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The First Part Is Comparatively Easy

It feels like it’s been a while since I’ve given a shout out to my late father in this space, so in some ways this may be overdue.

He was an immigrant entrepreneur who lived the Canadian dream, arriving here with next to nothing as a teenager, and he went on to build a very successful family enterprise.

While working for him in various capacities during my younger years, I got to hear some important words of wisdom that will never leave me.

In addition to one of my favourites, about the fact that simple and easy are NOT the same thing, there’s the one hinted at above in the title to this post.


Experts Telling You What to Do

In the field in which I now spend all of my time, working with enterprising families and accompanying them through the challenges of their intergenerational transitions, I always meet families who’ve received great advice from expert advisors.

One of the issues the families can quickly run into is that while the “what to do” part of the advice sounded great, it fell short when it came time for the “how to do it” part.

Back to Dad, I can hear him saying for the umpteenth time, “First we need to figure out what to do, then we’ll worry about how to do it”.

He was good about finding the resources to help with the first part, but he was even better at figuring out the steps required to succeed at the second part.

He would listen to all sorts of ideas and advice, but would make up his own mind, always considering how to put the solution into place.


Examples from Family Wealth Transitions

Almost every time I get introduced to a family, there’s already been a good deal of work done with other professionals, to get some of the structure in place for their eventual wealth transition.

There are typically wills in place for the parents, there may have been some estate freezes in place to crystalize the value of a business for one generation so the growth can be more easily held by the next one, sizeable insurance policies may be in place, and some level of trust structure may already exist.

These families will have been well advised on these tools by well-meaning professionals, all of whom have served a number of other families with similar products.

These all fall under the heading of “what to do”.

The assumption that few have questioned along the way is, how is this all going to work with the members of my family?

“Well, just have a family meeting to tell them all” may be the extent of the advice they receive for that part. If only it were that simple.


The Tail Wagging the Dog

In such cases, which remain the norm, many decisions have already been made, before any conversations are even attempted with their offspring.

These plans are being made for a group of people, but those people, for whom all of this is ostensibly being done, have never been consulted.

The silent expectation that “we know best” is a given, along with the one about “they should just be happy with whatever we give them”.

I look at this as the tail wagging the dog, or a “bass ackwards” way to go about things.

And I recognize that I’m in the minority with this view

And I’m good with that.


Complexity and Co-Creation

In most families, the way to go about things that I outlined above is sufficient. But I’m not talking about “most families”.

When there is sufficient wealth that complex tools and structures are required, then it behooves the families to engage in much more thoughtful efforts to get it right.

The idea is to make the wealth last AND the family last, and that takes work.

A few months ago in The Family Conversations You Know You Need to Have we looked at some of this. Note the plural “conversations”, because this is not a “one and done” discussion.

The “How to do it” part can also benefit from some outside, unbiased guidance and support.

Families left to themselves can seldom achieve the level of discussion and conversations between generations that is necessary to get everyone into co-creation mode.

Thankfully, there are more people doing this work now to help them.