My Lakota Friend

By Bob Gariano

Two decades ago, we were on a fly-fishing trip and camped in the Angostura State Recreation Area in South Dakota. This magnificent woodland is 60 miles south of Rapid City. It is in the middle of the sacred Indian lands of the Black Hills. The camp sites are adjacent to the Cheyenne River that runs through the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands. That river is a vital waterway for the Native American people who settled in this area more than a millennium ago. Along these shores, Cheyenne, Lakota, and Blackfeet hunters killed buffalo and other game to support their families.

During our trip that year I met Albert and two of his sons. Since that first introduction, I have been privileged to meet a number of other people in his extended family. Albert lives in the Silver City area north of Mount Rushmore and he and his family trace lineage back more than two hundred years to when the Lakota first came to these prairies. Today Albert, who owns substantial acreage, runs a successful ranching operation. He also manages his father’s real estate business. Over the years I have visited him often during my trips and he and I have established a long distance friendship.

Five years ago, while having lunch with Albert in a diner in Deadwood, the charming little town that was made infamous by the eponymous television series, my friend asked me about the Lake Forest High School hoodie that I was wearing. Instantly embarrassed, I began to apologize for the logo on my chest and told him that my local public school had this logo because their mascot was an Indian scout. Albert smiled at my concern and said a single word, “Hunkpapa”.

Albert went on to explain. “Do not be embarrassed. Be proud. Hunkpapa means scout in my ancestral language. The Hunkpapa is one of the seven council fires or clans of the Lakota tribe. We do not say Sioux because that word means enemy and was only used by our rivals, the Blackfeet. But we are very proud to be scouts. Hunkpapa were the most stalwart and dependable of the Lakota people, the word Hunkpapa having the same meaning to us as Spartans or Centurions might to you Mediterranean people.”

“Hunkpapa literally translated means the “head of the circle”. You see, we were a nomadic people. The Lakota camped in a circle with women, children and livestock in the middle. The circle of lodges was open at only one point and that is where we Hunkpapa, or scouts, set our teepees. No interloper could enter the encampment as long as it was guarded by our clan.”

“We Hunkpapa also scouted the terrain when the we moved our tribe through the flat valleys of the Platte and Big Cheyenne Rivers. My great grandfather was a renown Hunkpapa warrior. He knew Sitting Bull, Gall, and Running Antelope, all of whom fought against Custer at the Little Big Horn battle. When the Oglala Sioux formed an alliance against the settlers, they made sure to include the Hunkpapa scouts. These Lakota scouts were known as the most courageous warriors.”

Albert is a man who has both physical and intellectual power that is hard to miss. His raven dark hair, high cheek bones, and broad shoulders give evidence of his distant ancestors who came to this continent from Asia. These were the warriors who ruled the steppes and who later would establish the largest empire of the middle ages. They were the people that Marco Polo said were the finest light cavalry in the world. The Lakota and many other Native Americans trace their heritage to that same people that historians call the Mongols.  

Sitting over lunch at the little diner in Deadwood, I could still imagine Albert’s Lakota ancestors scouting the way for their tribe as they hunted buffalo on this prairie. My embarrassment turned into pride. Albert went on.

“Several years ago someone in Washington announced that the land around Black Hills would be repatriated and returned to their indigenous owners. I bet it was some city person who did not know our history. We were worried. The Lakota had taken the Black Hills from the Cheyenne in a bloody war in the middle of the 1800s. Some of my acreage is on that land. For a while, we thought our ranch would be taken away and given back to the descendants of these Cheyenne people. Fortunately, this plan never materialized and we kept those acres in our family.”

Before we ended our lunch, I offered Albert my other Lake Forest sweat shirt that was packed in the back of our SUV with our tents. He grinned broadly and seemed proud to get this gift from his city friend. I watched him as pulled it on over his head and broad shoulders. Then, with a wave, he got into his big muddy diesel pickup truck and headed back to his ranch and his family. I headed out for some afternoon fishing.

Memories of a Golf Tournament

by Bob Gariano

It has been six months since the BMW FedEx Golf Tournament was played at Conway Farms Golf Club in Lake Forest. Both nature and the Conway Farms staff have shown their remarkable resiliency in the last four weeks. The tinker toy structures erected on the course have all been disassembled and carted off to be used at other events. The second practice green has been reinstalled where a two story hospitality pavilion stood two weeks ago. Because the early autumn weather has been mild, the heather and indigenous grasses in the rough are already starting to grow again after being trod flat from thousands of spectator feet.

More than 130,000 spectators paid to attend the four day event at the Conway Farms. They were assisted by nearly 2500 volunteers who did everything from driving shuttle buses to operating cash registers at the merchandise tent to holding microphones for player interviews. The golfers and staff were challenged by the capricious weather. Early in the tournament week temperatures reached well into the nineties, but by the weekend a cold front had arrived with a drenching rain on Sunday that required the final round be postponed until Monday. Hot or chilly, the prairie wind was a constant factor.

The golf course was a show case for its first professional tournament and represented a challenge for these top professional athletes. The seventy professionals shot an average score over 72 holes of a nearly even par of 70.8 per round. The 5th and 13th holes earned their low handicap ratings by being the hardest with average scores of 4.24. The easiest hole statistically was the par 5 number 14. As for easy pitch and putt, forget it. All the par threes averaged significantly above par for the week.

The wide range of scoring created some debate about whether the course was hard or easy. This made Jim Furyk's score of 59 on Friday all the more noteworthy. Only the sixth player to shot a 59 in PGA tournament play, he did it while the rest of the field struggled. The next closest scores on that Friday were two players who could only muster 65s. There have been over three million professional tournament rounds that have yielded these six scores of 59. One of these record low scores belongs to Lake Forest's Chip Beck who shot a score of 59 during a round at the 1991 Las Vegas Invitational.

