The past is a full stop; the future is defined by smarter questions.

Opening hearts and minds

In 2005, my brother, then living at home in our parents' house at Färingsö outside Stockholm, gave me the most profound movie recommendation I have ever received — for the wonderful movie As It Is in Heaven. As an atheist, the title didn't inspire me. But my brother insisted. He even managed to convince my parents to watch it. I was living in Balmoral, Sydney, at the time and had the opportunity to eventually watch the movie at the nearby Art Deco Orpheum theatre in Cremorne on Sydney's North Shore, where incidentally it ran for 103 weeks straight, and (as documented in a 2007 Sydney Morning Herald article) beat Titanic in box office takings. The movie still gives me goose bumps just thinking about it, and anytime I hear ‘Gabriella's Song' from the soundtrack I start uncontrollably crying tears of joy and inspiration. Ew, I know. (If you have seen the movie, you will know exactly what I am talking about, though.)

I know from the times I have spent with clients in the United States that audiences there can be very appreciative and will occasionally break out into standing ovations. During my executive education in Bangalore, I also sat among Indians who clapped and expressed engagement throughout a Bollywood blockbuster. This wearing of hearts on the sleeves is not something that usually comes as naturally to Australians, but what emerged after the climactic finish to As It Is in Heaven moved me — deeply. The entire cinema audience stood up and broke out into a standing ovation that lasted for what felt like an eternity. A collective sigh of emotion had gripped our hearts and minds and we all stood in awe at what we had just experienced. I also came to feel a more personal message from this movie; I felt a calling, I cannot describe it any other way, to move home to Sweden to complete a mission.

Let me return to the narrative of the movie, which was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 77th Academy Awards, was directed by Swede Kay Pollak, and starred Michael Nyqvist and Frida Hallgren. In the film, Daniel Daréus (Nyqvist) is an internationally celebrated composer whose life ambition is to ‘make music which opens people's hearts'. He lives the intense high life on the global music scene and is in high demand, but his own heart is not in good health, and at the beginning of the movie he suffers a heart attack on stage. This leads him to retire back to his native village in Norrland, in the north of Sweden. There he buys the abandoned old school and, as he re-explores his old town and its surroundings, memories of his traumatised childhood, the loss of his mother at an early age and schoolyard bullying re-emerge. Soon after arrival, the local pastor visits and asks Daniel whether he would come to listen to the church choir. Grudgingly, Daniel, who wants a break from music, caves in, even though it is obvious the choir and the pastor want his help in coaching and leading the choir. While reluctant at first, Daniel slowly develops an excitement in helping the choir, and in the unlikely setting of Norrland, far away from the global stage, he rediscovers his own love for music.

The choir consists of a diverse mix of locals, with their own secrets, aspirations, internal dynamics and emotional baggage. Daniel learns to appreciate each and every one of them and helps them to find their unique voice, tone and expression, and together they find harmony in the diversity. Gabriella (Helen Sjöholm) is particularly talented, and Daniel writes her a solo performance — ‘Gabriella's Song' — which helps her regain her self-esteem and stand up to her physically abusive husband, Connie (Per Moberg), who incidentally was Daniel's own tormentor as a child. The choir's success grows, and as Daniel grows more confident in his role as the leader of the choir, he applies for the vacant role of cantor, and confidently steps into the role as an employee of the pastor. As a visionary, Daniel employs unconventional methods that are seen as heretical and challenging to the pastor, who originally asked for Daniel's help and who feels like his authority is compromised by the charismatic composer. A romance slowly develops between Daniel and Lena (Hallgren), which is used as a pretext by the pastor to start a church investigation into the blasphemous practices of Daniel. Eventually, the pastor suffers a mental breakdown because of the changes brought in by Daniel and the fact that church attendance is lower than the choir concerts. This culminates in the pastor threatening to kill both Daniel and himself as a result of the changing status quo. As you're likely starting to see, the narrative is in many ways a story about the friction between futurephiles and futurephobes, and the dynamics of change.

