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Contrasting Transition Timelines: 15 minutes or 10 Years

Based on a True Story

When you spend a lot of time in the wonderful world of family enterprises, you hear all sorts of stories, many of them entertaining and sometimes even instructive.

This is a true story that I recently learned more details about, and thanks to the way the patriarch shared the details, it also includes a wonderful contrast that we can all learn from.

The setting is an annual awards evening for local family businesses, for which I had the privilege of acting as the MC.

I had also been part of the jury that evaluated the applications, interviewed the finalists, and selected the winning family.

Transition # 1 : From G1 to G2

Part of the celebration that evening involved viewing some fantastic videos that had been made this summer at the place of business of the three finalists, and included candid clips with every family member involved in each business.

So while we had learned a great deal from the applications and our evaluation interviews, there were some new nuggets of information that came out that evening.

Some of these came from the videos, while others were revealed during a fireside chat with one family member from each of the finalists.

It was during the video that the patriarch from the winning family shared that when his father, the business founder, brought him into the business decades ago, that whole transition lasted “about 15 minutes”.

Transition # 2 :  From G2 to G3 

So about a decade ago, when he began to think about the next generational transition, where he would be the one planning his exit rather than his entry, he was trying to think about the appropriate timeframe.

When some advisors told him that ideally such transitions happen over a ten-year period, he was dubious and could not imaging why it would ever take that long.

During his acceptance speech, he confessed that ten years was, in fact, a very appropriate amount of time to do things right.

It seems like both these transitions could actually be deemed “successful” though, so what’s there to learn here?

I’m glad you asked.

Short and Sweet – Yes, That CAN Work

Let’s start with why the first transition above actually worked, because there are a couple of key details one might miss.

The first one is that the founder had grown the business to the point where he was no longer able to handle it, and was beginning to feel overwhelmed and in need of help.

The second key is that once his son arrived and Dad recognized that he had greater ability to lead than his old man, Dad got out of his way.

This doesn’t typically happen, especially with business founders.  

I have a client in a similar situation and there’s another parallel between the situations that’s also worth mentioning.

The first generation built a relatively small business, so the next generation was taking over something that was actually quite simple.

In the case of the award winners and my client, the business is now way too big and complex to hand over quickly and easily.

Slow and Steady Wins More Races

Once the business achieves a certain size and complexity, there are a lot of things that need to be brought into consideration.

When you think about any large business out there, what are the chances that the best person to run it is actually a descendant of the founder?

So if you’ve decided that you’d like to have your offspring take over your business, eventually, then it’s usually better to give yourself a long runway.

Time moves pretty quickly, and it’s much better to be ready too early than too late.

There’s More Than One Transition

A big reason things take long is that you’re not simply handing someone the keys to the front door.

You need to transfer your know-how and knowledge, as well as your contacts.

The leadership that the new person in charge, or more likely the new people in charge, will require, does not shift very easily overnight.

You need to plan to transfer authority and responsibility as well, which are not as easy to do as you might think.

There’s likely some ownership that will be changing hands as well, and that alone will take some time and getting used to.

So if you have a choice, better plan for a ten-year transition, not 15 minutes.

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Balancing Governance and Culture in Family Enterprise

Developing the Leadership to Find the Right Mix

Colleagues sometimes ask me what it’s like to write a weekly blog post, typically wondering how I constantly find topics to write about.

I normally note that I only write once a week, and I get ideas much more often, so it becomes more about sifting and sorting than dreaming up subjects.

Quite often, like this week, an idea hits me between the eyes and I cannot put it down, and then the tough work begins as I try to figure out how best to share it with readers.

I’ve gotta say, this one could go any number of directions, because it’s so foundational to my work.

Thinking Out Loud, In Writing

Selfishly, I write in order to force myself to clarify my thinking, and would do so even if I didn’t make my writing public.

It’s my version of “thinking out loud”, which I’m known to do, but I do it in writing. It’s kind of my personal journal, open for viewing.

So what was it that “hit me” this time, that I’m about to share?

I’m taking a series of online courses through Coursera, and there was a video in which a presenter uttered a sentence that made me immediately hit pause and rewind.

I’ll spare you the details of the courses, but note that they’re in the area of Positive Psychology, a recent interest of mine.

I don’t have the verbatim quote, but got the five key words.

