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Stepwise Planning for Family Enterprise Transition Work

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.

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Need Versus Demand in the Family Enterprise Space

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.

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Stop Assuming the Worst – Using the MGI Method

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.

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On Discernment and Resourcefulness for Family Clients

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.

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Formula 1 Racing and Working with 1% Families

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.

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Meta Views on Sharing with Peers and Families

Learning by Sharing, and Sharing our Learnings

Ever since I had my calling to work with families facing the challenges of transitioning their business to the next generation, I’ve found a wonderful kinship with others who work at guiding families towards this same goal.

The ecosystem surrounding such families continues to evolve and mature, as professionals from various fields of origin continue to find themselves in situations where collaborating together is an essential ingredient for getting the best results for the families who engage us.

Various peer groups have sprung up over the years, and as someone who’s been working mostly solo, I find it hard to resist joining them, so that I can continue to learn and share what I’ve been learning.

Having just returned from the annual in-person gathering of one such group, this topic is fresh and top-of-mind for me, and I want to share some of the perspectives I came home with.

A Wicked Case of “Groucho Marx Syndrome”

I was invited to join this particular group just before the pandemic, and even though most of its members have a certain professional status that I lack, I feel like my contributions are welcomed.

When I set aside my “why would I want to be part of a group that would have me as a member?” I can actually appreciate all that we bring to each other as a group of like-minded peers.

During a quick discussion with a small group a one point, someone mentioned the “container” that we provide for each other to pour our shared experiences into.

Another added that we understand ourselves better in relation to the group as we do this.

As individuals who often find themselves as the only non-family person in a room during the toughest parts of our job, this work can be lonely at times, and sharing with others who’ve experienced the same thing is cathartic and allows for personal and professional growth.

A More Recent Example

My involvement with a different organisation has me in the middle of launching another peer group, this one involving members who serve families from a variety of different professions of origin.

It will be interesting to see how this one evolves, and what we will each get out of the experience.

It’s always best to approach such situations with an open mind and an attitude of abundance, as opposed to arriving with a closed mind and a scarcity view of the world.

Thankfully those folks typically self-select out of such opportunities.

What About the META Part?

One of the most fascinating aspects of the work that goes into the organisation, launch, and maintenance of such groups (and make no mistake, it does take work) is how everything we learn in these efforts is applicable to so much of what we do with the families we serve.

The things we do to successfully engage with and learn from peers is almost perfectly transferable to the work that families require assistance with.

As peers who share with each other, we learn about ways that families can and should share.

As we co-create ways that we are going to govern our groups, we learn about ways that we can guide families as they develop their family governance policies.

As we share leadership in our groups, we learn about how to make co-leadership and co-creation work well in the families we serve.

As we facilitate our sessions with each other, we learn what makes some methods work better than others, and we practice new ways of being with each other, which helps us when we do so with families.

The Constant Challenges of Engagement and Alignment

All such peer groups face similar challenges, from their launch, through their evolution and into their maintenance stages. Eventually, things typically stagnate at some point, and a fresh look and new focus with some changes in leadership is often required.

Again, there are strong parallels to the work we do with families.

As I wrote back in 2020 in Family Engagement and Family Alignment – Chicken and Egg families need to constantly work on keeping all family members engaged, and working on their “alignment” is frequently required.

Likewise, when there are challenges keeping them aligned, working on their engagement is helpful.

From now on whenever anyone asks me why I choose to get involved in so many of these peer groups, I’ll just refer them to this post.

 

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The “Bookends” View of Family Life

Following Up On the Escalator Post

It’s been a few years since I’ve written a two-part blog post, and when I used to occasionally do that, it was planned as such in advance, when I recognized ahead of time that I was treating a longer topic.

This one wasn’t planned at all, and so this follow-up to last week’s The Crowded Escalator Problem in Family Planning is a bit of a surprise, even to me!

After completing that piece, it stayed with me, and I realized that I left a lot unsaid in that post.

I hope you’ll agree that it was worth revisiting this other view, the one at the beginning of the escalator ride, in contrast to the end.

With the escalator providing a metaphor for the ride through life for family members, I hope you’re ready to grab onto the handrail now.

Mixing Bookends with Escalators?

OK, so let’s get the mixed metaphor out of the way; I love to dabble in metaphors and so occasionally I end up putting a couple together, Frankenstein-style, that seem a bit incongruous, and that’s the case here.

I hope you’ll excuse that bit of inelegance, because I’m not sure there’s a better way to think of the view I’m talking about here.

