There is a large business consulting firm whose school of thought is starting to become more and more prevalent within the business world. Their fundamental idea is that companies are run exactly as they are structured to run. Businesses that are struggling financially are struggling because somewhere in their business structure, it’s geared to give you struggling results. Those who are overcoming and being successful are doing so because somewhere within the organization, there is structures that are producing those results. So what does this consulting firm do? They go about through the business structure and find those areas that are directly connected to the metrics that they want to change and change them.
Some will argue that a particular business failed because of some external event completely out of their control. That may very well be the case but the counter could be that the business did not properly plan or implement a proper risk management strategy to prepare for the unknown. Regardless of the outcome whether good or bad, the vast majority of the time you’ll see businesses have precisely the outcomes that they are designed to produce.
I have found the same to be true in my own life many times. My life is more or less a result of the decisions or lack thereof that I have made. I’m precisely where my decisions have led me to be. 
There really isn’t a right or wrong to where we are in our lives but for most part, I’ve found that my life is what I have made it to be and whenever I don’t like a certain aspect of it, in order to change the unwanted outcomes, I have to make the fundamental changes in my personal “business structure” that will lead me to different results.
Another thing this consulting firm does is look at the founders of the company especially in new startup firms. Their conjecture is that new startups take on the personality and character traits of the founders in the startup. In other words the new company takes on all of the good traits that the founders bring to the table and also inherently incorporates their weaknesses as well. This is yet another analogy that I have found to be true in new “family startups.” Families inherently take on the personalities traits both for the good and bad, of the husbands and wives. They are naturally molded by them because they are creating everything that is to become of the family. They are defining in a very real way, their “company” aka family culture and how they are going to be running things.
So what should we be doing in our families? We should continue to exemplify the positive traits that we have in our families. Internally look at our situations and see the areas that we are doing well at and continue to progress in those areas. However, we should also take a good look at ourselves and see those areas where we may be lacking a bit both individually and as a collective whole. Sometimes we feel that the little things in our personal lives won’t affect the family as a whole but nothing can be further from the truth. Families are a living, breathing organization that as stated earlier on takes on both the good and negative traits of its founders. Families are also, in a very real way a byproduct of the decisions that we make for better or for worse. This starts clearly from the first major decision of whom we want to be our partner in this family to career choices, and family traditions that we instill within them.
Ultimately our families usually are what we make them to be. They usually follow suit to where our priorities lay. Not the priorities that we imaginatively hold in our minds, but the priorities from what we actually do and where we actually spend our valuable time on. As the title of the post states decisions lead to destiny. Our decisions are what will ultimately determine the overall direction of where the family will be in 20-30 years.
