A Variety of Skills Are Needed 

Working with enterprising families as they prepare to transition to the next generation, as I’ve been doing for the past decade, I’m continually amazed at the different challenges this work throws up at me.

It’s been heartening to exchange with so many other colleagues who practice in this same space, to realize that this isn’t just something that affects me, but also everyone else who toils with family dynamics, in their various manifestations.

It’s probably the biggest reason this work is so rewarding, because you never know what you’ll discover when working in the “family circle”, and even what seems like it should be simple “discovery work”, often requires lots of detective skills.

I’ve written before about the importance of discernment, that is, figuring out what everything means and deciding what’s important, but going upstream a bit, just uncovering facts to understand each person’s context, can be an arduous process in its own right.

See: On Discernment and Resourcefulness for Family Clients


There’s Information in Everything

When starting with a new prospect, the mystery-solving begins, as the person who first reaches out presents their view of the issues and the presenting problem to be addressed.

At this point it’s important to be a sponge and try to soak up any and all information, putting as many puzzle pieces on the table as possible.

As more people are heard from, typically in one-on-one calls, more information is shared, and more puzzle pieces are added.

In addition to the facts that each person shares, there’s also information in how they share it, including who volunteers to step up for these calls quickly, and who needs to be cajoled into participating.


Imagining the Entire Puzzle, and Knowing You’re Wrong

When I first started this work, I’d get to a point once I’d heard from a few people and believed that I had a pretty good idea what the challenge was, who the players were, and how I could go about working with them to make some important progress together.

Nowadays, I’d much more realistic in my expectations, and I understand that early on in any family engagement process, it’s next to impossible to get a good read on where things should go, can go, and will go.  And that’s OK too. 

Well, it’s OK with me, but often harder to get clients to buy into the fact that whatever simple situation they initially believed needed to be addressed actually turns out to be much more complex and that a simple solution won’t likely suffice.


Subjectivity and Selective Sharing

Two of the major reasons underlying the difficulty in getting the full picture as an outsider to the family system come from the way we get our information.

On rare occasions there are ways to read up on a family from third party sources, but those can be fraught with misinformation in many cases, even where they do exist.

We get most of our info from the members of the family, each of whom has their own version of the truth.

Of course knowing how each person in the family perceives the facts is very important to understand, but when the goal is to develop an objective, “outsider’s” picture of reality, skills of discernment always come into play.

There’s a deeper level to the subjectivity question too, and that’s the selective sharing that also happens, meaning that skeptical family members will hold back on sharing their full and true feelings until they believe that the person with whom they are sharing can be trusted.


Trusted with What, and for What, Exactly?

Of course trust is a key concept in many areas of life, but when it comes to family businesses and the relationships of family members, everything seems heightened.

So when we look at developing trust as an outsider coming into the system, we need to do everything we can to make sure that each family member feels like they can trust us.

They need to trust us with their deepest feelings, many of which have not been shared with all their family members.

And they need to trust that we are there for them individually, as well as for the entire family as a whole.

To do so, we need to listen to them without judgement, in order to gather all of the clues we’ll need to be able to properly serve them.

See No Room for Judgement when Working with Families

Applies to Businesses, Families, and Everything Else

After chairing a recent Board meeting for a charity I’ve been involved with for over a decade, I was reflecting on how much that organisation has grown since I first became involved as a volunteer.

The needs of the local inner-city community we serve have changed with immigration and gentrification, and the services we offer needed to continue to evolve for us to be the best resource possible for our members.

At the same time, the way we manage ourselves as an organisation has continued to mature and become more clear and formal, especially regarding the processes and procedures followed by our leadership team.

Our challenge as a Board is to also continue to grow, evolve, and mature, to match what’s been going on “on the ground”, as it pertains to governance.


Noticing Growth, Evolution, and Maturity, Everywhere

I’ve long been a fan of acronyms and have shared a few over the years in this space.

See Start Cleaning Up your M.E.S.S., Is your Continuity PAL in Danger? and The “Family HUG” We’re All Looking for, for a few examples.

I’ve tried to leave a proverbial trail of breadcrumbs above, and I bet some of you have already caught on to the GEM acronym I noted in my title.

We’re talking about Growth, Evolution, and Maturity this week, because these processes are always going on, even though we rarely ever notice them.

