"Employees sometimes try to deal with us separately, as if we're not equals. Some, in fact, have lost their jobs thinking they could work here without dealing with Doug. Potential investors had problems dealing with our management style in the beginning, too. There's a real stereotype of the father-son partnership that patronizes the son, and sometimes it's gotten in our way. But it's gotten easier and easier with time.
"We've managed to impress upon people that not recognizing Doug is not to recognize a big chunk of the heart and soul of the business. We've made it very clear that if you have a patronizing attitude, you'll fail at SCO, or you'll not do business with SCO. After a few years of fighting it, it's rare that we find somebody who doesn't treat Doug as an equal. I don't think Fred Wang ever reached that stage. I think he was always in that shadow. Still, I believe that many of Wang's mistakes had to do with bureaucracy -- not with any father-son situation that may have developed there."
ERNEST D. KAY JR.
"Just as there's a Chinese culture, there's an old Southern culture, I think, and they both say 'Respect your elders,' " says 60-year-old Ernest D. Key Jr., who succeeded his father as president of Atlanta Belting Co., in Atlanta, back in 1964. The 67-year-old company is now a $10-million operation, with 100 employees. "Maybe Fred Wang's a throwback to my era. He seems to have succeeded his father mostly because that's what his father wanted, and if that's true, I'm with him.
"I grew up knowing that I was going into the family business. It was expected. Now that I think about it, my father never said why it was so important that I come into the company, but I think it was based on the idea of the agrarian society, where the land is passed down through the male children. I think he ran the company like a farm, and expected me to be one of the hired hands. Was that fair? Sure it was. I felt like I should work for the company. Sometimes I've wondered if that wasn't a mistake, but . . . well, it ain't doing me any good at 60 to think about that.
"Early in my career I did rebel once. I got a job somewhere else, but I never actually took it. My father and I had a very bad disagreement, and I can't recall whether I got fired or quit -- it was one of those shouting matches. My brother-in-law told me I'd hurt my father and that I should go talk to him. I did, and we had our most meaningful conversation up to that time. I came back to work, and he was glad I did. So was I.
"A father-son relationship is hard, because it's emotional. Sons revere their fathers, but they also know a lot about them, and that makes things hard when they're in business together. Say that you, the son, have this sterling idea. You bring it to your father on a bad day, and because it's a bad day and he's known you since you were spitting Pablum he says it's silly. If you weren't his son, he'd listen. But you don't think of that. He's your father, and you believe him, and it hurts.
"Sometimes it's the opposite. Maybe he's more enthralled than he should be with that sterling idea. What I'm saying is, the emotion of the relationship makes everything carry so much weight. You disappoint each other very easily, yet you also have tremendous emotional power over each other. It just doesn't happen like that when it's a professional manager and an employee. Things are different when Dad's the boss.
"My father's friends always said that whatever my father touched turned to gold, and that permeated my thinking. On several occasions, when we didn't see eye-to-eye -- even though I was convinced I was right -- I thought, who was I to argue with a man who had accomplished so much in his life? You can say I was being noble or loyal about it if you like, but it was also that he was a proven entity, while I was unproven."
MARK TAYLOR
"Was it difficult to succeed my father? Only in the sense that I had to work harder to prove myself, to show people that I wasn't where I was just because I was my father's son," says Mark Taylor, 39, president of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., a Wheaton, Ill., publisher of religious books and magazines, with 160 employees and more than $25 million in sales. "I've been president and CEO for five years. My father, Kenneth N. Taylor, is still chairman.
"There isn't much discussion of real business strategy between me and my father, but he does influence corporate values -- why we do what we do. Even though I've got the title of CEO, he remains the visionary for the company. He founded it, he brought it to its first level of success.
"There were plenty of times I wished I worked somewhere else, in a totally different industry, just to have the experience of seeing how somebody else does something. But I didn't. I had to do it all here, and it took a few years to work myself through that identity issue.
"As I look at Fred Wang, he had to have been aware of the lack of confidence people felt in him. And if he hadn't been able to do the things that would allow him to see himself apart from his father, I don't think he could have enjoyed his job. I know I wouldn't. Fred probably had a lot of internal conflict as to whether he was doing a good job, and whether he was even capable of doing a good job. Were I in his place, I'd probably be very, very relieved to see Dad come back and take over.
"For me, my confidence comes in recognizing that I have different strengths from my father. I know I can complement his skills. But that realization came as a function of age. Early on I was frustrated because I knew I wasn't super-creative, like my father. It bugged the dickens out of me. But one day I recognized that he didn't need that from me. He needed someone to help him sort the good ideas from the bad ones. That was liberating, knowing I had a unique contribution to make. It allowed me to make peace with myself."