      “…the right mixture of governance, culture, and leadership…”

Whoa, some of these words are right up my alley, but I’ve never heard them put that way before.

He’s Speaking My Language

Regular readers know how often I write about governance, despite the fact that that word has less than positive connotations for many people.

I also write about leadership often enough, or maybe not often enough, since it’s so important in so many places, especially in enterprising families.

Culture isn’t a word I use much, but it’s also key, and never far from the subject either, even if I don’t use that word.

So while those three words caught my ear, it was the ones right before them, “the right mixture” that got me thinking.

As I considered the idea, I couldn’t help coming to the conclusion that governance and culture fit together nicely as different ways that people work together, formal and informal, but leadership seemed to stick out a bit.

Mixing Governance and Culture

Governance is mostly about the formal structures, procedures, and mechanisms that are put in place to make sure that things run well, and that there are actual written ways that remind us all how we have agreed we will act together.

Culture is more about the informal “that’s how we do things around here” that are almost never written anywhere, yet they’re typically even more powerful in guiding actions than the written rules are.

Finding the right mixture of those two elements, the formal and the informal, is where a lot of the magic happens, and I use the word magic because it’s something that we usually can’t explain and perhaps don’t even try to comprehend.

The Right Mixture Needs to Be Found

But that “right mixture” does need to be found, and it will often happen with trial and error.

It will also vary from one family to another, as well as from one decade or generation to another within the same family, depending on where they are in their evolution of working together, and who the key players are.

But it’s not as if there’s a dial that we move to the left or right to adjust to the right setting, it just sort of evolves.

How and Where Does Leadership Fit?

Maybe that’s where leadership fits in, after all?

Who moves the dial towards a need for more formality, or towards more informal discussions, with the goal of moving the entire family system to a more appropriate equilibrium?

That work can only be done by those who take on that leadership role.

Lest you think that such leadership roles are assigned, or given based on age or seniority, let me remind you that this is not the case, and when leadership is set by this “default” setting, sub-optimal results normally follow.

Someone needs to step up to these roles, and take them.

Is that you?

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Agreements Gathering Dust: Bad vs. Good

A Necessary Evil Worth Getting Right

Working with enterprising families, there’s a lot at stake, because you’re trying to preserve the family’s wealth while also worrying about the quality of their relationships.

This work always entails some agreements that are put into writing and then signed by the parties, supposedly to make sure that all possible scenarios have been thought through, understood, and agreed to.

Preparing these agreements is done by well-trained and well-paid attorneys specialized in such matters, so everything should work out just fine most of the time, right?

If only it were that simple.

Formalized Governance Is VERY Important

I write about family governance a lot, but rarely about the formal written agreements that enterprising families typically put into place to formalize all the legal questions around both their business or wealth and its ownership.

The governance I usually work on with families involves their family relationships, and is thus typically much more informal.

Of course all three of these circles are interrelated and so the manner in which they’re governed cannot be looked at independently, but rather interdependently.

There’s More to Governance than Written Agreements

Although my specialty is governance of the family, I do get involved in how the written agreements relating to the business and its ownership get put together and signed by the family members, when appropriate.

My role, and my goal, is to make sure that the affected family members fully understand what they’re signing, so they know what they’re agreeing to.

Those agreements are necessary, so it makes sense to try to get them right, lest they be deficient when they’re actually needed in the future.

Ideally the relationships of the parties will be so positive that they’ll never need to rely on those documents, and they can simply gather dust. 

And that would be a good thing, in my view.

Do You Want Them to Just Gather Dust?

This subject came up recently while working with a family; the patriarch mentioned that he didn’t want to have an agreement that just gathered dust.

He was coming at this from the other side, and from there I could understand what he was getting at.

It gave me a chance to clarify this question with them all (in addition to giving me another blog topic).

In short, agreements that gather dust are neither good nor bad in and of themselves, they are good or bad depending on the contexts of what they were designed to do, and whether or not the circumstances ever require the family members to blow the dust off them.

Gathering Dust – BAD Version

Some lawyers note that a majority of the agreements they draft never even get signed, because the parties can never actually agree to all the terms.

So when an unsigned version sits for a while, the chances grow that it will only continue to gather dust because the longer it takes, the less likely it is that the parties will finally agree.

Perhaps these should be considered a work-in-progress and some time should be spent finding ways to modify them so that the parties will agree and sign… but that’s a lot of work!

