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Ownership: The Forgotten Circle of Family Business

Ownership: The Forgotten Circle of Family Business

On the back of my business card, I’ve got a colourful depiction of the Three-Circle-Model that I often use to initiate introductory discussions about the kind of work I do.

Not that it takes long to draw the Venn diagram on a napkin, pad, or placemat, but since I was struck by its simplicity when I was first exposed to it, I now enjoy sharing the insights it can bring.

 

History Lesson

Harvard’s Renato Tagiuri and John A. Davis came up with the model in the 1980’s when they realized that the old “Two-Circle” version was incomplete.

It was always clear that the Family and the Business overlapped, but it was the addition of the Ownership circle that added an “A-Ha” factor.

 

In Flux Versus Static

Interestingly, while the Family and the Business are both pretty much in constant daily flux, the Ownership is usually static or fixed for decades at a time.

But when the time does come to make changes to the ownership of a family business (and it will), those changes usually affect pretty much everything and everybody.

So the term “forgotten” in the title of this blog, is meant to make the point that we don’t usually give it much thought.

But maybe we should.

 

Some Examples

Imagine a family where the senior generation still owns the business while the rising generation members have solidified their place in the day-to-day operations.

At first they will likely patiently bide their time and accept the situation and “obey” the owners’ directives. But as the years become decades, this situation can become much less palatable.

The issues that arise in this type of situation are often framed in terms of “family dynamics”, which isn’t necessarily wrong, but the best solution to the “problem” may actually come from a change to the ownership.

 

Voting Control

Sometimes families realize that ownership should transfer to the rising generation relatively early on, which often occurs at the behest of an outside expert who suggests some beneficial tax-planning strategies for making these changes.

But often the parents can’t resist the temptation to create complex share structures that allow them to maintain control.

Having ownership without control adds a complicating factor to the Three-Circle-Model.

I’m not exactly sure how to do it, but somehow a modified version of the model might be needed to illustrate those situations where ownership doesn’t include control.

But all I’m trying to do here is to illustrate ways that the ownership circle often affects many of the day-to-day family business issues, even if we don’t give it enough thought.

 

Life Events as a Catalyst

Important life events can sometimes be a catalyst to changing the ownership structure. It’s much more fun when these involve a birth or marriage than a death or divorce.

Unexpected deaths sometimes catch families by surprise and hopefully these cases serve as a poignant reminder to others to get their affairs in order “just in case”.

When there’s a long illness that precedes a death, it’s sometimes a blessing, because important moves and discussions can then take place.

Of course in some cases, family relationships are such that even when the writing is on the wall and death is imminent, the family just can’t come together and have a productive discussion and agree on how the future ownership should be structured.

 

Preparing Owners to be Owners

Luckily, for every situation where families are “stuck”, we now hear more and more about families who are working to get out in front of these situations.

Enlightened families are looking into outside coaches and/or education programs that help prepare future owners to become good owners.

While it’s true that no special training is required to own shares in a company, the people who work in the business can tell you that the ownership of the business, and how they interact with and guide the company, has a huge effect on performance.

 

It Starts at the Top

When things begin to go poorly in a business, the roots of the demise can usually be traced back to the top, and that’s the ownership.

If you’re working with a business family and there are some issues that you’re trying to put your finger on as to their source, don’t forget to ask about the current ownership structure.

There’ll often be some good clues there.

 

Photo credit: Richard Legler

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Sharing Some Rocky Mountain Kool-Aid

Sharing Some Rocky Mountain Kool-Aid

I just returned from another fantastic Rocky Mountain experience: four jam-packed days, over two conferences, hosted by the Purposeful Planning Institute.

This has become an annual trek to Denver for me, which will surely continue for years to come.

 

Four Going on Five

I first attended PPI’s “Rendez Vous” in 2014 and returned again the following year. Last year, they added something new, an additional conference called “Fusion Collaboration”.

I decided to do both in 2016, and I jumped in with both feet again this year.

There was some confusion again, on the part of some attendees at either or both this week, about the difference between these two conferences.

I came up with an analogy that got a great response from everyone with whom I shared it, and the title of this post gives you a clue as to what it’s about.

 

Try Some of this Great Kool-Aid

Fusion Collaboration, the newer portion, is aimed at technical professionals who deal with business families, and families of wealth, and its goal is to introduce these more transactional folks to some of the other, deeper ways that these clients need to be served.