Last week, we dealt with the difficulty that some senior family members have in recognizing that the time had come for them to disembark from the escalator they’d been riding for decades, as it pertained to their leadership role in the family enterprise.

The key is to distinguish that role, the one they play leading a business, from their other roles, the one of family member, and whatever role they continue to play in ownership.

The Training Period Takes Time – It’s a Process

Those in the rising generation need time to learn how to assume the roles they’ll be expected to play in the future, so from their perspective, they usually can’t wait to get started.

Too often, though, they have to wait, sometimes way longer than needed, to get into positions where they can practice and learn.

And here comes the A-Ha that I had, after finishing up last week’s piece.

It’s a lot like when your children are young, and they want to help out, say, in the kitchen.

When you’re in a hurry, it will always be faster for you to decline the offer of help and do everything yourself.

Showing them, helping them, fixing their mistakes, cleaning up their messes, Aaaaaarrrrggghhhh, it’s all so time-consuming.

And, if you never slow down and do that, they’ll never learn.

You actually did it, back then, and so later in life, you need to remember to do it again.  

Hence the bookends.

Back to the “We” Versus “Me” Angle 

Last week I ended off noting the difference between taking the “Me” view of things rather than the “We” angle.

It is very much that here again, but it’s also a lot more.

It’s about the arc of time, and learning to look at it from a much longer viewpoint. In the life cycle of a family, the longer the viewpoint you take, the simpler everything becomes.

If you look at today, or next week, or this quarter, doing the Me thing, in the short term, will always win.

But when you think about where things will be (and NEED to be) in five or ten years, the We almost always takes over.

Switching Over to the Diaper Story

I’ll wrap up by switching to a completely different issue, but that still deals with people at the extreme stages of life.

I want to talk about diapers. More specifically, the two people involved in the changing of the diaper.

Let’s call them the “diaperer”, i.e. the one doing the changing of the diaper, along with all the duties that brings with it, and the “diaperee”, i.e. the one for whom that diaper has been doing the heavy lifting.

Early on in the lives of the rising generation family members, the kids are the diaperees, and their parents are the diaperers.

At the other end of the escalator, a role reversal naturally occurs.

Hopefully, the former diaperees will be able to pay someone else to become their parents’ diaperers, but I think you get my drift.

In many family roles, we end up taking turns.

Like with bookends, you end up facing the other way at the other end.

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The Crowded Escalator Problem in Families

It Gets Dangerous When People Won’t Disembark

When going about one’s business in society, there are some unwritten rules that people follow that ensure the smooth and safe flow of people.

Some of these are based on laws that are written and enforced, but many are simply based on custom.

Driving a car is largely based on laws, with a few customs sprinkled in, and these are usually formally taught to those who wish to be licensed to drive.

How we walk through airports, shopping malls, and other public spaces is usually way less formal, and is something we learn from our parents, who are concerned for our safety and try to teach us how to function in society.

One such basic practice is to always get off an escalator when you get to the top (or bottom), and not to step backwards just to stay on.

Stretching the Metaphor for All It’s Worth

I may have used more words than necessary to set up my metaphor, but I’m glad that I was able to incorporate the part about how such customs of behaviour in society are typically taught to us from a young age by other family members.

In my work with intergenerational families, it’s always interesting to note how the proverbial apples don’t fall very far from the tree.

Yet there are some things that the leading generation sometimes does that don’t serve the family well, which are then learned by their successors, much to the dismay of the generation that then has to follow them.

Failing to disembark from the escalator, and not getting out of the way of those who are behind you, is a problem that we see far too often.

It’s not safe for anyone, and the repercussions are far-reaching.

Examples Abound – Let’s Look as Some

A couple of months back, in Starting Family Discussions Late – 5 Considerations I shared a real-life story about a large family in the town where I was visiting relatives.

The matriarch had recently passed away, which brought with it a hope that some of the uncertainty facing the rising generations might soon be clarified.

What I didn’t get very deep into then, and what I hope to address here, is the follow-on effects that such lack of clarity can have on the subsequent generations of these families.

When those in their 80’s and 90’s still haven’t ended their ride on the proverbial escalator, those behind them in their 60’s aren’t able to begin to make their own plans, which then stifles the ability of their offspring to figure out where they fit into things.

You now end up with people in the prime of their lives and careers, in their 30’s and 40’s, who are unable to make key decisions around whether or not they have a future in the family enterprise.

A Recent Extreme Tale

I recently made a presentation about legacy planning to an industry group in the center of the universe (Canadian readers all know I’m referring to Toronto).