Gathering Dust – GOOD Version

In contrast, as I explained to the patriarch of that family I mentioned, I firmly believe that the goal should actually be to have agreements in place that do nothing but gather dust.

What’s the key difference in my version?

One of my favourite words that has come into my lexicon since I began working in this area is “co-creation”.

The best family governance is the co-created kind; period, full stop.

But what about when we’re talking about documents drafted by those aforementioned attorneys?

Well, they wrote them, but they wrote them for you, the family.

Making Them Your Own

So you all need to “make them your own”, which means that there’s some work involved by the family members to read and understand what’s written and to agree together on how they will use these documents.

You actually want them to gather dust and never be needed, so you need to figure out how you’re going to work together, with the goal of not ever needing to resort to blowing the dust off of what you paid those lawyers to write.

That takes time and effort, and often some outside help, and it’s all well worth it in the end.

Bring on the dust.

 

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Finding Better Labels for People in FamBiz

 

What You Call People DOES Matter

Like most areas we encounter in our lives, the field of Family Business has a lot of familiar vocabulary attached to it.

Certain terms become common to those who practice their profession or craft in this space, and words and phrases start to take on common meanings among most of those who inhabit this world.

And sometimes people keep on using words long after better, more appropriate terms come along, and an extra effort needs to be made by some industry leaders to help others make important shifts.

There are also a number of terms that get used to describe certain groups of people that we serve, and these “labels” that get attached to people can become particularly ripe for scrutiny, and overdue for some action to move towards better identifying labels.

This is where I’m going this week, please join me in this exploration.

Succession Planning Vs. Continuity Planning

I can’t believe it’s already been 8 years since I wrote Say Goodbye to Succession Planning in which I first mentioned that because of the negative connotations around the term succession planning, forward-thinking advisors were now using the term “continuity planning” in its place.

When you talk about succession planning, the “NowGen” are forced to think about what things should look like after they’re gone, and few of them really relish such conversations.

Continuity planning feels like it focuses more on what needs to stay the same, regardless of who will be actively involved.

It’s a subtle change, but one that seems to resonate better with the people who are being forced to talk about a subject that many would rather delay or avoid.

 

NextGen Vs. Rising Gen

Another change in lingo that I wrote about years ago is the use of the term “rising generation” in place of next generation.

This one feels like it has caught on even better, possibly because much of the impetus for the change came from James E. (Jay) Hughes Jr. himself.

See: The Rising Generation in Family Business

For those unfamiliar with his work, if you are at all interested in this wealth transition world, he has written some classic books and has been one of the thought leaders for the past few decades.

 

Children Vs. Offspring

There’s one big change that I’ve been trying to champion that I hope will also become more mainstream, and that is to get people to stop referring to their children as “children” once they reach adulthood.

As someone recently pointed out to me, “adult children” is an oxy-moron; they are either adults, or they are children.

The problem with using that term is that we end up treating people as little kids long past the point where it’s healthy to do so.

I like the word “offspring” and have been trying to use it every time I speak or write about this. It seems like I’ve increased the tempo too.

I used the search feature on my website and typed in “offspring” and the first 20 hits I got were all from 2021.

I’ve heard parents in their 70’s referring to their offspring in their 40’s as “the kids” and it always makes me shake my head, especially when those “kids” have their own kids!

Heirs and Beneficiaries Vs. Human Capital?

Depending on the profession one comes from, there are also some terms that get used that make me shudder when they’re taken too far.

Those who draw up legal documents use terms like heirs and beneficiaries, and I understand that some of these terms of art are necessary in certain contexts.

But they can often take on a life of their own when those who have those labels ascribed to them are treated as somehow “less than” or somehow undeserving of their good fortune.

I realize that I’m probably going too far for some here, but I would be thrilled if people started to consider the members of their family as human capital, a term that has much more positive connotations.

Slowly but Surely, Change Is Coming

I believe that progress is being made in many of these areas, and that’s a good thing.

What you call people makes a difference.

Now if I could only figure out what to call myself, as I’ve gone from a “family business advisor” to a “family legacy advisor” to a “family legacy guide”.

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The give and take of family coaching, from someone who’s been there

Read more
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My “Role / Goal / Control” Life Hack

A Shortcut for “In the Moment” Challenges

Most of what I write about each week focuses on issues on the far end of the spectrum of the “long-term vs short-term” continuum.

