Experts Playing in Many Different Sandboxes

During the decade since I had my calling to work with families on transitioning their wealth from one generation to the next, I’ve met hundreds of other professionals who also serve families hoping to achieve that goal.

This work is typically quite complex, and there’s often a lot at stake for the families, so it’s actually quite normal that many experts will serve any given family over the years, as the family and its needs evolve, along with the businesses and assets they own.

The past few years have also seen an increasing recognition that we experts must learn to work together if we hope to properly meet the needs of such families in a holistic way.

See: From Multi-Disciplinary Field to Interdisciplinary Ecosystem.

In addition to the work we do serving these families, there are many other ways to help this ecosystem evolve, and many different “sandboxes” in which some professionals play, as part of advancing the greater good.


An Abundance Mentality Helps

I’ve been blessed with meeting so many others who share the abundance mentality that’s required for professionals to agree to share their knowledge with others, while understanding that trying to “corner the market” isn’t really the best way to go in an emerging field like this one. 

See: Spreading the Gospel Vs. Cornering the Market from 2013.

 

 

I had a recent exchange with a colleague I’ve known for years that caused me to reflect on the various ways I’ve been participating in this ecosystem, which I somehow (selfishly) imagined was common knowledge. 

I share my thoughts about my work and the industry regularly, and this has gradually seen me develop a following that continues to grow.

The fact that this colleague I’ve known for years seemed unfamiliar with my work made me realize that not everyone consumes my content, and many go about making contributions in lots of other ways too. 

It also made me grateful for those of you who do follow my contributions.


Peer Organisations Are Prevalent and Front and Center

There are three main peer groups that I’ve been involved with since I began this work, and there are others I’ve not joined, because, well, you can’t do everything.

I found this work via Family Enterprise Canada and their Family Enterprise Advisor program, and I continue to contribute to that organisation as an ambassador, podcast host, and member of their editorial committee. I’ve also MC’d their annual Symposium the past two years.

See: Let’s Talk Family Enterprise podcast

Then there’s FFI, the Family Firm Institute, where I also enjoy interacting with peers in the field. I’m in a global virtual study group there, and a faculty member in their Global Education Network (GEN Program) where I’m one of the instructors for the Family Governance course.

Last but not least, PPI, the Purposeful Planning Institute, has resulted in some wonderful professional relationships and great learning.

Their annual RendezVous in Denver is always a highlight for me, and I’ve been lucky enough to serve on the Wisdom Expedition, charged with planning and selecting all of the breakout sessions for that conference.


Activities, Content Creation, Teaching, Serving Families

For those entering this ecosystem, there are so many ways to learn, get involved, and interact with other, like-minded professionals.

I’m grateful to those who’ve made great strides already, leading the organisations I’m part of as well as everyone who also creates content, does webinars, teaches courses, and organizes events so we can meet and learn together from one another.

So many people have been thoughtfully sharing for years (even decades in many cases) and this is beneficial to all of us who work with families, and of course ultimately to the families themselves.


Career Life Cycles, Like Families

In a “meta” kind of way, it’s noteworthy that the industry has career life cycles, not unlike the families we work with.

The elders lead and are eventually replaced by those who learned by following their footsteps.

Professionals all contribute differently based on their strengths, priorities, time commitments, and career cycle stage.

I continue to enjoy the parts I play, and realize how lucky I’ve been to follow many of the great leaders in this space.

It’s also a pretty small world, kind of like a big family, in many ways.


Post Script

I recently learned that my blog ranks nicely on this list of the Top 45 Family Business Blogs, and they asked me to share this link, so you can check out the others too.

Family-Business-Ownership Has Its Limits

The ecosystem of professionals who work with enterprising families is naturally quite diverse, as this work has become more interdisciplinary than ever before.

This week we’re going to look at some of the models these experts use to think about and explain the complexity involved in doing this work well.

My exposure to this began with the venerable Three Circle Model from Tagiuri and Davis, which I first wrote about here in Three Circles + Seven Sectors = One A-Ha Moment.

If you check the date on that post, you’ll see that it’s now over a decade old, so it stands to reason that some of my views on this have evolved in the intervening years.


From the Family Office World

Let’s start with something I’ve seen a couple of times now from some thought leaders from the family office space.