Far too often we worry about the short term, minute-by-minute and day-to-day concerns that are always front and center.

To notice the GEMs, though, you really need to take the time to step back and look at a much longer arc of time.


The Business’ Cycle

Like the charitable organisation mentioned above, most businesses also follow a pattern of growth and evolution that can last for years and decades, end eventually hit some sort of maturity phase.

Maturity itself can last a long time and we don’t even typically recognize maturity until it’s well underway.

Career cycles of those who work in the business also evolve, and key members see a growth in their responsibilities as that happens.  

Long time employees hit their stride and mature into roles, and if they’re lucky enough to stay until retirement, you can sometimes witness them coming down the other side of the maturity hill.

This isn’t always a bad thing, of course, especially when it has been expected and planned for, and replacements have been properly on-boarded.


The Family Business Version

Successful family businesses that have survived at least one generational transition each go through their own versions of this, and that’s where we’ll spend the rest of our discussion.

The founding generation goes through the progression first, and hopefully by the time they’re into the maturity phase, they’ve got other team members also growing into their roles and evolving with the business’ needs.

Ideally that’ll include some who are the offspring of the founder(s) and they can follow a similar journey.

So why am I even raising this idea?

My concern goes back to a point I made above, about the fact that you need to take the time and step back to see this, otherwise you won’t recognize what’s occurring.


To Everything There Is a Season

While the business is doing it’s day-to-day, month-to-month, and quarter-to-quarter thing, you know, the “Busy-Ness”, not everyone recognizes the progression of the individuals in the different generations of the family.

As the “now gen” are cresting the maturity hill, their “next gen” followers are rapidly ascending the growth and evolution stages, trying to catch up.

In fact, in an ideal scenario, both generations spend time together near the top of that hill and co-create a future for the organisation.

Contrast that with a stubborn leader who will not acknowledge that they’ve arrived at maturity and need to be thinking about their own eventual exit.

The unfortunate follow-on effect is a tendency to downplay the growth and evolution of their replacements, in order to justify their hold on that perch.


There IS Another Side to that Hill

I guess my main message here is that there is another side to the maturity hill.

The best descent from that peak is a gentle, gradual, and planned one.

This can (and should) be part of a long process, where the gems of the organisation can gradually ascend, all while having been encouraged to do so.

Battles for “king of the hill” are counterproductive.

Always Seeking to Uncover New Information

There are many concepts that arise in different ways and places in my work, and when I come across the same idea in various forms during a short space of time, it always gets my blogger brainwaves flowing.

Regular readers recognize my penchant for wordplay, including the use of words that might fall outside our everyday vocabulary.

I’m judicious with my word choices when speaking with most people, and I freely use the most accurate word to describe my thoughts, assuming I’ll be best understood that way.

Such is the case with a recent discussion I had on a coaching call I had with my long-time coach, Melissa.

I noted that I had some upcoming events ahead, that would make the next couple of weeks very “revelatory”.


Coaches Revel in Revelations

As coaches, we both understand full well the value we can bring, and she didn’t miss a beat.

She chimed in that a big part of what we do is to help our clients reveal who they are to themselves.

In turn, those clients can also focus on revealing who they are to others, but doing that internal work first is more helpful than you may realize, until you do it.

 

While that certainly applies to coaching, there’s also a big tie-in to working with client families in a facilitation capacity.

I’ve written about a particular aspect of this here before in Revealing a System to Itself.


Taking It Up a Level

Where coaching is often more of a One-on-One endeavour, facilitation involves groups of people, and one way that good facilitators can think of their role is to concentrate on revealing the system to itself.

What applies to individuals and the concept of helping them each discover who they are “as a person”, also applies to groups of connected people.

A connected group of people acts as an interdependent system, and facilitating such a system is all about helping them discover things about themselves and their relationships that used to he hidden to them. 

This can help unlock many areas, including new ways of relating to each other, which can lead to great progress.

It isn’t necessarily always easy, and sometimes what’s learned can be surprising and tough to digest, but seeing things more realistically is always useful to any group.


Another Example of Seeking Revelatory Info

I was recently contacted by someone who was referred to me by a business school professor at a University that has a family business program.

The young man was already running a successful and growing small business, and was entertaining the idea of having his brother join him in the business.