In spite of Furyk's historic performance on Friday, Zach Johnson made a heroic run during the final round on Monday that clinched the tournament win in Lake Forest. Two weeks later, Henrik Stenson won the overall FedEx Cup title with its $10 million prize money at East lake Golf Course in Atlanta. It was the same fiery Stenson who, after an unfortunate bounce, intentionally broke one of his clubs over a rock as he approached the green on number 18 at Conway Farms. That stream contains plenty of errant golf balls, but only one dismembered head from a professional's driver. Of course, according to the rules of the game, that headless shaft continued to be counted as one of his 14 clubs in his bag.

For all of the statistics, the essence of the Conway Farms event distilled to the quality of hospitality and conviviality of people of the North Shore who provided a backdrop for the event. One day late in the week, volunteers in the merchandise tent could catch sight of three miniature Ricky Fowlers, splendidly attired in bright orange from head to toe with matching over sized caps. These young fans came out to cheer their hero. Their youthful enthusiasm for the game ensures that PGA tournaments will be well attended long into the future.

It was that same day that Tom Fazio stopped by the members' pavilion adjacent to the 17th green. Fazio designed the Conway Farms course almost three decades ago and his commitment to exemplary course design has not waned. He spent time describing the challenges and techniques of the course with a small group of club members.

Perhaps most indicative of the week was this conversation overheard near the BMW owners pavilion on Saturday afternoon. A young spectator and golf enthusiast engaged a veteran observer with the idea that "This course cannot be all that hard. After all, Furyk shot a 59 yesterday." The sagacious veteran reflected for a moment and then said, "I don't know about that. I do know that there are seven billion people on our planet. This week, the best seventy golfers from among those seven billion have come to Lake Forest to play golf at Conway Farms. Even motivated with a chance at the $10 million prize, only half of those seventy professionals could shot par or below for the first round. That must mean something."

Why Family Businesses Ignore Succession Planning

By Robert Gariano

Many famous Chicago companies began as family businesses and have grown into successful and profitable enterprises. Companies like Grainger (NYSE:GWW), Oil-Dri (NYSE:ODC), Northern Trust (NASDAQ:NTRS), and John Sanfillipo & Son (NASDAQ:JBSS) are all examples of valuable publicly traded companies that were started by families in the Chicago area.

There is one attribute that all of the early leaders these successful companies possessed that allowed their businesses to grow into major companies. The founders of these companies were all committed to the long term growth of their businesses through leadership development. They all recognized that the businesses with the most talented leadership invariably won in the competitive marketplace. Success and growth involved a commitment to succession planning and leadership development.

Despite the obvious benefits of leadership development and succession planning many privately owned companies avoid this critical activity.  Founders of smaller companies with big ambitions should recognize these inhibitions and take steps to overcome them. There are at least five reasons that founders delay or avoid succession planning steps. Careful consideration can remove these obstacles to growth.

1.    Many founders of successful businesses are reluctant to give up control of the business and allow other leaders to take the reins of their company. It is true that new leaders may take the business into new areas and change the practices that have initially brought success to the enterprise. Nevertheless, with an involved board and a strong set of embedded values, these new ideas and directions will usually be a source of strength and opportunity for the enterprise. As one founder said as he heard ideas from the new leader recruited to take his company public, “We have to recognize that a new broom sweeps clean.”

2.    There are many variables involved in succession planning. The founder may be tempted to wait for a comprehensive and complete solution before deciding on new leadership actions. There are complicated questions of estate planning, board involvement, family aspirations, and business direction that must be considered. The founder should recognize that there is never a complete and perfect plan. The founder should start with a basic plan and then begin to tailor the individual steps to fit the emerging situation. A business founder who led his company through a successful initial public offering said, “Our plans changed several times in the months before the ipo as the market and competition changed, but we were always ready to chang the details of our plan to suit the situation. We were always ready to skate towards the puck.”

3.    Succession planning involves making difficult human decisions that can hurt peoples’ feelings. The founder should remember that delaying difficult leadership decisions can make these decisions even more difficult later and, if ignored, may finally endanger the entire enterprise. Thoughtful and logical succession planning includes performance evaluations and honest discussions with individuals in the business. While sometimes these discussions are difficult, candid discussions are almost never unexpected and usually turn into constructive actions.

4.    Often the founder says that she is too busy to do thoughtful succession planning and that hiring experts to help can be expensive and intrusive. But in retrospect, there is no more important role for the founder. The process of developing and recruiting the next generation of leaders for the company may be the single most important legacy that any founder can leave for their company. Without long term leadership plans, the growth and prosperity of the enterprise will be threatened. Customers, employees, and all the other constituents of the company rely upon the founder to lay the foundation for the future leadership of the business.

5.    Many small company leaders feel that their companies are too small to have a succession plan. They dread the odor of bureaucracy that might be a part of the performance evaluation process. However, the best and most talented people join companies that have growth plans that pave the way for exciting and competitive future growth. The most talented employees expect to have honest discussions about their work. They want to work for companies that provide training and career opportunities. These ideas are not confined to big organizations with extensive human resource departments. Even small companies should recognize the value of leadership development in attracting talent and building the value of the company. The best employees today expect to be part of such teams.

Starting a new business is a bold adventure in our environment of complex regulations and a rapidly changing, technically sophisticated global market place. As the new enterprise grows the founder will need to begin making plans for the business to prosper well into the future. This may require accessing capital through an initial public offering, allocating ownership among a new generation of shareholders, or simply growing into new products and geographies. All of these plans should be based on a foundation of succession planning and leadership development. There is no greater or more valuable legacy for the founder than ensuring that the enterprise has talented and committed leadership as a foundation for future growth.