Ernest Kasper laid down some strict rules before he'd even talk to Betsy about her coming to work at the foundry. First, she'd have to succeed in another company. Then she'd have to show him three other jobs she'd been offered. Within two years after collete, however, she'd passed his tests. "Give me anything," she pleaded with her dad, "as long as it's in the shop."
Although she collapsed in the bathtub each night after work, Betsy found she loved the place. "It's hard to prove to guys in a foundry that you can pull your weight," she remembers. "But I worked as hard as they did, and I never asked them to do anything I wouldn't do myself." She filled a Red Man brand tobacco pouch with bubble gum and carried it in the back pocket of her overalls, occasionally spitting on the floor with the best of them. And after months of shared sweat and endless conversations about pickup trucks and coon dogs, most of the men came to accept her. Within a year, she knew all 90-plus employees by name. She could see the business -- and life -- through their eyes.
When she completed her apprenticeship, Betsy made it her business to respond to the concerns she had picked up on the shop floor. In compliance with new Occupational Safety and Health Adminstration requirements, she implemented a right-to-know program that gave employees information about the hazardous chemicals used in the foundry. She promoted the company basketball games and had the cafeteria painted. And because of her experience working nearly every job in the plant, she was able to create the company's first quality-control manual, a step-by-step production guide that now lets Kasper Foundry compete for government contracts.
"Sure I'm proud of her," Ernie Kasper beams. "I'd be a damn fool not to be. The day and age when people keep women out of business is over. If they can do the job, why shouldn't they?"
"My aim is to take over the company," says Betsy. But, still, she wonders, "What if I want to have children?"
And there, it turns out, is the most difficult hurdle to the father-daughter succession. It hardly seems fair. No father would ask a son how he plans to juggle the responsibilities of business and family. But when it comes to daughters, fathers do ask. In time it is possible that that, too, may change. But somehow I doubt it.
The question here is not day care, or who will do the grocery shopping, or who will look after things during the three months after the baby is born. Those are concerns, but they are hardly concerns unique to the CEO of a family business. What is unique is the level of emotional commitment that a business extracts, especially from a daughter. Remember that for the daughter, the business is an extension of the family. That is one reason daughters are better at easing the pains of succession. But it is also a reason why a daughter's work life can more easily become all consuming.
Roland A. Bacci thinks about that. His 31-year-old daughter, Robin, took over the family-owned Mercedes-Benz dealership in San Rafael, Calif., after a long apprenticeship. Since then, sales have climbed by more than 25% a year. She shares his values and attitudes, right down to the habit of picking up any stray pieces of paper she finds on her inspection tours around the dealership. And she has put together her own team of new managers in sales, parts, and service. Her brother, David, also in the business, is satisfied with the arrangement.
So why isn't Roland Bacci happier? It's his daughter.
Oh, yes, she's thriving. She is healthy and attractive and successful beyond his wildest dreams. As a father, he's never felt closer to her than he does today. But he senses something is missing in her life -- and his. "She's so warm and so wonderful -- I'd love to see her married and having children," he says with a sigh. "That would make me happiest."
Robin doesn't fully share her father's concern. She works long and hard, bikes regularly, and takes pleasure in her tightly knit family. Other things will come in time.
"I've finally grown into myself," she says. "This is the happiest I've ever been." To anyone who speaks with her, it is clear that the challenge of running the dealership is now a seven-day-a-week high. It is her passion and her purpose.
"It takes all my energy, my love, and my attention," admits Robin. And in a sentence, that sums up why Roland Bacci is worried.
As the Cadillac pulls out of the company parking lot, he reaches into his pocket to make sure he still has the letter. It's to his daughter at college, and in it he asks her to consider joining him in the business after she's finished with her studies. No, he says, his health is fine. And business couldn't be better. It's just that he wanted her to know, formally and officially, that there was a big job with her name on it back home. He's confident, he says, that she can fill it.
Once he started writing, it all seemed to flow. He wanted her to know about the satisfactions of running a business, but some of the problems as well. There were the financial problems and the management pressures. But most of all were the succession problems any family business is bound to go through. He's not the easiest guy in the world to work for, but she knew that. And he's not likely to bow out too quickly. But they could work all that out if she were willing to make the commitment. Don't decide right away, he advised. Take some time to think about it.
He stops the car at the first intersection and hops out. As he holds the letter in the mailbox opening, he wonders how his son will react and whether he shouldn't first talk it over with his wife. But mostly he wonders what his daughter's reaction will be. She'd never expressed much of an interest in the firm, but then again, she'd never really been asked. The truth is, she has it all over her brothers -- in the way she thinks, in the way she handles people. He'd be lucky to get her. He was silly to have waited this long.