As I embarked on a couple of exploratory calls with each of them to see if and how I might be a resource to them, a couple of things became apparent.

As usual in any new situation I learn about, I have no idea or pre-conceived notion of where things might lead and how best to proceed; there’s a lot of figuring it out as we go, and that’s perfectly fine.

In speaking with them both separately, it became clear that the issue of compensation would be potentially thorny for them to resolve.


Why Don’t You Start There?

This is where I surprised even myself. I’m typically a fan of starting slow, and working on banking some small wins early on in any process, to provide useful momentum.

But in this case, since they were trying to decide on a “go/no go” of whether the second brother would quit his job to join the firm, I suggested they “Zag”, instead of “Zig”.

My suggestion to them was to see if they could come up with a satisfactory compensation arrangement they could both agree to, and to tackle that issue as their first major step.

My thinking is that the process of negotiating this area would be quite revelatory to the way the rest of their working relationship would go.

If they get through this obstacle, future challenges will seem easy in comparison.


It’s Not What Happens That’s Important….

There’s a saying that it’s not what happens that’s important, it’s what you do about it afterwards that counts.

Revelatory family situations tee up some of the best opportunities to respond in new and better ways.

Alternatively, they can also highlight some important “no go” decisions too. Either way, they lead to progress.

Most People Prefer Being No.1 to Being No.2

Every once in a while, I get a blog idea that I save for a later date, and then another one comes up and I repeat the process.

And then, through some serendipitous process, it dawns on me that I can actually combine them into one post, and benefit from some interplay between them.

It doesn’t always work out the way I planned, but I’m willing to give it a shot. 


Why Can’t I Be My Own G1?

The first of the ideas I decided to write about concerns the way that people who work with wealthy and enterprising families like to label their generations.

We always start by talking about the first generation, known as G1, and then their offspring are G2, their grandchildren G3, and so on.

The fact that we all do this makes even the family members become unwitting participants in this game, without thinking about how absurd it can seem to some.

The label of G1 typically gets assigned to the person (or couple) who “started the business”, also known as the founder, the wealth creator, or patriarch/matriarch.


Why This Can Be Sub-Optimal

Of course these people did not simply fall off a turnip truck, they presumably had parents of their own, for whom they would be G2, and grandparents for whom they were G3.

The way we begin the story can overemphasize the input of G1. Yes, in many cases, even most, the role that person plays is in fact outsized and shouldn’t be minimized.

There are plenty of examples, though, where the G1 portion of an enterprise’s existence was a modest success, and it was only in G2 or even G3 that things really took off in terms of success.

Couldn’t those responsible for that restart the labelling process and dub themselves “the real G1”?


“We Want to Be Our Own G1”

I had a call recently from a G2 who explained that he and his wife were interested in “starting our own G1”.

Their family had already done a lot of work on family governance where G1 and G2 set up structures and traditions to preserve that family legacy.

And, now that they’ve seen that success, this couple is interested in recreating a new start as G1, with their own children, who are currently teenagers, as G2.


What About the Sovereignty?

Let’s switch to the other blog idea now, which came from a session at a recent conference, where a couple of dozen of us were working with and learning about an interesting tool to use in our work with families.

During a debrief towards the end, one of the participants, whose work I’ve admired for a while, said something in a way I’d never heard.

Speaking about some of the challenges of those in G2 or G3 of many wealthy families, he stated “some of these people don’t have a lot of sovereignty”. (Thanks Scott)

Hmmm, sovereignty! What an interesting way to phrase that.

Let’s take a closer look, shall we.


Google to the Rescue

I already had my own meaning of sovereignty in mind, but for the purposes of this blog, let’s see if Mr. Google can shed some light on this.

     Sovereignty:

  •      Supreme power or authority
  •      The authority of a state to govern itself
  •      A self-governing state

These definitions don’t automatically lend themselves to individuals, but there are certainly parallels.

Who enjoys being in situations where you’re unable to “govern yourself”?


When G2 Wants to Reclaim Sovereignty

When the couple called me and stated their wish to be their own G1, it was the first time anyone had approached me like this in the decade I’ve been doing this work.

It was exceptional, in the true sense of the word.