I’m referring to the loooooong term, in case that wasn’t clear.

I work in the intergenerational wealth transition space, which typically concentrates on years, decades, and lifetimes, not hours, minutes, and seconds.

However, just as each year contains many hours, each of us runs into challenges on a day-to-day basis, and sometimes a little “life hack” will come in handy.

So this week, for a change, I’m focusing on the other end of the continuum, the very short term.

“Oh Crap! Now What?”

A couple of weeks ago, my daughter was charged with organizing an event over a weekend, which involved a few dozen people coming together, indoors, for an inter-collegiate competition.

It happened to be a curling bonspiel, for the curious.

Thanks to COVID, all of last season had been wiped out, and this was the first tournament of the new season, so there was plenty of uncertainty. 

It was also the first time she’d been in charge of such an event.

When I spoke to her by phone on Friday evening, things were going fine.

Alas, I awoke Saturday to a text from her that read, “Please call me whenever you get the chance, thanks” and the time stamp was 7:09 AM. 

I also noticed that I had missed her recent call, because my ringer was off.

Daughter in Need = Dad as Hero?

If you have very independent young adult offspring like me, you learn to relish any opportunity to feel needed in their lives, so this could be a rare chance to play hero.

I called her right away, got a quick “I’ll call you back in ten”, and my mind went to work, wondering how best to be a “responsive, reliable, resource” to her.

How I would frame all my experience and wisdom for her, I began to contemplate.

  • “What’s your ROLE here?”, I thought, would be a good place to start to help her clarify whatever the challenge was.
  • “What’s your GOAL, in that role?” would be a great next step to help her think through.
  • “What is actually within your CONTROL?”, I considered adding, lest she begin to worry about things over which she had none.

Proud Wise Dad, Ready to Serve!

Well, wouldn’t you know it, when she did call, I never got to share this wisdom, as the issue had already been settled.

One player had a close contact with someone who’d tested positive for COVID, so he needed to declare himself ineligible, and they were able to find a replacement. 

It turned out to be a very wet firecracker for Dad to help her out with.

But wait, I write a blog every week, and am constantly on the lookout for ideas to write about.

Now, how do I turn this into something that affects enterprising families, as I typically do?

The Meta Version!

Well, I imagine that many parents of your adults face similar challenges of how best to be useful to them, without over-functioning and jumping in to fix things for them.

Maybe I could apply this Role/Goal/Control hack to myself and see what happens. 

Here goes…

My role could be summarized as follows: 

  • Resource; thinking partner; coach.

My goal: 

  • Get her to a place where she feels confident that she can handle the situation; without being too directive; so that in the future she will readily reach out to me again

What can I control: 

  • My tone; my positivity; my brief words of encouragement to her.

Wrong Answers Only Version

Role: “Wise Dad” with all the answers.

Goal: Get her to listen to my wisdom.

Control: Well, this is where it falls apart, doesn’t it?

In reality, I’m not the one running this tournament, as much as I want it to be a success, I have no say in anything, and all I can really control is my interaction with her, which will likely only last a couple of minutes.

Take-Away Wisdom

While I wasn’t able to try out my life hack “in the wild”, I still like it and will keep it handy.

I hope others find it useful, especially those of you who over-estimate the sphere of your control.

 

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The “Changing People” Dilemma in Enterprising Families

Both Ways of Doing It Are Tough

It’s not often that I’ll write a blog on a brand new idea that just came to me, but this revelation I had last week was enough to put this subject at the top of my topic list.

I knew I needed to write this after I’d already shared the “A-Ha moment” on a call with someone so soon after the discovery.

The discovery, as I’ve labeled it, was nothing more than a brief phrase I read in a book (or maybe I heard it on an audiobook?).

The phrase, if I’m getting it verbatim, was, 

 

                                                   “Sometimes, 

                                             changing the people 

                                                  is easier than 

                                            changing the people”.

 

Don’t worry if it doesn’t hit you right away, that can be expected. 

The important thing is to eventually get it and understand it, and I promise we’ll get into it, and especially look at it from the lens of people who work with their family members.

Changing People 1: Simple Method – Swap

So I’m making this one “No.1” because based on my understanding of the quote, this is the first option the speaker is alluding to.