Unbeknown to the rest of the choir, Arne (Lennart Jähkel), the choir's unofficial brand ambassador, registers the choir to compete at the annual ‘Let the People Sing' event in Innsbruck, Austria. Daniel is hesitant as he doesn't believe that people can compete in music, and he is cautious about re-emerging onto the global stage, considering his own heart's health. However, his reborn love for music, finding an outlet to write ‘music that opens people's hearts', and the persuasion of the group lead him to accepting the challenge, and the group sets off on a transformational odyssey to Austria together. The final scene of the movie shows Daniel dreaming about rushing towards his own younger self in a field of wheat, fulfilling his life's ambition of writing music that opens people's hearts.

So why does this movie speak so strongly to me? I mean, every time I watch it (and as you can likely tell from my preceding description of it, I have watched this movie in the double-digits), I am literally not able to not be moved to tears of joy. And I am not one who cries easily (unless called for … ). Even though I know this sounds grandiose or even deluded, I feel like in some ways this movie was written for me. In my more megalomaniacal moments, I get a sense that, just like Daniel, I have built an international reputation — as a futurist, mind you — and like Daniel I have always had an ambition to open people's hearts (and minds) to the world of possibility and become their best selves — to drive progress, discovery and growth. For ten years I have had an opportunity to do that on the international stage — from Sydney, Singapore, Shanghai and San Francisco to Stockholm. Combined with an ambition to move home to my own native village, I wanted to reconnect with my roots, and help change the fortunes of my mum and dad's choir at Georg Sörman. Like Daniel, employing heretical methods, changing processes, and occasionally going against the wishes of the established leadership (Mum and Dad) has not always been easy, and certainly anybody that ever tried changing the status quo will be able to identify with this experience.

Reversing roles: mentor son, heroine mother

Since shifting base from Sydney to Stockholm in 2013 (and back again in 2016), I have asked myself why I embarked on an uncertain odyssey of implementation in Sweden. My brother advised me against this ‘fool's errand', and my Global Executive MBA cohort warned me of the downside of engaging with family business, especially during a particularly successful phase of my own business, Thinque. My dad told me that I was better off staying away.

There is a smorgasbord of reasons why I persisted, some of which I have already covered in earlier chapters. And ‘no' is not usually a good counterargument when you are talking with a change agent. Ultimately, I also knew my work wasn't done with just writing text on a page in a strategy document. The ideas we had generated together between the generations after I first issued the call to adventure deserved to see the light of day in a practical way.

And this quest wasn't just about restoring Mum's honour. I also wanted to help my dad, who retired as a colonel in 2006 at the age of 55 from the shrinking Swedish defence force, and who had been complaining about how the business, and Mum's micromanagement of it, stood in the way of the retired life he had imagined. Not only this, but he had also complained about how the reactive injections of life savings to meet payroll needs was draining his and Mum's joint future life design. Passive aggressive comments had been uttered to me and my brother many times about the impact of the business on his (and family) life. He often commented that if he had known retired life away from the professional forces would mean unpaid slave labour for the family business without a sliver of a hope of a financial dividend, he would never have retired in the first place.

In 2006/7, Dad's acquiescence had been secured with a 40 per cent stake in the business, and in many moments of weakness since that time he has expressed his exasperation by asking that the business doors get locked and the key thrown away. I don't believe he fully means it when he says this, but the emotional sentiment of the supporting partner in so many family businesses is encapsulated in this comment. Of course, the problem with that solution is that it is not really a solution. Locking the door doesn't lock out all future problems. I was convinced that Dad's future ambition for peace and quiet, a life beyond the business and for a future payout for his ‘sweat equity' and support for the family business and of Mum since 1979 provided me with an invitation to help him on his quest to climb Maslow's ladder of retiree self-actualisation.

