The man who invented the Glock fired all three of his children

Gaston Glock screwed up. He screwed up horribly.

I got to learn what not to do in family business from the book GLOCK, by Paul Barrett.

Gaston had been a humble manufacturer for thirty years in Austria. Gaston made hinges, curtain rods, and knives in his garage.

Gaston was a steady, modest Austrian engineer always tinkering with products and always inventing new products.

At the age of 50, Gaston overheard a hallway conversation in 1980 between two colonels in the Austrian Army needing a new sidearm to replace the World War II handgun, Walther P-38. Gaston took a chance and asked if he could submit a prototype. The colonels told him he could give it a try on his own dime. No promises.

For two years Gaston worked day and night on his prototype. He was humble in his pursuit of listening to experts in the gun industry while also leveraging his range of experiences in manufacturing. He finally submitted his sample in May of 1982.

The sample, Glock 17, became an immediate success in the eyes of the Austrian Army! It was called Glock 17 because it held 17 rounds in the magazine. It was indestructible. It was reliable. It was made of sturdy, light plastic. It held three times the amount of rounds of ammo compared to other options in the marketplace. The Glock 17 was less expensive, more reliable, and far superior performance compared to all the other handguns. 

I could spend the rest of this journal entry talking about all the clever strategic decisions and marketing moves Gaston accomplished to bring his industry changing invention to market… I’m not going to. 

I’m going to focus on what he did wrong. None of the success matters. What could have been a successful family business is riddled with lawsuits and brokenness today.

What he did wrong are the most real and relevant threats to our family businesses. He failed at a scale more spectacular than most family businesses.

Success arrived after decades of obscurity, and he had built nothing that could hold it. Structure, counsel, a wife he still talked to, children with real responsibility. He had none of it before the money came. 

One of Glock’s American sales managers summarizes it well: “He started out pretty humble and unassuming… then he began believing his news clippings.”

He was a decent man at 51 who got rich. 

Gaston’s heart began to change in his early 50s with the newfound success. The loves in his life became more explicit toward the shallow values of the world. One of his executives articulates his priorities: “He makes roughly $200,000 a day… He spends money on mistresses, on houses, on sex, on cars. He bribes people….”  

(YIKES!!!)

As his priorities changed and the company grew he developed a management style worth noting. Gaston would remind his managers: “Every morning you have to slap everyone on the head, just in case they did something wrong.” 

(No trust. Zero.)

At the office, “Longtime employees learned to keep their heads down.”

The culture was toxic to say the least. On top of it all, one of Glock’s advisors, Charles Ewert, wound up hiring a hit man to kill Gaston in a parking garage. Glock defended himself and survived the attack! (This didn’t serve as a wake up call for Gaston it only made him more vengeful and have even less trust for his executives and inner circle.)

On the home front his life was just as chaotic (hard to imagine), Glock divorced his wife of forty nine years. He had an affair and married at the age of 82 a woman fifty years younger than him.

Glock recruited and then let go of all three of his children from the company. He pulled some common mistakes in succession giving Gaston Jr. a title with no responsibilities. Gaston also gave his oldest daughter, Brigitte, no tasks above administration.

Glock was essentially a human tornado creating brokenness everywhere he put his attention.

None of the “success” matters. 

He was so poor that all he had was money. 

Look how sad this is from Gaston’s youngest son, Robert:

“We’re talking about a life’s work [Glock], which is now ruined and broken.”

I can’t help but think of the lost opportunity to work with his kids and build a legacy of good with his first wife, Helga. 

If we’re going to build things to last we need to work on our inner worlds. Stewardship is an inside job. It’s the invisible work on our hearts we do when no one is watching. 

Onward,

Matt

PS - Gaston was so poor that all he had was money.