The idea of getting rid of certain people and replacing them with new people is an option in many situations. 

The thinking goes that if you can’t change the way you are, then we are going to get rid of you and bring in someone who is a better fit.

Simple enough, on the surface, right?

But what about doing this in a family business, is it really that simple when you are contemplating firing a relative?

Yes, it is done sometimes, and sometimes the family even manages to get through it without too many hard feelings, but it’s always trickier than it would be if the person being changed out wasn’t part of the family.

Changing People 2: Complex Method – Convince

So let’s look at the other way of changing people, which I’ve decided to call “convince”.

I labelled this one “complex” because it can take on all sorts of angles and will vary in how each person who’s trying to convince another will go about the effort.

It’s also likely something that is not a “one shot deal” but much more of a process, involving a number of interactions over a longer period of time.

The other reason I call it complex is because no two people will do it the same way, and even if it “worked” with one person, that doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to make it work the same way with someone else.

When Do You Switch from One to the Other?

If we go back to the quote that’s driving this whole blog, there seems to be an inherent question under the surface, which I get from the first word, “sometimes”.

So, what are those times where you need to switch from convincing someone to swapping them out?

Presumably, you will try to convince first, second, and third, and maybe even a few dozen times, before coming to the conclusion that you need to go to the much more drastic plan of getting rid of someone and bringing in someone new.

Working with family members is great when things are going well, and when they’re not, well, it can really be awful.

Coming to the conclusion that someone absolutely needs to go is quite difficult, but sometimes it’s necessary.

Who Can You Really Truly Control?

Of course trying to convince people to change has its limits, because most people don’t like to be told what to do, and a lot of people resist change to begin with.

If you’re a regular reader you will be familiar with my thoughts on how futile it can be to even try to change others, because the only person we can actually really control is ourselves.

I know that I don’t like it when other people try to tell me I need to do something different or try to make me do something I don’t like doing.

I’m pretty sure I’m not alone here, either.

Sometimes we need to flip it around, look in the mirror, and see what changes we can make in ourselves, and see if we can’t end up with some positive changes in the others around us.

Family systems theory is pretty clear, if you change how you interact with the system, the system will change.

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All FamBiz Are Different, And All the SAME

All FamBiz Are Different, And All the SAME

Lots of Ways to Look at Enterprising Families

One of the most interesting things I’ve noted since I began working with a variety of families who own and manage a business or assets together is how so many of their challenges repeat from one situation to the next.

At the same time, each has its own idiosyncrasies because no two families, no two businesses, and no two situations are identical.

This paradox is well known among those who work with many families, but each family typically views itself as “very unique”, which I recognize is not an elegant expression, but it does underline how so many families live under the illusion that they are alone in facing their particular challenges.

 

Let’s Take a Look Inside Each Family

Of course there’s another problem with looking at families and comparing and contrasting them with other families, and that’s the fact that none of these families is a monolithic unit, but rather a constellation of many individuals.

Much of the most difficult work with families comes from the interdependence between all of the family members.

If we picture a convoy of buses on a highway, and we are looking at them from a helicopter above, they all appear to be quite similar.

The more interesting stuff is what is going on inside each of those buses, which is where they will look and sound quite different.

It sure would be easier to deal with these busloads of people if each held a group of similarly trained people like an army unit, rather than each one containing a separate family group.

 

What Kind of SAMEness Do We Want?

Many folks like me who work with family groups employ a standard process, which allows them to determine how the members of the family are similar and different from each other.

I prefer to treat each possible intervention as unique, and I spend a lot of time discussing exactly what the family members are hoping to achieve with me, right up front, and I do not reach for any “cookie cutter” solution.

Regular readers know that I have a bit of a penchant for coming up with mnemonic devices in order to make things easier to remember.

See Is Your Continuity Planning PAL in Danger, and Start Cleaning Up Your M.E.S.S. for examples.

So it might not surprise you that I recently came up with a new one that spells out “SAME”.

 

Remedial Work: Engagement and Alignment

If you like creating mnemonics, you know that vowels carry a premium, because some of those 5 or 6 letters show up disproportionately in words.

Luckily, I have already written a lot about family Engagement and family Alignment, so I already had a couple of key elements ready to go.

The serendipitous thing about this instance is that I wasn’t looking for a way to come up with a creative way of remembering something, but it “found me” nonetheless.