The presenters at Fusion are mostly specialists who work on the less technical aspects of wealth transfer, in what I like to call the “family circle”.

Many people used to call these the “soft side” (and still do), but now it’s more often dubbed “relational”, or “family dynamics”.

Fusion Collaboration is PPI’s attempt to get them to try Purposeful Planning Kool-Aid and “get them hooked”.

 

Let’s Swap Kool-Aid Recipes

By Wednesday evening, Fusion was wrapping up, and many of the lawyers and accountants and transactional specialists were preparing to depart, only to be replaced by a fresh crop of attendees.

The people who came for Rendez Vous, for this, its seventh incarnation, didn’t need to be enticed to drink the proverbial Purposeful Planning Kool-Aid.

Most of these people already subscribe to “Kool-Aid Aficionado” magazine, and they bring their Kool-Aid mixing and serving tips and recipes to share with their friends.

Besides the relational experts, many traditional transactional professionals who’ve become Kool-Aid fans also attend this conference regularly.

 

What’s In this Stuff?

If you’re curious about the main ingredient in this enticing beverage, it was nicely summarized by PPI’s founder, John A. Warnick, in one slide, which read:

                      Purposeful Planning   =   “Client-centric”   +     “Family-centric”

Most professional advisors already recognize the importance of putting the client’s needs and desires at the heart of wealth transition planning,

They also usually understand (in theory, at least) how important it is to bring next generation family members into the picture, preferably early on.

 

Secondary Equals?

Many of those who’ve traditionally driven the discussions around the pieces of wealth and business continuity, and transitions to the next generation, would consider themselves the primary drivers of this important work.

That may be true in the strict “transactional” sense, but more and more families are demanding a more holistic approach, which naturally involves a host of other experts from different, perhaps “secondary” domains.

Ideally, a collaborative group, or better yet, a team of advisors, will work together to figure out and design a complete inter-generational solution, along with the client family.

In order to do this work efficiently, and effectively, it really helps if the advisor team can work as collaborative equals.

 

Who Are They?

To give you an example of the types of specialists I’m talking about, here are some words and titles from some of the business cards I collected this week.

  • Legacy Advisor
  • Independent Trustee
  • Family Enterprise Advisor
  • Facilitator
  • Coach
  • Consultant
  • Psychologist
  • Gift Planner
  • Communications Specialist
  • Family Dynamics
  • Philanthropy Consultant
  • Family Legacy Advisor

And I know I’ve easily missed at least a handful of specialties.

 

July in Colorado 

After the opening dinner of Rendez Vous, as a table exercise, the “Elders” in attendance were asked to share with the “Tenderfeet” why we keep coing back every year.

At my table, most agreed it was the people, all of whom seem to come for the right reasons, i.e. to serve families better.

It’s also a great place to fill up on information, ideas, best practices, contacts, and lots of hugs too.

Oh, and Kool-Aid, of course!

Hoping to see you in Denver in 2018.

Would you like a glass, or a whole pitcher?

Links to previous Rendez Vous blogs:

2016: SWEET SECLUDED RENDEZ-VOUS

2015: RENDEZ-VOUS WITH A PURPOSE

2014: THE RISING GENERATION IN FAMILY BUSINESS

 

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A Pitcher, a Golfer, and a Baby Bird

A Pitcher, a Golfer, and a Baby Bird

Whenever I hear a really good analogy, something in my brain gets triggered, and I want to find ways to remember it, perfect it, and share it.

When people ask me how I come up with blog ideas every week (for over 250 weeks now, and counting) I usually note that the difficult part isn’t in having enough ideas, it’s having too many.

So when I hear the same analogy coming from two completely different areas, I take notice, and I try to find ways to combine them into one blog.

 

The Pitcher

Last week I was watching a Cubs game on TV, and Jake Arrieta was on the mound. The colour commentator was John Smoltz, a former pitcher himself, and a Hall of Famer too.

He was talking about issues Arrieta had been having with control, and Smoltz mentioned that he was working on finding the right grip on the ball in his hand as he threw his pitches.

“You’ve got to think of the baseball as if it’s a baby bird”, he said (I’m paraphrasing here) “You don’t want it to fly away, but you don’t want to squash it either”.

This sounded very familiar to me.

 

The Golfer

Years ago, when I still played golf (or rather “tried” to play golf) I was having issues with a really bad slice.