I’ve heard about the “MLF ratio”, as in the percentage of the time spent by those who work for the family office that’s spent in each of three key areas.

It seems many family offices have a ratio of about 70 / 20 / 10.

What does that mean?

That 70% of people’s time is spent on the Money, another 20% on Legal matters, and then a final 10% is spent on the Family.

Those I’ve heard talk about this are typically in favour of finding ways to increase the Family number, to at least double or triple where it typically falls.


From the Trustee World

I recently saw a similar triumvirate that I think stemmed from the world of trustees for wealthy families.

This one looks at Assets, Documents, and Relationships.

 

The assets are what the family owns, the documents are the legal papers that explain who owns what (and who’s allowed to do what), and oh, yeah, let’s not forget that there are a group of family members that are being served here!

And isn’t it always the problems in the relationships of those family members where most of the problems arise?

Again, I think that those who speak about this trio are those who are in favour of finding ways to increase some of the thinking about the relationship questions on the front end of decisions, as opposed to having to then clean up a mess that resulted in poorly thought out “documents”.


From Other Family Wealth Experts

I also recall hearing someone recently noting that heirs don’t only inherit wealth, they also inherit structures.

So if we wanted to turn this into a three-point model, it might be “heirs, wealth, structures”.

Once again, we look at the wealth/assets/money/business (what) as one leg of the stool, the family/relationships/heirs (who) as another, and then the legal/ownership/documents/structures (how) as the third.


Doing Away with the Circles?

At this point, we can even do away with the circles, for the sake of simplicity.

What the Three Circle Model does so nicely is to highlight the overlaps for some of the people, because in the family business world from which it emerged, the issues caused by family-employees and family-owners versus family members who are neither (or both) are often front and center.

But as a family’s wealth increases and the portion from an operating business decreases, these other ways of looking at things often make more sense.


Who and What Aren’t Enough

The one thing that doesn’t change is that more often than not, the balance of time and effort is way off from what it should be.

Regular readers won’t be surprised to hear that I think that too much focus is put on the money, the business, the wealth, the assets, while too little focus is put on the family, the relationships, the heirs, and all things related to the human capital.

Likewise, those in charge of the documents, the structures, the legal arrangements, the ownership (beneficial and otherwise) are given far more attention than they deserve.

In its simplest terms, it boils down to Who gets What.

It is very important that all of this be spelled out properly, especially when so much is at stake.

However, there are a couple of other questions that shouldn’t be forgotten along the way.

Let’s start with some WHY questions:

  • Why are we doing it this way?
  • Why don’t we involve our heirs?

And let’s add a big HOW question:

  • How is all this actually going to work, with our family?

You WILL Leave a Legacy, Like It or Not

This week I want to tackle a topic that many people talk about, but don’t always mean the same thing when they use the word.

Legacy is a big word, despite it only being six letters long.

I’ve been paying attention to people who write and speak about it for about a decade now, and while I don’t consider myself to be the authority on the subject, I definitely have some strong feelings about some parts of it that I want to share.

I also want to give a bunch of tips of the hat to some of the people from whom I’ve gleaned some of the wisdom I’ll now attempt to spout.


This Is NOT Optional 

My first hat tip is to David York, whose words have inspired several of my weekly posts over the years. See, for example, Striving for the All and Nothing Inheritance.

York talks about the fact that leaving a legacy is not optional, i.e. you will leave one, whether you like it or not.

Will it be large or small? Will it be positive or negative? Will it last centuries or fade within months?  These are perhaps the questions you should concern yourself with, but some sort of legacy will survive each of us.

Once we understand and accept this fact, hopefully it’ll help focus some of our actions in ways that ensure that the legacy we eventually leave will look something like what we’re hoping for.


Wealth Is NOT a Legacy

My next hat tip is to David Werdiger, for reminding me via his most recent newsletter, of a quote from the man who deserves thousands of hat tips from all of us, James E. Hughes Jr., aka Jay Hughes.

Werdiger quotes Hughes as saying:

            “Founders Create Wealth, but Heirs Create Legacies”

We’ll get more into dissecting the second part of that in a minute, but for now let’s concentrate on the founders and the wealth.

Too many founders believe that the wealth they created will be their legacy, and hence the more wealth, the greater the legacy.

