It puzzles me how often companies characterize themselves as families. I think that’s not the case at all, no matter how tight-knit an organization is. I think of Ipswitch not as a family, but as a community.

In some ways I can see why people refer to companies as families. Employees spend a lot of time together, form friendships, and even at times fall in love and get married – which can work as long as neither person has influence over the other’s job assignments or career path. (I recall that work is one of the top places that couples meet. That’s usually in companies bigger than Ipswitch, though we did have two employees get married once.)

But calling a company a family distorts the picture, and encourages the wrong kind of thinking about what the company is all about. Companies have a purpose, which includes producing products or services and convincing customers to purchase them. Companies must also take in at least as much money as flows out, or eventually they go out of business. As part of that, managers must regularly decide on the right number and mix of people to employ, assess performance, and adjust staffing accordingly. Families are forever, no matter how poorly they get along. Siblings, parents and children, cousins, grandparents, etc. may feud and not talk for years, but they remain a family. A family doesn’t have to actively accomplish anything to stay a family. Thinking of a company as a family encourages a feeling that the company will always exist, which Andy Grove would find antithetical to his famous comment that only the paranoid survive.

Communities also have a purpose. If they fail to fulfill their purpose, they disintegrate and become a collection of individuals, who typically seek to form new communities. People in communities also form strong bonds, and can feel a deep connection with others. But the makeup of a community changes over time. People come and go, but as long as community achieves its purpose, it continues to exist. That sounds much more like a company than a family to me.

So say my sisters and me.

Posted by Roger Greene
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