The conversations with my dad have often reminded me of Cat Stevens' epic ‘Father and Son'. In this, one of my all-time favourite songs, the cross-generational exchange hones in on a son's desire to break away and create his own destiny, while the father advises his son that it's too early to make these sorts of changes. Instead, the father tells his son he's still young and has plenty of time, that he should take his time to think more, marry, settle down. The heartaching pre-odyssey dialogue is sung magnificently by Cat Stevens in two different registers to represent each of the characters interchangeably, and to bring alive their unique generational perspectives on life. (You can check out the online version by going to YouTube and searching ‘father and son Cat Stevens'.) In a relationship where, statistically, Dad has more of his life behind him than in front of him, and, statistically, with me having a longer future ahead of me than a past behind me, the phrases speak to our family dynamics. Unlike the son in ‘Father and Son', however, I did not now face the choice of going away and creating my own destiny. For many years I had already done that successfully around the world. Contrary to the younger generation in Stevens' song my destiny was to lean in, to come home, and to support because I could see that neither Mum nor Dad were ‘old, but happy'. Rather than keeping all the things inside, I decided that while it might be hard, it was harder to ignore all the things I knew. It was time to help my parents overcome their futurephobia.

You might well be thinking now that Anders is trying to play Holden Caulfield's character from Catcher in the Rye. And, yes, my psychologist may say the same thing. I wanted to ensure that my parents' future retirement would be lived happily and financially stress-free, and with no sense of regret. And I also wanted to stop hearing complaints about the business during social gatherings of our small family unit of four. Something had to be done. I couldn't watch them in this destructive rat wheel anymore. The love letter hadn't been read, the instruction book for a better future had been ignored, and the complaints kept coming. Enough was enough. I had to stand with my mother (see figure 4.1, overleaf) and join the quest as its mentor, and ‘lift some milk' (as we call ‘executing on stuff' in Swedish).

This quest was not purely selfless, as you can likely tell from some of the reasons I have run through for starting it and issuing the call to adventure. I have no intention of pretending that the success of the ‘Georg Sörman 100' strategy was devoid of self-interest. However, I believe that my aspirations were fully aligned with the spoken objectives, goals and ambitions of my parents — at least their verbalised and overt ambitions. My transparent and selfish reasons also included the aligned objective of seeing through the implementation of our strategy with positive financial results, and ensuring that the business would be professionally managed and in ‘saleable' condition (in a family business context, this doesn't mean that we would necessarily sell, but that the business would be attractive to a potential suitor). The business's success would benefit its two shareholders, Mum and Dad. Importantly, this success would also give them peace of mind and pride — and, from my perspective, help their relationships. And I knew that the involvement of the fourth generation in a family business selling menswear would be viewed positively by the market and help attract a new generation (my generation) back to the brand, while also strengthening the authenticity of a brand known for timelessness and timeliness. The collaboration with my parents, who are baby boomers, would also send a signal that we are as committed to the baby boomer clientele as we are to gen X and gen Y. In this sense, again, our interests aligned.

From a personal credibility perspective, there was also an element of wanting to ‘walk the talk'. Over four continents thousands of people have heard me speak about Georg Sörman and its struggles with change, technology and digital disruption. In many ways, I as part of the fourth generation have become a brand ambassador and spokesman for the modernised brand. If the implementation failed, what would it say about me as a management consultant, strategist and futurist? Would I lose all credibility? And if we failed, where would it leave my parents? How could we inspire other small business owners, independent businesses and family operators that a viable business future existed in a globalised world of scale, speed and automation? For too long, I had been preaching to appreciative clients and audiences seeking innovation, change and agility. Now it was time to help my difficult, (occasionally) futurephobic and ageing parents. It was time to come home. And unlike the parable of the prodigal son, I had nothing to be ashamed of — I was returning home from international success. And yet I was soon to discover that it is challenging to become a prophet in your hometown.

Fool's errand?