During the Q & A, an attendee shared their story, which I will now relate here, while disguising some facts for privacy.

The G1 founder is in his late 90’s and still very much in charge of all major decisions, including many day-to-day ones.

Unfortunately, the G2 heir apparent passed away recently, reinforcing the founder’s perceived need to stick around even longer.

The G3 person who attended my session, who’s trying to run the company with a sibling (and both see things very differently, by the way) now has to deal with a meddling founder grandfather, a mother who suddenly holds a large ownership share despite never having been involved in the business, and a sibling equal.

When this person’s offspring, who are hitting their prime working years, ask their parent to try to paint a picture of their future in this family enterprise, how can they do anything but shrug their shoulders and say, “we’ll see…”?

Moving from a “Me Focus” to a “We Focus”

I’m often too indirect in my writing referring to the importance of “having important discussions”.

I now want to highlight that talk is insufficient, and that action has to occur.

A key action that needs to happen is for senior family leaders to get off the damn escalator.

They need to move from focusing on ME to doing what’s best for WE.

Hopefully some will recognize themselves and act.

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A More Important Type of “A.I.” for Family Enterprises

Probably Not as Big a Deal as Artificial Intelligence

A couple of months back, my wife took an extended work trip that had me alone in the house with just our two cats to take care of. 

I decided that it was an opportune time to clear out our freezer, which had begun to accumulate a variety of odds and ends that were too good to throw away, yet wouldn’t keep forever.

I keep an email folder of blog ideas that bears some similarities to such a home appliance, and lately I’ve decided to look behind some of the recent additions to see if there isn’t something I put in there a while ago that just might be right to serve up now.

Such is the case with this week’s post, which is all about Appreciative Inquiry, which I’ve seen labelled as “A.i.”, not to be confused with the now ubiquitous “A.I.” (Artificial Intelligence, for the uninitiated)

In my work with enterprising families, appreciative inquiry will likely be the more important A.I., at least in the short term, although this prediction risks looking foolish and out of date some day.

So What Is Appreciative Inquiry?

Rather than trying to reinvent the wheel, I’ve decided to share an introductory sentence from this piece I saved last summer, by Regina Koetters.

“Appreciative inquiry (Ai) focuses on what’s working well, why it’s working well, and how to replicate and build upon it. 

Developed by Dr. David Cooperrider and Dr. Ron Fry at Case Western University three decades ago, this approach has been validated by extensive research as an effective means of developing people, spurring innovation, and scaling companies.”

I hope that you can see why I like the idea of using Appreciative Inquiry with business families, where too often there can be a tendency to focus on the negative.

Positive Psychology Strikes Again

This is not brand new territory for me, as I’ve touched on some angles that come from the world of positive psychology before, notably in What Colour Is Your Cape?

Keeping one’s focus on what’s going well can be so important in setting the right tone with everyone we interact with.

It’s as much a “default mindset” as anything else, in my view, and can truly be a difference maker in so many settings.

And, it doesn’t come naturally to most people.

Maybe that’s why it’s so refreshing when you experience it.

Generative Questions and Positive Framing

Family businesses do a lot of things right in order to be successful, so sometimes when we are invited into them to be helpful, it can be a natural reaction to try to fix what’s not working.

But as my UK colleague Ken McCracken likes to say, they have some natural advantages that they’re already using, so it’s usually better to look at what they’re doing right.

(Listen to the podcast I did with Ken as my guest.)

The biggest thing to remember is to ask what are called “generative questions” and do so with “positive framing”.

These generative questions come from a place of real curiosity and a desire to learn when listening to the answers.

The constant search for more positive ways to look at things works better when the questions are asked in this way, as opposed to questions that contain judgement.

There are literally books written about this topic and also courses you can take to get better at this.

Hopefully this blog post will encourage more people to consider this methodology in the family enterprise space.

Not to Be Confused with Other Kinds of A.I. 

Off the top, I tried to make a humorous point about the other kind of “A.I.” that we keep hearing about in popular culture these days.

I also realize that there are even more things that go by the initials “A.I.”, including one I wrote about recently in No Beef with this Family Resemblance.

I imagine that in some family farming businesses there might be a reliance on the Artificial Insemination practices that I got to learn about thanks to my Dad’s post-retirement adventures in cattle breeding.

But for most family enterprises, and for the advisors that work with them, I think that Appreciative Inquiry is an idea whose time has come, and that more people should be looking into.

The questions we ask and the way we ask them are the basis for the good conversations we have, that create and sustain our most important relationships.

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