It was, though, from my viewpoint, a perfectly natural and healthy way to think about the progress this family is hoping to make as they transition from their G1 to G2, towards their own, new G1 to their G2.

The good news is that this doesn’t have to be (and shouldn’t be!) an “either/or” question.

It’s actually a wonderful opportunity to create a “both/and” scenario.

This family branch of G2’s will continue to be an active part of that family, while also co-creating new realities for their rising generation, who, someday, may wish to begin anew as their own G1.

Wouldn’t that be great!

 

It’s Often Right in Front of Your Nose

Although I personally try to shy away from using a simple “see problem, find solution” mindset, I recognize that many people do default to that way of thinking.

There’s no shortage of folks who prefer this shortcut way of looking at situations and trying to find a way through a challenge.

Dealing with complex family situations as I often do, a bigger picture, longer term, systems view of what they’re facing, typically yields better results for me when guiding a family.

There’s plenty of nuance in my work, and I also try hard to not present myself as the bearer of simple solutions to problems.


Inspired by a Tweet, Uh, I Mean, an “X”?

While I love using LinkedIn for professional interactions, I’m still a fan of what used to be called Twitter, although I spend less time there than I once did.

This week’s blog was inspired by a post I saw recently on X, from Dr. Nicole LePera (@Theholisticpsyc) a psychologist with over a million followers there.

Her post read simply:

                    If I am the problem, I am also the solution.

As you might imagine, I was intrigued and needed to process this more, but on the surface it held promise as inspiration for an eventual blog post here.

It’s so simple, and there are many ways to ponder it.

I immediately emailed it to myself and saved it in my “blog ideas” folder.


Complex Situations Have Multifaceted Problems

Back to the complex family situations I often learn of, and sometimes get invited in to assist with, there are always many people interested in finding a solution.

Not that many, though, immediately jump at the opportunity to look at the part that they themselves play in the perceived problem.

If (and when!) they do, they can eventually see how at least a part of the resolution is right there in front of them, when they look in the mirror.

While it isn’t usually easy to get anyone to the place where they even feel like taking that glance in the mirror, it is almost always a necessary step that needs to be taken.

As you might imagine, it’s also typically not something that only needs to happen for one member of a family, because any complex situation naturally requires some “adjustment” by several people.


Spreading the Responsibility Around

Challenging family situations affect many members of the family, and are also affected by many family members too.

Getting each family member to understand and accept this fact can take some time, but that “buy in”, to get everyone focused on doing their part in getting to a better place is crucial.

This work requires a “systems view” to be able to see what’s going on, and it also requires the guidance for each person in the system to make the necessary adjustments to get to a better place.

Getting a family to understand that there’s a shared responsibility at play can calm the whole system down as well, and that’s a huge piece of making progress.


The More and the Less of It

Families can benefit from making small, gradual adjustments, which can happen once some family leaders step up and show the way, by modeling such behaviours.

I’m talking about learning to practice more forgiveness and less blaming.

Nobody likes to have fingers pointed at them, even when they may internally acknowledge some of the fault for where things are.

Knowing that others are in a forgiving mood can become contagious, for the benefit of all.

Instilling an attitude of more gratitude and less lamenting one’s fate is also quite beneficial.


Benefits of the Mirror

Helping family members think about their own role in things, and getting them to think in terms of “I-statements”, as opposed to “you are to blame”, goes a long way.

Getting a family to a better way of being together requires an attitude of more self-efficacy, that gets everyone out of finger-pointing mode.

There’s typically a kind of culture to the ways families act, that can set in an add to the “stuckness” that sometimes exists.

Getting a family “unstuck” doesn’t usually happen quickly, and rarely in one step.

Taking the time to work with each person individually, to get them to understand and accept that everyone holds part of both the problem as well as the solution, is always worth the trouble.

RendezVous’23 Raises the Bar (Again)

Every summer since 2014 I’ve looked forward to the annual RendezVous of the Purposeful Planning Institute, which is regularly the best week of my professional year.

I’m writing this at the Denver airport as my flight home has been delayed. 

This conference, along with other PPI activities throughout the year, has provided more blog inspiration than anything else over the years.

As our closing keynote speaker noted today, this is not a conference, it’s an experience. He was bang on, as I told him as I hugged him when he was done. 