A slice is when you aim the ball at the green, and you hit it and for the first second that you watch it, you’re really happy, but then the ball just decides to take a right turn, often into the woods.

I don’t recall exactly where the advice I heard came from, but I absolutely remember reading or hearing the story about the bird.

“Think of the golf club like a baby bird, you don’t want it to fly away, but you don’t want to squash it to death either”.

 

Business Family > Family Business

So what the heck does all of this baby bird stuff have to do with family business? I’m glad you asked.

When people think about family business, they usually think about the business part of it. In the term “family business”, the word “business” is the noun.

My preference is to talk about the “business family”, where the word “family” is the noun.

I think I’ve been pretty consistent with this, as even the secondary title of my 2014 book, SHIFT your Family Business, is “Stop working on your Family Business, Start working on your Business Family”.

 

Parenting

When I meet with members of a business family, it usually doesn’t take very long for issues to come up that have a lot more to do with “parenting” than they do with “business”.

And it’s the parenting part that brings us back to the baby bird analogy. As a parent myself, I too have struggled with the temptation to grip the bird too hard.

As a former child, I can tell you that at times I felt like I was a little too “directed” in my life. Being “directed” is a close cousin of being “squashed”.

 

If you love someone…

It saddens me when I meet people in their 40’s or 50’s who work in their family business, and it becomes clear after a short time with them that they’re not really there because they want to be.

If they could hit the “rewind button”, they would have made different choices. Unfortunately, there is no “rewind button”.

These issues almost always stem from the baby bird being gripped too tightly.

Instead of just throwing more balls than strikes, or too many lost golf balls, the consequences are much worse.

 

Go Fly Now

When the baby bird is held in your hands for too long, it will never learn to fly on it’s own.

Even worse, when the time comes that the bird HAS TO fly, and it can’t, because it never got the opportunity to learn to fly on it’s own, parents will often criticize them for not having what it takes.

 

Too Loose > Too Tight

While you may think that it’s simply a matter of finding the right balance between gripping too loosely and gripping too tightly, that may be true for the golfer and the pitcher.

For the parent, gripping too tightly causes far more problems.

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5 Things you Need to Know: Family Vision

5 Things you Need to Know: Family Vision

A few weeks ago in “Family Business: How Do Values Fit In?” I touched on the idea of a “Family Vision”, and I’ve been meaning to get back to it, so here goes.

I’ve decided to make this one of my occasional “5 Things” pieces, much to the chagrin of my wife, who wonders why five is always my go-to number. (It just is, Dear, it just is.)

  1. Values Should Come First

Before you do any work on a family vision, it really makes a lot of sense to do the values work first. The vision is about the future and where you want to go together.

“Oh cool, the future!” you might think, and you may be tempted to jump right in and skip over the values part, but I recommend against it.

The values are about where you are now, and hopefully what all family members agree on about where they are together.

It’s kind of important to know that before you try to figure out where you’re going to go together.

  1. Common Vision Is What You Need

Just as it is important to understand the values that family members have in common, it should go without mentioning that a family vision is supposed to be a “common vision”, for the family, by the family.

But I am mentioning it, because sometimes there is someone in the family who needs to be reminded of this.

A family vision that comes from one person only, and that has been carved in stone by its sole creator, will not be worth the stone tablet it is printed on.

  1. It’s about Discovery and Co-Creation

Once you’ve figured out the values and committed to the concept of the common vision, it really becomes an exercise in discovery and co-creation.

One key is just being curious about where different family members see possibilities, which can open up discussions that you hadn’t thought of before.

Discovering areas where younger family members have passions and finding ways to create a vision together can be very powerful.

If you’ve built a particular business that may or may not excite the younger family members, wouldn’t it make sense to at least hear their ideas and try to find ways for everyone to have a stake in the family’s share assets?

    4. You Can’t Rush This Stuff

One of the bigger misconceptions about any of this values and vision work for families is how long it takes to actually do it in a thoughtful way.

It may sound tempting to try to schedule a few hours or even a day to do all of this. Yes, you could do it that quickly and you could conceivably get some value out of such an exercise.

Ideally, and for best results, this kind of work is NOT done quickly, or in one shot. My preference is to do the values work in two separate sessions first, before even getting to the vision.

Also, the larger the family group, the longer you should expect it to take.

Remember, “If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together”, as I wrote last year (Going Far? Go Together).

    5. It Doesn’t Happen by Itself

One of my favourite expressions is “these things don’t just happen by themselves”, and that’s certainly the case here too.

