I’m finding it hard to carve out time to write our family business plan. Just as many companies face that end-of-year frenzy, so too, does a family. The shopping, baking, decorating, and wrapping, combined with pageants and parties, leaves little time for business affairs, be it personal or professional. But without the planning, we’re just spinning our wheels in a giant rat race to nowhere. And I just don’t have time to be running nowhere anymore.

So we scheduled a family business meeting. The agenda? Defining our family philosophy so that we could develop a family mission statement.

It was surprisingly easy and what resulted were the values and lessons that we want to impart on our children. Values which are important to us. Lessons that we have learned. Guide posts to becoming good, kind, responsible, honest and happy human beings.

It didn’t seem right to take such an important document and stick it in a pile of papers, only to be shuffled from room to room. I want and need a daily reminder to keep us all on the straight and narrow. So I painted it, on a large over sized canvas and it now hangs on our living room wall for all to see.

This represents who we are and want to be. This will be the basis for our family mission statement. These are the words that we choose to live by.

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