They then continue focusing on making their proverbial pie as big as possible, on the mistaken assumption that quantity and size are what are worth striving for, in order to ensure a long-lasting legacy.

That’s a short-sighted view.

There’s no such thing as a fortune that’s “too big” to screw up. In fact, there are plenty of examples of “positive correlation” on those scores.


Don’t Forget the People Part

My final hat tip is to Tim Belber, who inspired this post way back in 2017, called Is Your Continuity PAL in Danger? 

Belber’s argument is framed as an equation: P + A = L.

People, plus assets, equals legacy.

What he means is that while anyone’s legacy will involve the assets they accumulated in their life, there won’t really be a legacy, unless there are people who care enough about it to carry it on into the future.

I sometimes talk about the fact that when we’re babies, someone changes our diapers, but at the other end of life, sometimes diapers are again needed, and now instead of changing the diapers of our children, it’s likely our offspring who will be in charge of changing ours.

If you want them changed with love (and in a timely manner), best make sure the relationships with your offspring, who may be calling the shots, are properly maintained and nurtured.


Preparing the Heirs for the Assets

All of this falls nicely in the category of preparing your heirs to receive the assets they’ll eventually inherit.

So much effort is typically put into the other end of that equation, i.e. preparing the assets for the heirs.

What wise people and families are finally realizing is that the time and effort spent on preparing heirs is never wasted.


Back to the Title of this Post

As I thought about the title for this piece, I stumbled into the idea of pride and whether or not your heirs will be proud of the legacy they inherit.

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to think that this is the key element required in  the legacy one leaves.

If more people lived their lives with this type of “top of mind” motto, “I will act in ways that enhance my legacy. knowing that my children will be proud to keep my legacy alive”, that would probably be a good thing.

Fun with Similar Words, Part Umpteen

My wife and I were recently back in “full house” mode for a few days, as both our recent college graduate offspring decided to grace us with their presence at the same time.

I always enjoy the mental stimulation of this family time, as our similar-yet-different senses of humour get reacquainted and combine for many laughs.

One evening they indulged me as I shared highlights of a recent episode of America’s Got Talent that I’d seen, whereupon I realized that the word “finale” has a number of possible meanings.

Add in the fact that I often intentionally mispronounce that word as “finally” (for humorous effect) and you now have the genesis of this post.

Let’s see if I can turn this all into something useful for those in the family wealth transition ecosystem.


At Least Three Types of Finales

As I zipped through the recording of the episode, I stopped on a few acts I thought were worth sharing, including one that featured a really nice visual finale that we enjoyed.

So there’s the first type of finale, the end of a particular act, the last few seconds of a performance that lasted a couple of minutes.

We then watched parts of a couple of other acts from the 2-hour episode, before finally watching the last performance, which was the finale of that episode.

Imagine all the attempts at using every possible “double entendre”, feigning ignorance of what someone meant, sarcasm, and every other kind of dig we could employ to try to confuse, frustrate, or otherwise get a laugh from our family trio.

Of course we even brought up the idea that in a few weeks we could watch the “finals” of the competition, which would then be another kind of finale.

So we already had a finale of a performance, of an episode, and of a season. 


The Journeys, Not Just the Destinations

As I attempt to turn this family time into a blog post, the various time frames, and the fact that they each had an endpoint, were where my mind went.

It made me think about each finale as an endpoint, or destination.

As I wrote in There Is No Destination, I like to focus more on the journey instead.

In fact, after every finale, there’s always something else about to begin.

Bringing this to the overarching subject of this blog, the idea of family continuity, and transitioning an enterprise to the next generation of one’s family, let’s think about this as it pertains to the views of the “NowGen” and the “NextGen” of a family.


Back to the Long Game and the Arcs of Life

As noted last week in Stepwise Planning for Family Enterprise Transition Work, you can only plan so far ahead in this work, because each step depends on how the previous one turned out.

It’s almost like there’s a never-ending series of finales, each followed by another round of what’s next.

The trick is to periodically take the time to reflect on how these steps fit together when looked at from the very long term, “arc of life”, viewpoint.

Family wealth transitions are intergenerational by definition, so it certainly behooves us to look at them from that lens.