There can actually be quite a bit of work involved just in getting a family together, and then to get them all to understand the importance of the task at hand.

Depending on their ages and their previous involvement in important family discussions, it may take some convincing for them to actually believe that their input will be welcomed and heard.

The word “intentional” really fits well here. There needs to be an intention to do the work that needs to be done to discover and co-create a family vision.

Make the Investment

In my book SHIFT your Family Business, the letter “I” in SHIFT stands for “Invest”, and it’s all about investing the time necessary to do this important work.

Of course there is a financial investment that goes along with this, but for families with considerable wealth it’s a drop in the proverbial bucket.

The time required is the biggest investment, but those who take the time to get it right will be rewarded by the resulting legacy.

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“Yellow Light Family” – Proceed with Caution

“Yellow Light Family” – Proceed with Caution

Last week’s post (Happy to Be Wrong on FEX) talked about the great symposium I attended in Halifax earlier this month.

If you’re a regular reader (thanks!) you know that one of my best sources of blog material comes from these kinds of events.

I often do some sort of “Top 10” of things I picked up, but I’m going to devote this blog to one specific presentation I attended.

In coming weeks, I’ll likely dig in to a few other memorable sessions from the FEX conference.

 

Green, Yellow or Red Zone?

The symposium had a good mix of sessions; a couple for families only, others just for advisors, but most were open to all.

In this advisor-only session, Jim Grubman of Cambridge Family Enterprise Group presented “Green, Yellow or Red Zone Clients”.

He introduced the concept of the “Two-Axis Model” of wealth advising, with technical issues along the X-axis (horizontal), and personal and family dynamics on the Y-axis (vertical).

In each case, the model ranges from low complexity to high, from left to right and from bottom to top.

The colour-scheme was reserved for the family dynamics axis; green at the bottom, yellow in the middle, and red at the top end.

 

Technical Bread and Butter

Grubman mentioned that as you go from left to right on the “technical axis”, more complexity is usually seen as a positive for advisors.

A family with complex technical needs is often a plus, in that it allows you to showcase your abilities to solve their issues, and to charge accordingly.

The more people, entities, trusts, and jurisdictions a family has to deal with, the more the advisors will relish the task. At least the best advisors do.

 

The Family Dynamics Axis

The vertical axis, on the other hand, where family complexities increase, can be a very different story.

This is where the “traffic light” comes into play.

The low complexity families, with little of no conflict, anxiety, addictions, etc. are where most advisors prefer things to be.

Green is good, because there’s no family stuff to trip you up.

As you begin to see any of those issues, you leave the safety of the “green zone” and get into the yellow territory. At this point many who advise on technical issues (legal, tax, trusts, accounting, cross-border, etc.) quickly feel like they’re out of their depth.

Sometimes it doesn’t take much to raise the proverbial red flag, and get the advisors to scratch their heads wondering if they will be able to resolve the family issues.

 

Break It Down

Here’s where the real value of the presentation came for me. Rather than simply looking at the family dynamics question globally, Grubman breaks it down into several components.

In many cases, one thing sets off alarm bells, but others are hardly any concern.

For example, the sensitive issue could be the family’s level of conflict, their communication style, addictions, perceived fairness, or lack of governance systems.

When you can put your finger on it with greater detail, you’re much better placed to deal with it.

It can also help to look at “state versus trait” variables. There could be a situational factor at play, which may just be temporary. (Traits are fixed, while states are transitory)

 

Isolate the Issues

When the advisor team can share their views using this type of breakdown, they can pinpoint the issue more easily.

A family that looked red, or “very yellow” can look much less daunting once you see that there is really one key issue that is flashing, and that the others are pretty green.

 

Coordination and Collaboration

Now I’m gonna switch from what Jim Grubman was saying to Steve Legler’s take.

No single advisor will be able to handle a family with any complexity above green, on either axis.

Technical professionals work together to solve the family’s asset-related issues. On the family dynamics side of things, the same should also be true.

Families will benefit from advisors who can coordinate their activities at a minimum, and hopefully even collaborate.

 

Inter-Disciplinary Fluency Helps

FEX’s FEA Program helps advisors develop the inter-disciplinary fluency they need to properly serve families.

Knowing what families need, and how the pieces all fit together, is key. And so is being able to work together.

Tools like Grubman’s help us all do a better job for families.

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