I was a couple of weeks into defining a possible engagement with a family, and I was preparing my notes for a call with the patriarch.

I wrote down “engagement” and “alignment” in my notebook, and then I added a couple of adjectives that I thought encapsulated his three offspring, each of whom I had recently met over Zoom.

I happened to add the words “sincere” and “motivated”.

Are you starting to see what was about to jump off the page at me?

 

Sincere – Aligned – Motivated – Engaged

I truly felt that all three of these adult siblings were sincere in undertaking the work needed, they were generally aligned in their thinking about how they work together as family, they seemed motivated to do the required work together (which is not always the case), and they were already feeling engaged in the process with me.

So there I had it, they were all the S.A.M.E., despite being quite different individuals.

I feel like I now have a useful checklist with which I can quickly look at a group of people with whom I’m being asked to work, and see how many of these four ingredients are present.

 

Aligning Different People = Finding Some Sameness

Much of this work, in the “family circle” comes down to aligning people who are different, and that means finding ways where they are alike, or the same.

If you determine that they’re all sincere, motivated, and ready to engage, you will be well on your way.

And please remember that they are not all the SAME.

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The “Good/Fast/Cheap” Quandary in Family Enterprise

An Old One, But a Good One

Writing a weekly missive here gives me the chance to share a lot of different ideas that I’ve picked up over the five and a half decades of my life.

Often it’ll be something recent that I heard from a colleague, or based on some interaction I just had with a member of a client family I’ve been working with.

And then sometimes, like this week, it’s something that has been with me for so long that I can’t even pinpoint how and when the idea first came to me.

There are times when I believe that I’m sharing something that’s already well known, and it turns out many readers are learning it for the first time, and other times when I think that I’m writing about a “new secret”, only to discover that everyone’s already well aware of the concept.

I’m not sure where this week’s subject falls, but I do know that it’s an old one, but a good one, for me.

Good – Fast – Cheap: Pick Two (You Can’t Have All Three!)

This applies to all sorts of services that one ends up needing at some point in time, from clothing repairs to home renovation projects and from legal services to therapy.

You want good service, and you’d like it done quickly, and you prefer not to overpay for it too. And if you expect to get all three of those things at once, you’re probably out of luck.

  • If it’s good and cheap, you’ll probably have to wait for it;
  • If it’s good and fast, it will likely cost you;
  • And if it’s fast and cheap, it’s usually a crappy job.

I’m sure that there are some exceptions, but when they occur, you should be extra thankful, because they are rare.

An Unexpected Bill in the Mailbox

My daughter unwittingly provided me with an opportunity to share this with her recently, as she related a recent visit to a medical clinic.

Instead of going to the clinic at her school, which required an online appointment, a friend had told her about a nearby walk-in clinic, so that’s where she went.

She was in and out in 20 minutes, with a prescription that took care of her problem promptly.

She was quite happy with it all, until a number of days later when she found a bill for $150 in her mailbox. 

As a Canadian in the US, she was also learning first hand about the differences in our medical systems.

When I told her about the Good/Fast/Cheap quandary, she understood it right away. 

When I told her I was going to write about it here, she asked me if the example was worth $150 to me.

What About Family Enterprise Services

When a family enterprise requires the services of professionals, the same rules apply.

In fact, sometimes you may be lucky if you get two of the three, as my mind goes to families who think that they can simply purchase everything they need for their family governance from professionals who offer to write a constitution for them.

Such families pay a lot of money for that work, and end up with something that’s nearly useless.

I believe the last place you should skimp is on your family, so when you want good service you should be prepared to pay for it.

Likewise, it’s always better to do family work before it becomes urgent, because then it will cost you more for the convenience.

The place where “fast” comes into play is in responsiveness, because when you’re paying someone to serve you, promptness should be expected and included in the price.

Please Don’t Ask Me for Fast and Cheap

When people hire me, I try to make it clear that I’m not interested in fast and cheap, because that would mean that it probably wouldn’t be very good, and I’m not interested in doing shoddy work.

While I know that some colleagues charge more than I do, I know that many others charge less. 

The kind of work I do isn’t often doable quickly, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not quick to respond, it’s more about the nature of family relationships and how long it can take for sustainable changes to occur.

And of course there’s never a surprise invoice in anyone’s inbox either, because that gets worked out well in advance.

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