Inheritance

If ever you have a company or an empire, never leave it to your son. Succession like this leads to failure, as the person my not be suited to the role. Look at Oliver and Richard Cromwell, or Darius the great and Darius the third.

So it is, in a much more modest way, with my current boss. He is the fourth generation head of a construction/development company, and if ever a man was ill-suited to the role, it's him. I won't make a list of the shortcomings, because it's pointless and not a criticism per se. Some people have key skill sets, others have different skills. One of the keys to a successful life is to find your role. Chief Exec of a construction firm is not his.

So, I find myself, struggling in the company. My own skills by contrast do match the requirements of the development industry. More than a decade of success in brutal PLC's reflects this, and hence we don't work well together, since it;s hard to say to the boss "You're talking bollocks" and harder still if you are the boss, to hear it.

But in one of the biggest construction booms ever, this company has lost money (yes lost money) for the last five years.

So the message is, if you have a company, only let your son run it, if he would have made it to the top anyway. Taking him into the firm and doing the "one day all this will be yours" speech is bad for him, and bad for everyone else, because the talented will think "No chance of me making the top with junior here, I'm off" and you'll end up losing the really valuable people.