Many people have difficulty “going there”, mostly because it forces them to think about how things will look in a world “post me”, i.e. after my final finale. (You know, “if I die” as opposed to “when I die”).

But you can only get so far if you don’t consider that view.


Don’t Set Yourself Up for “Finally!”

Let’s wrap with a look at a couple of versions of “finally” that you’ll want to avoid.

First, please don’t look at “estate planning” and “succession planning” as events, that involve putting ideas and decisions to paper as an item on a to-do list.

Too many people do this work, along with outside experts, and once they sign the documents, they exhale and say “finally”, that’s done.

It’s a process, not an event, and you’re never done.

Second, please make sure not to set things up in a way that creates the conditions for your heirs to quietly and subconsciously root for your demise.

Too many people put themselves in a position where the lives of their offspring will be much better after their passing, as opposed to during their lives.

You really don’t want your death to create a “finally!!!” reaction from them. 

You Can Only Plan So Far Ahead

This week we’re looking at the reality faced by those of us who work with groups of family members as part of our role in guiding families through the challenges they face when transitioning their family assets to the next generation.

For those who simply advise a family leader (or couple) it’s typically much simpler. You give them your best ideas and advice, a few tips on sharing information within their family group, wish them luck, and you’re done. 

Of course, what happens next, when they in turn speak with their family members, is that they’re met with questions, resistance, quizzical looks, rolling of eyes, and all manner of uncertainty. Things often grind to a halt or spin out of control from there.

Some families are wise and lucky enough to find and enlist the help of skilled outsiders who know what questions to expect and can help guide the family forward, at least by one more next step.

That “one step at a time” aspect is what I want to share more about now.

 

More Peer Group Benefits 

Let’s put some context around how this topic became top of mind for me recently.

As noted in Meta Views on Sharing with Peers and Families I participate in a few regular meetings with peers, where we share ideas and stories about how we work with families.

A recent call had someone sharing a live case that they’re involved with, and the dozen or so others on the screen provided them with all sorts of ideas that they might pursue with the family we’d discussed.


And Some Sports Analogies Too

My mind kept churning after the call, and I couldn’t help thinking that even though this advisor now had a handful of great ideas that they might pursue with the family at their next meeting, it would be next to impossible for them to lay out a long term plan for how to implement these great ideas.

While every advisor and family leader may have some idea around the best approach to take as a family recognizes the need to begin to have regular meetings and to create some semblance of governance, it’s difficult to lay out Step A, Step B, and Step C, in order.

Trying to carve it in stone from the get go is NOT recommended.

You can only realistically plan Step A, and you need to keep B, C, D, etc. on the back burner (or in your back pocket), until they can all, as a family, see what works, what gets traction, and what the family is ready for.

As a fan of sports analogies (see Formula 1 Racing and Working with 1% Families) the next morning I tuned into a soccer match….


Tic-Tac-Toe Just as They Planned

The FA Cup game began with a pass all the way back to the goalkeeper, who fired the ball downfield in what seemed like a set play.

Surely this couldn’t turn directly into a scoring opportunity as they’d drawn it up in the locker room. There are too many moving parts on the field. Or so I thought.

A mere 16 seconds later, the ball was in the back of the net, and I wondered if maybe I was wrong. The play involved about 4 or 5 players, and the 4 or 5 steps all worked out in order, seemingly exactly as planned.


Playing the Very Long Game

As I tried to process what I just saw, it finally came to me. The score in the game was 1-nil, but there were still 89 minutes to go (at a minimum).

They managed to put a few exact steps together and successfully attained one step along the way to victory, but the rest of the game was played with more of the typical “fits and starts” that sports fans are accustomed to seeing.

Similarly, when working with a family on an intergenerational transition, you’re playing an even longer long game, measured in years and decades, not seconds and minutes.

As advisors or coaches who work with families, sometimes we can draw up a nice sequence of moves that work out, but it’s much more important to know how to guide the family through the ups and downs of the whole season.

Having family members learn how to play nicely together as a team is always key, so time spent on that is never wasted.

The Evolution Over a Decade

It was ten years ago, during the time I was completing the Family Enterprise Advisor program in 2013, that I first had my true calling to work in this fascinating field.

