simplicity on the other side of complexity.

One way to look at flows of power is through a metaphor of “games”.  Since Eric Berne’s publication of the neo-Freudian ideas of transactional analysis, the notion that people (mostly in twos and threes) play games has played a role in popular awareness.  The fact is that families with all of their roles and scripts and storylines are well-suited for playing complex systemic games of their own.

It therefore might be useful for us to identify, briefly analyze and attach catchy names to a few of the more common patterns that these games take in business families.  This overview is not intended to be “scientific” in the slightest, but it should provide a useful lens for looking at systems thinking in ways that people can immediately understand and quickly match up to their felt experience of the dynamics in play. When we view a system as a complex multiplayer game it can allow us to extract the patterns of thinking, behavior and interactions from the manifest chaos and confusion of the real time action one sees.  This, in turn, can allow us to see some simplicity behind the complexity of the family system. Keep in mind that the list below contains dysfunctional games that are rooted in unhealthy power dynamics. There are more cooperative and win-win games that we will explore in some future post.  There are also unhealthy games rooted in “love” (not power) that we could and will eventually discuss as well.

You will undoubtedly recognize some of these patterns in your own family or the families of your clients.  The list here is not meant to be exhaustive but merely illustrative of how these “games” play themselves out.[1]  If you have noticed other “games” please feel free to comment and add to the list – if all goes well and we all pitch in – we will have a pretty good collection by the time we are done.  It is worth noting that sometimes more than one of these is being played simultaneously.

Let the games begin!

Two in a Box.  In this game the senior generation puts two children into the family business with the expectation that they will either fight it out and one will triumph over the other or they will come to an arrangement that maximizes the contributions each makes to the business. Typically this game begins with a sense of deep obligation to the family business on the part of the children and a stated commitment by the senior generation to fairly share the opportunities and growth of the business with those who participate.  In some happy cases this works well.  When children are well-matched, complementary and relatively egoless (at least with respect to their roles), the children can do well.  More often however this arrangement becomes a cage match with a winner take all outcome.  Some senior generation members believe that this kind of competition is actually healthy for the personal development of the “contestants” and the business (it “toughens them up” or “shows what they are made of”), though it rarely turns out that way in practice.  More often than not it leaves a trail of broken relationships, failed dreams and a lot of collateral damage to “innocent bystanders”.   (Note:  in the game theory posited here no one is truly “innocent” – all are playing roles in the game with varying degrees of responsibility and contribution.)

 Variations:  Survivor or Hunger Games in which multiple children are put in the business and over time, one triumphs – the others are “kicked off the island” or “die in combat”.  The family members who are not active in the management of the business are often observers and play supporting roles, though if they have an economic interest, they may interfere to attempt to give one or another side advantages.

Old Lion/Young Lion.  This game is a generational variation of two in a box and is familiar to almost all advisors.  The senior business leader (old lion) invites a son or daughter (young lion) into the business with promises of handing over the reins one day when they are ready. As it turns out – for many complex reasons – the old lion is never quite ready to give up his position in the pride and the young lion is never deemed quite ready to take over.  The old lion proceeds to hang onto power until the young lion is able to gain the upper hand, take over the business and edge out the old lion (or the old lion simply dies or ages out).  Rarely does the old lion sincerely support the ambitions of the young lion for fear of being deposed and banished sooner rather than later.

A version of this game is Mini-me.  Here the leader of the business believes that the business will thrive only under the leadership of someone exactly like him or her.  The new leader never quite measures up and so is never given the opportunity to take on full leadership.  (As an aside, watching the Austin Powers series as a study in business transition actually yields some rather interesting insights – one wonders if Mike Meyers has had some personal experience with these dynamics.)

White Sheep/Black Sheep.  In this game the family is pitted against a child who is deemed to be the problem or troublemaker who is bringing down the family business.  The game is rigged to ensure that the black sheep cannot find favor within the family system.  The black sheep’s isolation is chalked up to their personality or character.  It is rarely seen that there is a game that is being played by all concerned, that everyone has a part in that game (including the shepherds, the white sheep and the black sheep).  This game is often played to justify self or others, to enable various people to take on a role of victim (which is often a position of real power in these games) and to allow others the satisfaction of encouraging the drama to play itself out.

Like all good games, this one has quite a few variations. Sometimes the “black sheep” is actually not a sibling (e.g. a stepmother, an in-law or even a vilified parent).  Another variation, called Musical Chairs, allows different people to be “white sheep” or “black sheep” at different times based on their most recent behavior.  People often get written into and out of wills through playing this variation of the game. The important point in Musical Chairs is that there always has to be one who is out of favor but that the role changes from time to time.  Another variation is Golden Boy/Golden Girl where one child is not vilified, but held up as the paragon of all that is good and true and right with the world and to which none of the others can measure up.  Sometimes Golden Boy/Golden Girl is a set up to yet another family game of a similar nature – Scapegoat – where the failures of the system are laid on one person who tried to lead and that person is then sent to the desert to die in atonement for disowned “sins” of the community. Yet another variation is Simon Says where people in the family are expected to say, do and think the right things in the right way with failure to do so becoming a source of castigation, humiliation, loss and potential exclusion- which, after repeated rounds, can lead to the games of Musical Chairs or White Sheep/Black Sheep

Capture the Flag.  This is a favorite game in many business families.  By unexamined agreements, the family is divided into teams.  Common teams are boys v. girls, bloods v. married-ins, older v. younger children or family branches v. each other.  The sides square off to see who can capture the flag.  The flags in this game can vary by family: sometimes the flag is money, sometimes control, sometimes information, sometimes acceptance or respect, sometimes the affection or approval of the parents, and so on.  Often times this game starts relatively innocently as children are growing up (e.g. boys v. girls) and sometimes it is played in highly intentional ways from the beginning (bloods v. married-ins).  Because this tends to be a winner-take-all game, the psychic and economic stakes can be high and the competition fierce.  Each family will develop their own rules as to how the game is played, what is fair and what is not, and how to determine winners and losers.  This game differs from forms of Two in a Box in that this is a team, not an individual sport.