I lost count of how many hugs I was involved in over four days.


The Inside View of the “Village” of Work

Many readers know that I’ve been involved in one way or another in the preparation and planning of this event over its last 6 iterations, which included 2 “RendeZoom” versions thanks to you-know-what.

Last year we got together in real life once again, and the experience was among the best ever, which many chalked up to the fact that it had been 3 years since we’d all been together.

The bar from RV’22 was therefore already high, and yet everyone I spoke to agreed that we’ve raised it once again.

Survey feedback is yet to come, and of course there are lots of things that can be improved, but I for one still have a long way to come down from this annual Rocky Mountain high.


The Joy of Connection

Last year’s theme was “The Fundamentals of Human Connection” which was quite à propos considering its post-pandemic timing.

We followed that up this year with “The Joy of Connection”, and I cannot recall ever making so many connections at a conference, and not just shallow ones.

As many of us admitted, working with families on the eventual transition of their wealth from one generation to the next can be very emotional work, which is ironically often lonely for those who practice in the area of professional guidance and facilitation.

This is the one week each year when so many of us come together to share our experiences, learnings, challenges, frustrations, and dreams of what’s possible, with so many of our like-minded and like-hearted colleagues, many of whom become close friends (hence all the hugging).


“You Have to Experience It to Understand”

It would be impossible to do justice to the experience in just one blog post, so I won’t even attempt that here.

In previous years, I’ve written some kind of summary or highlight blog after returning home.

This year I just want to share my gratitude for the PPI Community who are truly my “tribe”, which I’ve known for nine years now.

I’ll surely circle back on some of the topics we discussed in future posts, over the coming weeks and months.

One comment I heard from a few attendees, as they related their difficulty in conveying what goes on at RendezVous to colleagues, was “It’s really hard to describe, you have to experience it to understand”.

Amen.


So Much Work, So Much Reward

As noted above, having an inside view of some of the committees (called “expeditions” in PPI-speak”) involved in preparing this annual extravaganza, I’ve seen first hand just how much work is involved.

Thankfully, the “many hands make light work” proverb applies, and we know that it truly takes a “village” to pull it all off.

The organisation itself (PPI) continues to evolve and mature, along with the field of working with wealthy families that we serve.

Since our fearless founder, John A. Warnick, convened the first RendezVous in 2011, the leadership has evolved as well, and is now about to pivot to an even more distributed model, much like what some of our family enterprise clients face when the founding generation cedes its place to the rising gen.


Light On Content, High on Vibe

Apologies for those who read my work for content, as this post is light on that.

I’m trying to convey the vibe of this group, who continue to inspire me and my work.

The conference is NOT light on content, even though much of that content is focussed on process, as in how we work with family clients.

As one presenter noted, the process is the product!

If you think this group might be for you, get in touch and I’ll gladly fill you in over a Zoom call

Just the Way “WE” Always Wanted It

In many ways this post has been a long time coming. I’ve run into versions of what I’ll be sharing this week for years now, but never felt compelled to devote a whole post to it.

Some confluence of cases in my head, from the past and from current discussions with clients and prospects, has resulted in my finally deciding to tackle this tough subject.

In other ways, though, it’s so simple to describe, that even those who know little about family business can easily relate to such stories when I share the basic fact patterns.

Every parent says they want what’s best for all of their children, and every single one of them believes it when they say it.

But they sometimes overestimate how much they know, as well as what they can control to make that happen.


Building the Dream Family Business

The closest I’ve come to writing about a version of this was way back in 2016, with When your Greatest Desire is also your Greatest Fear.

But that post was about the fact that parents hope to get to a level of wealth that makes the lives of all their family members easier, and then end up “overshooting” that level, and suddenly realize they’ve got a whole different challenge on their hands, often labelled as entitlement.

This week we’re looking at parental desires again, but from different perspective, and with a whole other kind of downside.


Unlikely Business Partners

The simplest way to describe the phenomenon is to consider a family business with just one person or couple in charge, who have more than one child together.

They will often want to bring all of their offspring into the business with them, and run things together as the prototypical “one big happy family”.

And this can work for a time, especially while the senior generation remains in place, to mitigate any sibling issues “in the bud”.

The problem comes later, after the exit of the parents, when the siblings end up in a situation where they’re now unwitting partners together.