When I entered the program, I assumed that the key work to be done was all in the “business circle”, where family businesses have been traditionally well served by the existing fields of professionals who work with all sorts of businesses (family or otherwise).

As I learned about the Three Circle Model (and wrote about then in Three Circles + Seven Sectors = One A-Ha Moment) I quickly recognized not only that the “family circle” existed, but also the fact that it is typically as underserved as it is important.

I also realized that my natural abilities are best suited to serve the family relationship area, despite all my education until then having been geared towards business circle challenges.


Sharing My New Calling Back Then

As I tried to comprehend my newfound calling and what it would mean to finding the type of clients who actually have a need for be served in these areas, I found myself trying to explain the challenges that families face, which while related to the business circle, are actually quite distinct from them.

I recall someone mentioning that there was a lot of demand for such guidance for families, because of the prevalence of family enterprises in the economy.

I initially agreed with those who noted the demand for what I was speaking about, before eventually realizing that the word “demand” was poorly chosen to describe the reality of the situation.

I think what my friend was trying to point out was a huge need for help in these areas, which existed then and still does today.

The problem for people like me is that while the need is huge, the demand is actually quite low.


Turning Need into Demand

One of my overarching challenges for this past decade has been trying to find ways to turn that need that families have to find resources and guidance to overcome the challenges they face into demand for such services.

How does one turn a need into a demand?

I recall a story about IBM way back when, who came up with a computer so powerful that they expected would have little demand, because it was difficult to conceive of what anyone could use that much computing power for in those days.

I daresay that every person in the western world now probably has several devices they use daily that are more powerful than the machine they were talking about decades ago.


The Education Aspects

One aspect that certainly comes into play is education, and it can be looked at in a few different ways.

Of course one part is to make families aware of what they could be (and should be) working on to increase the odds of success in their favour, as they try to find the best path to transition their businesses and wealth to the next generation of their family.

Sharing examples of families who have been “early adopters” of some of these avant-garde methods, and thereby educating these families around what has worked elsewhere is a big part of that.

Instead of having professionals use scare tactics by pointing out well known failures, and thereby providing “solutions” that solve for some simple aspect of those failures, we’ve seen more modeling of what successful families have done.

The other major education angle lies in having professional experts trained to serve such families, based on those positive models of families who have done this well.


Growing the Supply

The supply of experts who serve families needing support in the family circle continues to grow, seemingly at a faster pace than ever, and that’s a good thing.

The need is still greater than the demand, but at least the supply is ramping up as more and more demand is being expressed.

As I wrote last year in From Multi-Disciplinary Field to Interdisciplinary Ecosystem in many ways I’m jealous of those now entering the space because of the progress we’ve all been making over the past decade.

Everything continues to evolve of course, and there is no finish line either.

Most families will need support and resources at some point on their journey, and the opportunity to accompany them on this complex ride can be very rewarding for many.

A Simple Adjustment Makes a Big Difference

There’s an expression that I’ve found myself using more and more recently when speaking with people, but I don’t think I’ve used it in writing that often.

When I talk about the principles behind much of the work that I do with families, as I try to guide them to prepare for the transition of their business or their wealth to the next generation, I often marvel that things are actually quite simple.

“None of this is rocket science!”, I typically state as some point.

Regular readers may recall that I also like to remind everyone that “simple” is not the same as “easy”.

So this week I want to share a concept that is far from rocket science, that is relatively easy to explain, and that while not necessarily easy to do at first, does get easier with practice.

I’ve been trying it myself since I learned it and can attest to its usefulness.


A Book Recommendation from a Podcast

For the past few years I’ve been serving as one of the hosts of the Let’s Talk Family Enterprise podcast, which continues to be a labour of love for me.

(My Dad used to say “There are only two reasons to do something: Love or Money”. Mystery resolved for the curious.)

One of the standard requests we have for each guest at the end of every episode is for a book recommendation, and I’ve been nicely surprised by most of the responses.

I’ve ordered many of them based on the suggestions of my guests, and enjoyed the vast majority.

And so it was with episode 45 when I spoke with Kristin Keffeler about her book, The Myth of the Silver Spoon, and the book she recommended, Good Inside, by Dr. Becky Kennedy.

I ordered that audiobook from Audible, and listened to it during a car trip.