My brother has often described my mentor's journey to Sweden to help in the renaissance of the family business as perfectly fitting the definition of a fool's errand — that is, a task or activity that has no hope of success. I am not sure I agree with either the definition or his analysis.

Firstly, let's look at the definition, and my issue with it. Fools have historically been so much more than comedians or archetypes of ridicule. In fact, court fools, or jesters, have played an important role in royal courts around the world since time immemorial: speaking truth to power. According to Beatrice K Otto in her book Fools are everywhere: The court jester around the world, they have played crucial roles in negotiations, diplomatic disputes and in challenging both nepotism and military strategy. Because of the fool's use of wit and humour, rulers would often turn to them for advice, particularly in situations where they felt threatened by the noblemen or aristocracy around them, or in situations where they were surrounded by yes-men, with little to contribute. In other words, a fool's errand may in fact be taken to mean successful negotiations and strategic results if we dig a bit deeper. And I believe that in the curious case of Georg Sörman, the errand can still be completed by the heroine of this story.

Failing to succeed — a family business' self-fulfilling prophecy

What we were up against is the generational prophecy of family business (see figure 4.2, overleaf). Across cultures and contexts, there is a saying which in Swedish holds ‘förvärva, ärva, fördärva'. In English, this means ‘acquire, inherit, poison'. (In Swedish, it rhymes.) In other words, the first generation starts and builds the business, the second generation nurtures and brings the business success, and the third generation ruins the business. The English-language equivalent holds that ‘it is only but three generations from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves.' How convenient, given that Georg Sörman sells beautiful Eton shirts! According to Boston's Family Firm Institute, one study shows that only 30 per cent of family businesses succeed in shifting to the second generation, and only 13 per cent manage to shift to the third generation (my mum's generation), and that when it comes to the fourth generation (my brother and me), only 3 per cent are controlled by the founder's family. While controversial, this is sometimes known as the 30/13/3 rule in a family business context. So, not only was I up against a very tradition-bound culture and the disparate interests of the owners, but I was also facing the gargantuan task of going up against the generational prophecy to see if we could get Georg Sörman beyond the hump and into the 3 per cent.

By way of comparison, here are the short- and medium-term prospects of small businesses in the United States, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics:

About half of all new establishments survive five years or more and about one-third survive 10 years or more. As one would expect, the probability of survival increases with a firm's age. Survival rates have changed little over time.

Yet, something highly disturbing seems to be happening around the third generation in a family business context. And according to researchers and experts in family business, like Annelie Karlsson from FBN Sweden, if you get beyond the third generation, the family business can become a ‘crown jewel' that doesn't cause an intra-family disruption, but becomes a cherished treasure which combines rather than divides. This is what I wanted my family to achieve. Were we failing to succeed and, if so, why? Why wasn't I, like the fictional Daniel Daréus (in As It Is in Heaven), able to fully open Mum's and Dad's hearts? How was it that the futurist, who is able to successfully package a wonderful yet challenging view of the future for tens of thousands of unknown people around the world each year, was sucking at it in a family business context? Was this a case of the plumber's taps always leaking? (Or, as we say in Sweden, the shoemaker's son having the worst shoes?) We needed to cross the chasm to the fourth generation, yet the collaboration was failing. I was back in Sweden and was ‘lifting the milk' — I was meeting with new suppliers, going to procurement meetings, collaborating with the accountants and lawyers of Georg Sörman, implementing the Georg Sörman 100 brand strategy by updating customer touch points, training the staff, meeting with media outlets, creating corporate partnerships and enabling sponsorship opportunities. And I was starting to see some changes in Mum (such as her joining FBN, for example). But as soon as it came to rolling up our shirtsleeves and implementing the ‘Georg Sörman 100' strategy and investments, I saw evidence of sabotaging behaviour — little metaphorical cigarette butts like those I mentioned in chapter 3 — which flew in the face of the strategy. By extension, this made the prophecy of ‘from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations' all the more likely.