They’ve worked together for while, but at a lower level, with less at stake and possibly less ego involvement.

Eventually they realize they’re stuck in a partnership with people with whom they never would have entered into business together of their own free will.


“Plans that Don’t Include Us”

Too often the parents make plans with professionals regarding their estate plans that include an operating business, and because they’ve long dreamt that what they’ve been building will continue on with the whole family at the helm, those plans end up creating sibling partnerships that really don’t have a high likelihood of surviving long term.

See Why Succession Planning Fails

When the cart (the legal structures) is put before the horse (the relationships of the offspring expected to work well together), things are set up for failure more than for success.

And it happens all the time.

Hopefully it can be caught in time, plans can be modified, and a new plan, this time including input from those most affected, can be put into place.

If not, those who end up “stuck as partners” risk having their family relationships damaged because they can’t live up to Mom and Dad’s dreams.


We’re Better Than Our Parents!

I’ve even seen versions of this where a parent hopes to have all of their offspring continue together despite the fact that they previously worked with their own siblings, and quickly realized that was not a good fit.

They couldn’t work with their own sibling, yet they expect their heirs to successfully work together; presumably they believe their own parenting skills are far superior than those of their parents!

Parenting skills are just one variable in this equation, and the human desire for some independence is typically stronger than whether your parents taught you to play nicely together.

Playing nicely as children is one thing, working together as adults is quite another.


Time for a Reality Check

When a family calls in someone like me, it’s often an opportunity for a reality check on those dreams we were talking about.

Assessing the likelihood of success is a large part of what I do, and in many cases (most?) some modifications to “Plan A” are required, to increase the likelihood of their success.

Success looks different for everyone, but continued family harmony is at the top of my list.

Serving the Needs of “Enterprising Families” Varies Greatly

There are some subjects related to working with enterprising families that many of us don’t really ever think about, but that are always kind of there in the background somewhere.

This week we’re going to look at one of those, thanks to a new book that I just finished reading and that I highly recommend, which made me realize one of these issues actually does exist.

It got me thinking too, and when I do that, I typically try to find an analogy or a metaphor to help explain it more clearly, and so I’ll be trying out this new thinking here as well.

I bet you’re wondering what book I’m talking about.


Wealth 3.0 – The Future of Family Wealth Advising

I’ve known that this book was due out soon and was pleasantly surprised to see that it’s now available.

The authors, Jim Grubman, Dennis Jaffe, and Kristin Keffeler are all veterans of the field who I’ve known for years, and I’ve interviewed each of them of the Let’s Talk Family Enterprise podcast in the past couple of years. (Episodes 11, 29, 45)

They are mentors and colleagues and have each already authored other books on areas of this subject matter individually.

I think you can imagine why someone like me, who writes regularly about family wealth transitions, would’ve been eagerly awaiting its publication.


Business, Enterprise, Wealth

I could never do the book justice with a full review in this blog space, but I do want to share my thoughts on the new distinction that it clarified for me.

It’s a book about advising families about their wealth.

It highlights the fact that the field of family wealth advising is not very well defined and urges those who participate in this field professionally to do more to organize and advance it for the good of the families we serve.

(Image credit: https://www.vitatanden.se/)

 

It also contrasts the needs of wealthy families with those who inhabit the world of family business.

The family business advising world is, in many ways, ahead of the family wealth advisory space, and is also distinct from it.

That was the “A-Ha” moment for me.


Some Families Make the Journey

My own professional journey in this ecosystem started with me working for my Dad in the family business he started before I was born.

I then found my calling to this work while enrolled in the Family Enterprise Advisor program.

And I now sometimes work with families who have significant wealth, without ever having had an operating business to speak of.

Even the term “family enterprise” feels a bit clunky, because it was essentially concocted to try to cover the fact that families often sell the operating business that made them wealthy, and then still have many of the same issues to deal with, despite no longer being concerned with the operation of a business.

The Family Firm Institute, started in 1986, has been playing a leading role in advancing and professionalizing the field of family business advising.


Wealthy Families Come in Many Forms Now

The Ultra High Net Worth Institute, for its part, has yet to see its fifth birthday, and they seem to be working hard to play catch up.

All three of Wealth 3.0’s authors are part of the UHNWI faculty.

