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How Family Governance Is Like a Home Reno
Each week here I love to try to find new and useful (and entertaining) ways to talk about my favourite subjects, i.e. the challenges faced by families who are preparing an intergenerational transition.
Whether they still own an operating business or not, there are a variety of things that they need to work on to increase their odds of success.
And while the work that I do with one family will undoubtedly be helpful in some way with another, there isn’t necessarily a lot of predictability in this work.
It was during a recent discussion I was having with some colleagues that one of them gave me a fresh angle on the unpredictability of this work, which we’ll now explore together.
We Never Know What We’re Going to Find
Nearly every intervention with a family begins with some sort of information gathering phase, typically called “discovery” or something like that.
But because every family is different and their situations are all unique to them, we can’t usually forecast too far ahead what the next phase will look like.
This is because we never know what we’re going to find until we start the work.
Just as I had completed uttering some version of those last two sentences, one astute co-worker replied, “Oh, yeah, like a renovation!”
“Hmmm”, I said, thanking her for the blog idea, “I’m going to use that!” (Thanks C.C.)
Status Quo No Longer Sufficient
As we start to explore the similarities between a home renovation and the beginnings for some family governance work, let’s start at a logical place, the beginning.
I daresay that any renovation project begins with noticing that the status quo no longer serves the purpose for the future, so the family begins to imagine how they could modify the structure of their home for their future.
Similarly, a family might begin to notice that what got them “here” is not what’s going to get them “there”, and decide to think about new ways of interacting and structuring their important discussions about their future together as owners of their assets, as they prepare for a future with new people in leadership positions.
Dreaming About How to Make It Better
So after the family comes to the decision that they need to make some modifications, they’ll eventually get to the point where they understand that they will need to get some expert outside help.
Obviously some of the renovation work will need to be entrusted to professional tradespeople at some point, but even in the initial stages, having someone meet with the family leaders to explore possibilities makes sense too.
Those leading generation family members would also be wise to include other, younger family members from the rising generation too, since the renovation project is, after all, ostensibly being done for them, right?
See Successful Planning – Who Should Be Involved? from 2015.
One Step at a Time
As someone who loves analogies and metaphors, I also need to frequently acknowledge their limits; there is always a point where they break down.
But pointing those things out can also be useful and illustrative, so that’s the pivot we’ll embark on next.
Whereas with a home reno project, you will probably end up with some idea of what the end product will look like, family governance work doesn’t necessarily have an “end product”.
We can talk about providing more place for the kids to play in the home and we can talk about setting up a family council, but how clear those plans will look in each person’s mind’s eye will differ widely, especially in the latter case.
The Longer Term View, Not a Never-Ending Project
In both cases, people call in outside experts because something isn’t going the way they want and they recognize a need for help making changes.
For a building project it can be nice to start fresh and build new, because you don’t have to worry about what you might find once you start knocking down walls.
Once you have done the initial discovery work, you can start to get a much better idea of where you are going and what you need to start to work on first.
Until I haven’t spoken to all the family members in depth, it’s usually way too early to know what is going to come of the project.
And taking a much longer term view can help it not feel like a never-ending project.
