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So Many Matches to Try to Get Right
When families are trying to get their continuity planning right, there’s never a single professional advisor who can handle all of the family’s needs.
That statement is becoming accepted today, more than ever, and that’s a good thing.
Of course that doesn’t mean that there aren’t still some who see themselves as able to cover off most of what a family might need, but we’re thankfully finally arriving at a place where most professionals openly acknowledge their limits.
They’re recognizing the importance of collaborating with others in service of their family clients.
Unfortunately, there remains a huge gulf between saying that you’re open to collaborating, and actually collaborating well on some regular basis.
If it were easy, more of us would be doing it, and doing it more often.
See Key Challenges to Serving Enterprising Families
The Initial Introductions Are Simple
Let’s get to back to the idea I broached in the title, on matching families with advisors.
A family leader will often know an advisor or have a friend in a similar situation who will introduce them to an advisor they know and like.
But after that, it gets difficult for that family leader to evaluate if that advisor they met is a good fit, and to what extent they can be a good resource for their family.
Most often, such relationships begin with technical advice around legal and tax questions, which regular readers will recognize that I find is a sub-optimal place to begin.
Eventually, some families get to the point where they recognize that they need support with getting the other family members to the table and involved in discussions and planning.
The family may realize that they need someone else to come in to deal with the dynamics and relationship issues, without which much of that technical work will be at risk or perhaps for naught.
Solopreneurs, Some Pros and Cons
Many of the specialists in the “family circle” space are independent, “solopreneurs” if you will, like me.
A major advantage we have is the flexibility to collaborate with others, regardless of the logo they have on their business card (remember those?).
Speaking from experience, this is an important asset.
But on the con side, I have spent over a decade waiting for most of the “institutional” players to understand and adopt this mentality.
Ten years ago, I was hopeful (perhaps naively so) that those who serve families on technical aspects of their planning would clearly see that they’re not necessarily well equipped to work with the family dynamics challenges and invite me in regularly.
Referral as a Handoff, Or an Integrated Team
Being referred into a family is wonderful, and it would be nice if it occurred more frequently.
Perhaps some of the hesitation to do so comes from the view that one is “handing off” a client to someone outside their firm.
Nothing could be further from the truth of course, as any good independent consultant recognizes that while serving the family comes first, a very close second lies in making the “referrer” look good (if only to hopefully encourage future referrals).
The idea of having an “integrated team” is beginning to see the light of day in some of the larger institutions, as they recognize the importance of offering a full range of services to families.
But the number of places where you can do “one stop shopping” is not large. See The Elusive Perfect “Cookie Cutter” Solution
Integrated teams are mostly aspirational, at least as far as finding the mix of technical skills and also the relational savvy to deal with an entire family.
Serving Every Member of a Family
Thus far I’ve only been speaking of the advisors, and I haven’t even touched on the fact that for anyone to be able to serve as a facilitator for their family meetings, you need to have very close to unanimous approval of all participants.
I always say that if one single person doesn’t want me there, it really makes my job nearly impossible.
They don’t all have to love me, but it’s better when they at least like the person who is running their meetings.
It’s also important that that person have what some call “multi-disciplinary fluency”, or an ability to understand what the other, more technical advisors, are talking about with the family.
Finding the right match for a family can take work, but is worth the efforts.
