‘Our CEO speaker series has become a crown jewel for people who just want to walk into a room and hear a great story from another CEO, and then go back to work,’ says Michelline Dufort, director of the CEO & Family Enterprise Center.
As director of the CEO & Family Enterprise Center, Michelline Dufort connects family-owned businesses with resources — including each other. Through expert speaker presentations, peer group sessions and leadership training, the center helps owners navigate the challenges that can arise when husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, parents and children, and other family members are working side by side.
Dufort was recently a guest on the NH Business Review “Down to Business” podcast. This article was adapted from that interview and was edited for clarity.
Q. What does the center do, and what is your role within it?
A. The CEO & Family Enterprise Center was formed 3 ½ decades ago by family businesses who came together. Our main mission is working with family businesses on business growth to succession planning to succession implementation and all the things around it that are really unique to family businesses. We diversified about 15 years ago, and we’ve added in a CEO speaker series and CEO peer groups.
Q. The center is affiliated with the University of New Hampshire but not funded by the university. How does that work?
A. When we were founded, those family businesses owned it and brought in sponsors, and that model of being self-funded has just worked for us. We have an association with the business school because it makes sense on so many levels. People are familiar with UNH as alums, and they’re used to turning to UNH for resources. It flows the other way, too. A lot of times we have members who are looking for crackerjack interns or to hire, and there’s a lot that goes back and forth between business classes.
Q. Tell us about the issues family businesses face, such as husbands and wives who are working together, the succession issues, maybe a company is growing and they need a different CEO than the person who started.
A. Every year in the spring, we get together, and I pull in as many members as I can for lunch. I’ll throw up a big whiteboard and say, “What are you struggling with? What do you want to hear about?” And you’re exactly right, that’s the stuff they talk about. Growing the business for an exit of some sort. We hope that exit is to the next generation. We talk about different ways to structure that deal. We talk around the time and the cadence and the communications that needs to happen around that.
We spend a lot of time on best practices. One thing that a lot of family businesses get tripped on is compensation. There’s this feeling like, “I’m being greedy if I take too much from the company.” Well, no, and you have to be at market value to attract the right talent.
We talk about family relations — husbands and wives, cousins, brothers, sisters. We talk about that really tricky area where there’s a family where some of the siblings work in and some work out.
How do you keep the family members who don’t work in the business aware of what’s going on and feel that they have a connection to it, although it’s not their day job?
Q. What are your core programs, and what do they offer to family-owned businesses?
A. The family business program rotates every month. For the rest of our programs, you do not need to be a family business to participate, including our Emerging Leaders program (offered in partnership with the Business & Industry Association and Sojourn Partners).
When you look at the person you want to emulate, you have to realize at some point you cannot be a copycat of anyone. You have to find your own voice and your own confidence. Emerging Leaders is a wonderful way on that path to finding your own style.
The peer groups are something that has exploded for us. Every month, eight to 10 business owners come together, and they present about the inner workings of their business, their concerns, their aspirations, the things they’re grappling with, the things they’re excited about.
It’s a very closed, private, completely confidential, noncompetitive environment that is facilitated by a person who is very business minded and has a great deal of business experience.
