Uniting under non-family leadership

Excerpted with permission from Family Business Magazine, Autumn 2008, www.familybusinessmagazine.com.

The Geo. H. Rucker Realty Corporation celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2006 but has been led by a non-family member since 1988. This was an essential move that brought harmony to a squabbling ownership group, company stakeholders say.

By Thomas W. Durso

Michael P. Rucker’s first couple of meetings as a member of the board of Geo. H. Rucker Realty Corporation left him wondering what he’d gotten himself into.

Rucker had been badgering his father-in-law, John Jones Sr. (the son of one of Rucker Realty’s founding partners, M. Ashton C. Jones Sr.), for a spot on the board for some time. In 1980 he got his wish, becoming the fourth third-generation board member.

Almost immediately Rucker saw the company begin to change radically: Before he knew what was happening, the elder members of the board had decided to divest some of Rucker Realty’s ancillary holdings.

“In my very first meeting they sold the Rucker Insurance Company [and were weighing] a motion to sell the Rucker Mortgage Company,” he recalls. “So here I am in my first board meeting thinking, ‘What is going on?’ Then the next thing up, in another meeting or so, was to sell the brokerage and sell the property management [business].”

Rucker and the other third-generation board members huddled to decide whether to continue breaking up the company.

“We got together and I said, ‘Do we want to shut this thing down?’” says Rucker, a cousin of company co-founders Rucker and Jones, who married Jones’s granddaughter. “And the four of us said, ‘No, let’s keep this thing going.’” Then came the big question: “So what do you do next?” The answer was unprecedented for Rucker Realty: Michael Rucker and the rest of the third generation took over management of the company and began making plans to step away from day-to-day affairs and bring in—for the first time—outside, professional management to run things. For a sedate commercial real estate firm in suburban Washington, D.C., this was a huge and risky move.

It was also necessary: Without the involvement of non-family members, Rucker Realty likely wouldn’t exist today.

In 1906 George H. Rucker, the elected Court of Clerk of Alexandria County, Va., launched a real estate development business. Two years later his brother-in-law, Ashton Jones, joined Rucker as a partner in the business. The company put down roots in Arlington and began developing properties and constructing buildings. Matters proceeded rather uneventfully over the next 75 years, with Rucker’s and Jones’s children and grandchildren, now spread across three families (Rucker’s descendants, the Stones; and Jones’s, the Joneses and Ruckers), succeeding them.

Want to know how the Rucker family and their business have succeeded in being led by someone outside of the family? Read the full article by Thomas W. Durso in the Autumn 2008 edition of Family Business Magazine. Free article access is available online for subscribers. To learn more, please visit Family Business Magazine online at www.familybusinessmagazine.com.