While I only have one take-away as I reflect back on it, it’s a major one, and it’s the subject of this post, which I’m finally getting to!


People Generally Are Good Inside

The premise of the book is that, generally speaking, people ARE good inside. It can be easy to forget that from time to time, especially when we’re dealing with our own family members.

What the author then suggests is to adopt the MGI method, in order to minimize our over-reactions to situations, especially when we still don’t have all the information around something that has occurred.

And when you think about it, when we first learn about anything, we almost never have all of the information, we typically only have our own, quickly arrived at, perspective.

Kennedy suggests learning to always defer to the Most Generous Interpretation of what you learned.

That’s the MGI, and it sits at the other end of the continuum most of us default to, which is to ascribe the worst imaginable view of what has happened, usually basing this on some assumptions, many of which turn out to be wrong!


Examples in our Own Families

There are many everyday occurrences this applies to, so there are plenty of opportunities to learn to put this into practice.

Years ago I began a daily meditation practice, which continues today, and it has made a similar difference to my stress levels.

Say I come into the kitchen and I see someone left some dishes in the sink. I could simply get angry inside and assume some forgetfulness or laziness on the part of whoever left them there.

Or, I could apply the most generous interpretation to what I see, and say to myself that the culprit got distracted or was in a huge hurry.

If I send a text to a family member and then notice hours later that I am still waiting for a reply, I could assume that they are purposely ignoring me and waiting to reply in order to make me angry.

Or, I could use the MGI method, and tell myself that they must be very busy, and maybe my text arrived at a very inopportune time for them.


Making a Habit of This Practice

It’s a simple mind trick that can become a habit, and that’s the secret to making it work for you.

Any single time you do it is almost irrelevant, like meditating once, or going for a jog once a year.

But as you do this more and more, it can help in keeping you calm.

Key Success Factors for Working on Family Transitions

When I stated sharing my thoughts in this blog over a decade ago, I decided to write a weekly post and figured I’d see how long I could keep that up.

Well, I’m still going, and often people ask how I come up with fresh material 52 times a year. One answer is that I recognize that nothing is truly original and subjects come up in different forms and contexts, which allows me to repeat certain themes.

This week I’m combining the ideas of discernment and resourcefulness, both of which I wrote about in 2018, in separate posts.

Let’s jump right in.


Patrick Lencioni Fan Club?

I’m a fan of the writings of Patrick Lencioni, and if you’ve never heard of him, you’re missing out on something. He’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I love the way he brings clarity and simplicity to his work.

His latest book, the Six Types of Working Genius, is where the concept of Discernment jumped off the page at me again.

I highly recommend the book but will cut to the chase here and focus on the fact that Discernment is one of the types of genius, and it also happens to be in my personal top 2 (along with Engagement).

Discernment is the ability to see the big picture of what’s going on and then to divine what needs to be done as a next step.

See Questions of Discernment in Family Business for my initial thoughts on this in 2018.


Where Are We in This Transition Journey?

When a family is working on transitioning their wealth from one generation to the next, it is truly a journey, and not an event.

There’s also a whole heck of a lot of complexity going on, and a number of interested parties, all of whom see things in their own personal way.

This is why it is sometimes useful to engage an unbiased outsider to guide the family on this journey.

If that person is also skilled in the area of Discernment, I hope that you can understand why this would be a plus.


Bringing the Right Resources to Bear

Now let’s look at the resourcefulness question, and see how it ties into serving families.

The first thing one needs to recognize is that any one person quickly hits a limit in what they can provide, by themselves, to a large, diverse and complex family.

Knowing what other services and resources are out there that can be woven into how we serve families is often the key to our continuing to be able to add value as the family evolves and moves forward.

Let’s look at a handful that I’ve used or incorporated into my client work over the years.

See also: The 3 R’s: Finding a Responsive, Reliable, Resource


Outside Platforms and Services for Families

  • I’m working with some families using the MTM 360 platform that has been instrumental in getting them started holding regular family meetings.
  • I recently used the Family Enterprise Assessment Tool (FEAT), which was very helpful in clarifying what my client family needed to work on next.
  • I’m just starting down the road with a family where we’re looking at using the Assess Next Gen tool as a way to plan the next steps in the eventual exit of the G1 parents from the business.
  • I’m also a big fan of the Values Edge Toolkit and have used it a few times to help families discern, understand, and follow through on the values that they all have in common.
  • Last but not least, I’ve been looking at bringing another client family into working with the Tamarind Learning wealth education platform.

