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For the first time in history, four generations are together in the workplace—Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z. With some of the oldest Gen Z in their early to mid-20s, and some Baby Boomers still working into their 70s, the wide age gap is unprecedented. 

Human resources experts say it can become contentious when you have four generations with different values and expectations working together. 

Until the pandemic, the work world was built on how Baby Boomers (generally) prefered to work. The pandemic, of course, threw everything into chaos, but many are working hard to bring things back to how they were. The younger generations are fighting it. They’ve tasted “freedom” from long commutes and having to wait until their weekends to do household chores. They don’t want things to go back to the way they were.

And that’s just one issue facing four generations of business workers. There are plenty of other challenges as leaders learn how to gain consensus and build collaboration among a 50-year age difference. 

For family businesses, the same is said to be true. Before 2019, only 3% of family businesses saw a fourth generation working alongside the first generation. But that is beginning to change as longevity increases, founders work longer before any type of transition occurs, and their great-grandchildren have the opportunity to join the family business. 

Dennis Jaffe has done some work with generative families—those who last beyond three generations—and found that many of the attributes of a successful family business are the same as the businesses that successfully manage multiple generations. He also has found that one thing stands out when the family is looking to increase the value of the business, either to pass along a more successful company or to sell it: the strength of the bench.

Several years ago, I was in a Vistage group with a generative family business owner. He was getting close to retirement, and his sons wanted to do the same. They were considering selling the business and wanted the group’s help on how to do that.

The best advice he got was to build his bench strength. If he and his sons were all going to retire, that meant his grandchildren would be the “bench,” and some of them (at the time) were too young and inexperienced for a buyer to consider the management team competent. 

After that meeting, he spent the next seven years building his bench. He hired a president—someone who was well-known in their industry for scaling and growing businesses. His sons stayed involved as they created educational and skill-development programs for the rising generation. And he began to remove himself from the day-to-day operations so a buyer wouldn’t see him as critical to the business’s success. 

My friend’s goal was to build bench strength that was not reliant on him and his sons but put all of the success on his grandchildren and the new president. 

It worked. He ended up selling for a multiple of eight times EBITDA, his sons gracefully exited the business after a three-year workout, his grandchildren currently have leadership roles, and he stayed on the board to monitor the success (and profitability) of the business he built. It was the best of all worlds for him and his family. But he could only have done it by building the bench strength of external professionals and family members. 

As you work to manage multiple generations in your business and think about increasing the value of the business, keep my friend in mind. It won’t happen overnight, you have to plan for it, and your family needs to be on board, but it can happen. 

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