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And the Subtleties That Make Them Different
There often comes a time in the evolution of a family when the leaders recognize that a shift needs to happen regarding the wealth they’ve accumulated.
Some make this shift more easily than others and some never get there.
My first book, which came out a decade ago, addressed some of the challenges involved.
I think the title is self evident in this context: SHIFT your Family Business – Stop Working In Your Family Business, Start Working On Your Business Family.
At some point, the founder/wealth creator needs to figure out how to go from Me, to We.
Not Always an Easy Shift to Actually Make
Many a family business founder has faced difficulties here, notably because they’re so strong-willed and driven and had success due to their individual leadership qualities.
They are great, people tell them they’re great, and they want to keep going and building more wealth. They’ve caught lightning in a bottle and are having fun.
Eventually, though, many get to the stage where the concept of sharing the wealth with their family starts to click.
They’ve likely been saying for decades that “they’re doing all this for their kids” anyway.
Saying Something Is Easy – Doing It Is Hard
So that idea of letting go of the “me” attitude towards a “we” attitude kind of makes sense.
And in the end, it isn’t that hard to at least “say” that you’re moving forward on the basis of “we”.
Between the saying and the doing, though, there’s usually a lot of work to be done.
Expanding the circle outwards beyond oneself is an idea that most people can get their mind around, in theory. But putting it into practice can get tricky in a hurry.
The minute you begin to take concrete steps and writing checks, a multitude of questions come up.
We’re Moving Into “Mine to Ours” Territory
The simplest way to summarize the point I’m trying to make here is that “Me to We” is more theoretical and therefore easy to conceptualize, while the “Mine to Ours” is where we get into the action stage, and complexity rears its ugly head.
Let’s take a brief detour into the land of philanthropic giving.
There’s an expression used by those who work in that world that I’ll paraphrase here, because I think it rhymes with the challenges faced by families figuring out how to share their wealth.
It goes something like this: “It’s easy to give away money. It’s difficult to give it away well”.
When it comes to figuring out how to share one’s wealth with family members, truly stepping into the “from Mine to Ours” in practice, it is really hard to do this well.
Back to Equality Versus Fairness Again
Back in 2017 I tried to address some of this in We Treat Them All Equally – That’s Good, Right?
In simple and straightforward situations, equal is fine; but very few of the situations I come across in the families I work with are simple and straightforward!
We’re venturing towards one of the biggest overall topics I deal with, even though I don’t love the way it’s typically labelled.
I’m talking about family governance, of course, as regular readers may have guessed.
I just put “family governance” into the search feature on my website and, unsurprisingly, hit the motherlode. Here’s one good place to start: Three Pillars of Family Governance from a Pro.
That post quotes Barbara Hauser noting that transparency, accountability and participation are all required.
How Are We Going to ___________ Together?
If you want to dive into that motherlode of posts, please be my guest. I can save you some time and give you a quick summary of what family governance boils down to.
The subheading above has a blank in it, into which you can plug the following three phrases:
- Make decisions
- Communicate
- Solve problems
That’s the gist of family governance, but as usual, even though it’s simple to say, it is hard to actually do.
Making “Mine to Ours” Actually Work
Going from my wealth to our wealth takes time and practice, and typically evolves over years and decades, not days and weeks.
There’s no substitute to having regular family meetings to discuss matters in a productive way.
Families need to learn how to make decisions, communicate, and solve problems together.
They need to learn how to operationalize transparency, accountability and participation.
Few families can do this all by themselves, so finding someone to facilitate the process is a great idea and a good place to start.