While many of the world’s wealthy families have had a successful business as their main wealth driver, there are now more non-business-owning wealthy families than ever.

Entertainment celebrities, world class sports figures, tech billionaires, and even well-compensated executives can easily end up in the Ultra High Net Worth category.

When these successful people end up with more money than they could ever spend, and they have families, they then face many issues that they hadn’t even realized before.


Do You Need a Dentist or an Orthodontist?

So as I contemplated all of this, I began to think about family business advisors as dentists.

They help business families with lots of little things, many of them mundane, and work with them to help keep their mouths healthy.

Maybe family wealth advising is more like orthodontics.

They still concern themselves with your mouth, but they look at things very differently, and help with more specialized services.

Orthodontics surely evolved from the field of dentistry and then took its own course of professionalization.

Every orthodontist needs to study dentistry first, and then move on to that specialty afterwards.

Perhaps family wealth advising is now beginning to follow a similar path?

Not Everyone Can Be the CEO

In the world of family enterprises and their ubiquitous challenges in transitioning from one generation to the next, there are a number of misconceptions that continue to plague those trying to help families get things right.

A pervasive one that’s a pet peeve of mine, is the focus on finding that one singular person who can take over the top job, let’s call them the CEO.

When you think about a business founder, the person who’s the “G1” (first generation) head of the family business, you typically imagine certain traits and characteristics that they likely exhibit and even exude.

I suppose it’s natural to assume that once they’re no longer around, the ideal replacement for them would be a clone, or the person who is most like them.

And that’s the first part of the misconception.


Not Everyone WANTS to Be the CEO!

Fans of TV dramas like Succession may believe that the members of the next generation of every family business behave like the fictional Roy siblings.

Now I’m not saying that their portrayal of the battle to succeed their father is completely unrealistic, or that the efforts they each made to try to outmaneuver one another never occur, but they are surely the exception, not the rule.

Additionally, as a Family business goes through each successive generational transition (G1 to G2; G2 to G3, etc.) those qualities of the original founding CEO become less and less important.

Already by G2, the leadership that works best is often very different from that of the founder.

And not everyone even wants to be the CEO.


Sticking with the Hollywood Theme

Having mentioned a TV drama, I guess I can stick with the Hollywood theme a bit longer, and invoke another misconception, or actually probably more like a “misquote” or “misnomer” that gets used far too often.

Whether it’s the Emmy awards for TV or the Oscars for movies, awards shows always honour two different categories of actors.

There’s one category for the “lead” actors and another for “supporting” actors.

But that’s not actually what they’re called, even though that’s the way most people say it.

It’s actually best actor in a “leading role” and “supporting role”.

OK, not a big deal, right? Or is it?

Maybe not in Hollywood, but what about in a family enterprise?


Playing Second Fiddle to your Sibling?

Let’s get back to the sibling drama situation we touched on earlier. These kind of superiority contest plays do happen, especially when they happen in an environment where there’s a “winner-take-all” mentality.

When things are seen as a contest to find the best person, and all others are less good, that “winners or losers” dynamic isn’t helpful at all.

While you can’t always make it disappear, there are ways to try to frame it as more about the roles than about the individuals.


Many Roles in Large and Complex Families

There’s something that I recognized after entering this field a decade ago that I hadn’t appreciated until I began working with several large and complex families.

It isn’t something that most people would consider, and even those in such families often need to have it pointed out to them before they eventually say, “Yeah, that’s true”.

I’m talking about the fact that there are usually several major roles that need to be played as a family enterprise moves from G2 to G3 and onwards.


Not Just the Roles in the Business

Besides the roles in leadership in the operating business, there are other key roles that someone from the family can, should, and hopefully will take on.

Governance roles are so important, and exist in various places and forms during the evolution of a family business becoming a family enterprise.

Family office roles, ownership council leadership, being the family champion and taking on leadership of a family council, leading a family foundation, being part of the board of directors, leading the education committee and being the Chief Family Learning Officer all come to mind.

These roles don’t start with a job posting and typically evolve as a family matures from one generation to the next.

They also come with various advantages and disadvantages, suit different kinds of people during different life stages, and are sometimes compensated and other times not.

Helping families recognize this is the first step to finding the right spot for each person who wants to participate.