Risk.  This is a popular game in multigenerational families that have established strong branch identities. Just like in the board game of the same title, family members try to amass power and resources by taking chances.  The trick is to stretch but not break through the boundaries of what is acceptable in the game. Often this is done by stretching the limits of permissible behavior to accumulate power, influence and resources.  Occasionally alliances form (which can make this a close cousin to Capture the Flag) but these alliances are usually temporary and merely expedient for both sides.  There tends to be a long middle game as slight advantages shifts slowly from one side to the other and back again.  The play continues until one person has amassed all there is to gain or until everyone gets tired of rolling the dice, decides it is late and time to “go to bed” and thereby end the game.

Rescue Me.  This game, though it often looks innocuous, can be insidious.  Typically this game involves the famous Karpman drama triangle.  In his triangle, there are three basic roles – the persecutor, the victim and the rescuer.  The drama begins when a player does something to “persecute” another player who takes on the role of the “victim”. The rescuer in this triangle plays a pivotal part and gets a lot of points in the playing of the game by comforting the victim and calming down the persecutor.  What many don’t realize is the investment that the rescuer has in the continuation of the game (it looks like the rescuer is trying to end the game when in fact that is often not the case).  The power and psychic satisfaction that comes from playing mediator can be profound. Thus the rescuer is often the one who either subtly sets up the game, eggs it on or keeps it cycling through its inevitable variations.  The end result is that neither victim nor persecutor takes responsibility and neither truly learns from their actions. Often when the rescuer is no longer effective (through death, disability or waning powers to effectively intervene because of the scale of the drama), the system has become so entrenched in patterns of persecution and victimhood (with the parties trading roles of victim and persecutor in escalating moves of retaliation) that the entire family system falls apart.

A variation of this game, Big, Bad World, places non-family forces in the role of persecutor with one or both parents or siblings rescuing the victim.  This can become a pattern that feeds the pernicious roots and expressions of entitlement and nepotism in families.

 I’ve Got a Secret.  This is a game primarily about the control of information and secrets.  Here one or more people are privy to information that the rest of the contestants (family members) must ferret out.  Sometimes this has to do with estate planning, sometimes business financials and performance, sometimes succession plans. The goal is to hide information usually because of anxiety about the consequences of revealing the information. A number of other games can either support  or include the game of I’ve Got a Secret (Capture the Flag, White Sheep/Black Sheep, Old Lion/Young Lion and Risk often have elements of I’ve Got a Secret woven into the way the game is being played).  A variation of this is Telephone where information and secrets are passed as currency to build alliances and power bases.

Solitaire.  Here the family simply decides it won’t play any collective game but that everyone will play their own chosen game as they see fit.  In some businesses that throw of a good bit of wealth, this can lead to a number of children independently playing “Let’s All Goof Off” or “Failure to Launch” which enables them to live off of passive income and not work or find other useful ways to meaningfully engage and contribute to the larger world. In other families it can simply lead to children playing solo – each with his or her own career and family but with little common engagement, vision or commitment to the family as a whole. The end result is that no one pays sufficient attention to the economic interests of the family and, through neglect, the economic engine sputters and dies.

Conclusions

There are undoubtedly other games (and please feel free to add a few of your own).  The point is that by looking at the complexity of family systems and identifying the key primary and secondary “games” that are being systematically played by the family can be quite useful and yield important insights.  One thing that is not captured in what has come before is the degree of real suffering that often results from the way families have structured their interactions.  It is easy to trivialize this pain and the use of the nomenclature of “games” can desensitize us to these harsher human realities.  At the same time the lens of looking at these systemic processes can help to illuminate the path out of suffering.

Identifying the games allows for more effective intervention and reveals the points of greatest leverage to change the system.  Using the metaphor and naming the games often allows the family members to see themselves and each other in new ways and with a clarity and degree of objectivity they had not had before.  It uncovers the systemic nature of their interactions and allows the family to see the ways in which they have set themselves up to fail. Often the role, motives and payoffs of each individual family member becomes clearer to self and others.  In short, understanding how the game is played can help families begin to change the game.

We would note that it is one thing for the advisor or even the family to see the games they are playing.  It is quite another to shift and change the game.  Changing games takes time and focus. It is very easy for families to take the insight that they have gained about their own gamesmanship and actually incorporate it into the game.  In these cases insight doesn’t lead to change, only more of the same. Using the knowledge gained most often requires the kind of discipline, persistent and progressive insight and self-awareness, and the intentional conversation that only comes from focused and well-designed facilitative intervention.  It is this kind of engagement that turns flashes of insight into action and, over time, shifts the playing field so that the family is playing a new, and far more productive game.

 

— November 6, 2013