All of these are potentially useful for families at one time or another, and it also helps that I know the people who’ve worked hard to develop these resources, so that I have confidence when introducing them.


Weaving It All into the Family’s Timeline

Back to discernment, a big part of doing this work well is involving the family leaders and working together to figure out the answer to this key question: 

                         What does this family need now?

Many of these tools have only been created in the past decade, and others have had major revamps and improvements recently.

This ecosystem continues to evolve, enabling professionals to serve complex families in more productive and useful ways than ever.

Naturally, if you’re curious about any of these and want to talk about how they might be a fit for your family or one that you serve, please hit me up and let’s talk.

Useful Analogies for Working with Complex UHNW Families

During recent discussions with colleagues, many of whom who also work with complex families, I came up with an analogy that resonated with some of them.

So of course I now want to share it here as well, if only because writing about it forces me to think through the best ways to talk about the subject.

I’ve always been a huge fan of metaphors and analogies of all kinds, even though they’re never perfect.

I’ve written about sports analogies here a number of times, including The Rules of Baseball and Family Business, Where’s the Puck – Family Wealth Hockey Analogies, and Communication in Curling and in the Family.

Formula 1 Racing Is Up Next

This week we’re venturing a bit up-market, into the lofty world of Formula 1 auto racing, because that’s the analogy I recently concocted.

It so happens that the wealthy are often referred to as “The 1 %”, but that’s a total fluke here, and I didn’t even realize the coincidence of the number 1 until I set about coming up with a headline for this post.

For those who don’t follow auto racing, Formula 1 likes to view itself as the crème de la crème of the sport, with a worldwide audience and races on several continents.

Many of the automakers own parts of the teams and use them as kind of an R & D Laboratory to test the limits of technology.

The technical automotive improvements they develop at this top level of racing cars eventually make their way downstream to the cars sold to consumers.

Over the years Mercedes, Ferrari, BMW, Nissan, Renault, Ford, Honda and Porsche have been doing this. Likewise, in the US, Toyota, Ford and Chevrolet have done similar things on the NASCAR circuit.


Family Governance Models to Follow

I recently attended the annual NYC conference of the Institute for Family Governance where some of this really hit home.

Attendees heard from members of several families about how their governance systems were put into place and how they have evolved over the generations.

We heard from families that are into their 5th, 6th, and even 7th generations, including a few that now have several hundred family owners.

None of them got to where they are today easily, and they were all supported by outside professionals over the decades.

These are rare families at the very top of the complexity pyramid, and often also from the highest echelons of wealth.

This is the “Formula 1” equivalent I’m trying to point out.

What About the Other 99%?

As someone who is involved in several professional communities who serve families, I’ve heard many people lament the fact that we typically speak about the work that gets done and discussed always seems to involve the wealthiest families. See Meta Views on Sharing with Peers and Families.

They recognize that the need for this work on family dynamics and developing the rising generation exists at all levels of wealth and even in the smallest of family businesses. I can’t argue against that.

What I always try to stress is that this ecosystem is still in its infancy, and for now, most of the ideas we are learning to integrate into these complex wealthy families are still emerging, and that the good news is what we learn here can, should, and will eventually trickle down to simpler and smaller families.


The Pit Crew Metaphor

Happily, there’s a related metaphor that I can share that will help drive my point home, and that’s the idea of the interdisciplinary pit crew that every race team has to prepare the car for each race, and also handle the periodic pit stops during the main event.

The aforementioned professionals who serve families come from a variety of fields that each have their own view of what family clients need, and when they work together, all seeing the same big picture, they can be even more effective all while being more efficient.

If you’ve ever watched any auto racing on TV, you’ve surely been impressed by what you see when a car comes in for a pit stop and a bunch of guys all jump in and change all the tires, top up the gas tank, make whatever other adjustments, and then get the car back on the racetrack in a few seconds.

Imagine professionals who work well together to serve families operating with such seamless interaction, and you can begin to see what’s possible in our ecosystem.

That’s the model we should be following.