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On Accepting Acceptance and Self-Awareness

It Is What It Is, And What It’s Going to Be

I’ve been known to say, somewhat cynically, that the secret to happiness is having low expectations.

The reactions that this statement elicits vary, of course, but rarely do people take me up on it for discussion.

So this week I feel like delving into the question of what we’re willing to accept, and how thinking about that can be helpful in managing oneself, especially in the context of working with family members.

This may get a bit hard to follow, so I apologize in advance, but I hope you’ll stick with me until the end to see how this will unfold.

Accepting That You Have to Accept Things

I can’t control anyone except myself. 

And neither can you, but of course we’re now talking about “yourself”, and not me anymore!

Far too often, we wish we could control others, and we even believe we’d be doing them a favour by doing so.

If you’re a parent, you probably have a certain perspective on this that others may not be able to relate to.

If you are a parent of young children, it’s actually a part of your responsibility to try to control your children, as you prepare them to become responsible adults.

But at some point, they do actually become adults, and then, controlling them is no longer their parents’ job.

Eventually, you need to accept that the child you raised into adulthood is now an adult, and they’re no longer your responsibility.

It Often Comes with Age

There is certainly a correlation between one’s age and one’s ability to accept that one can no longer control one’s offspring.

But age is only one component, as I know some people who’ve been alive for many decades who still haven’t arrived there yet, and I also know some younger people who already get it, despite their youth.

I only wish that those who have not yet arrived at this point would recognize how liberating it is to let go of this desire to ensure that others conform to their desires.

It really is a basic principle; I do me, and you do you.

Very simple, and yet not necessarily easy.

Once you do learn to accept that others are going to do what they want, and not what you want, a lot of pressure comes off.

An Unexpected Real World Example

When I first met “Lou” he was very high energy but also quite high strung.

He was a neighbour at my cottage, so I’d see him over the summer and then over the winter we’d lose touch.

One spring, he came over and seemed so much more calm, to the point where I mentioned it to him.

His recent divorce had caused him so much stress that his doctor had to have a serious discussion with him about the negative health consequences he was dealing with.

“So did he prescribe you some meds?”, I asked.

No. He told me to let it go.

There was more to it than that, of course, but that was the key. I’m glad that Lou was able to take the message to heart, because otherwise I fear he may no longer be with us.

Lou’s doctor helped him see that the stress he thought his ex-wife was causing him was actually something he could control, by letting it go.

Coming to Your Own Realisation

Each person either comes to this conclusion or doesn’t, but like I said earlier, anyone who has arrived here can tell you how liberating it is.

Are you aware that you are causing yourself harm by continuing to hang on to that desire to have others behave the way you wish they would?

That’s the self-awareness angle I hinted at in by title.

I’ve been over this ground in the past, in Rest in Peace, While You’re Still Alive, and in Equanimity, Yours for Only $250 Million.

If you devote only a small portion of the energy and emotion that you are dwelling on about how others are living their lives, and instead decide to focus on getting on with your life, you too can benefit.

The Greatest Irony of It All

One part of this that always strikes me is that those who are most guilty of this flaw are typically perfect case examples of those who themselves behaved very much counter to the desires of their own parents.

You raised them to be adults, not let them be adults.

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Knowing What Your Family’s Stuck With

The Latest Legal Documents Typically Rule

When it comes to the planning that families work on to transition their assets from one generation to the next, there are lots of moving parts.

It’s not unusual for discussions to drag out over months and years, when family leaders are trying to arrange things for the future. 

That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because in my view it’s better to take your time to get it right than to rush into something that turns out to be sub-optimal.

But there’s also a danger in taking too long, or waiting too long to take care of overdue updates and revisions.

If someone important happens to die before everything is signed, you may very well be stuck with what was written the last time that agreements were actually fully executed.

The Illusion That All Is Good

Because the vast majority of people really don’t like to think about this stuff very often, there’s a tendency to delay taking action, even when you know that you really should be working on making your latest ideas and plans official.

Quite often a family will undergo weeks and months of discussions and drafting and revising and signing documents, and so when that’s finally all done, the last thing they want to do is open up that Pandora’s box again, even if several years have elapsed in the interim.

So more often than not, they continue to live under the false illusion that all is good.

Far too often, the sprint to wrap things up, and the fatigue that naturally occurs afterwards, means that few of those family members affected by these agreements actually know what’s really in them or have a good understanding of what’s to occur upon someone’s death.

The exhaustion feeling is a real thing.

“They’re Stuck with It!”

This subject came (back) onto my radar a while back during a peer call, when one experienced colleague was lamenting the fact that she often has to deal with such situations, where a family realizes that what they signed is not what they actually thought they’d agreed upon.

It’s also not what they want nor what they need.

This call was in French so I’ll give you the direct quote followed by my translation:

                           « Pis là, ils sont pognés avec ça! »

                           “And then, they’re stuck with it!”

I can’t convey her tone here, but let’s just say there was a certain amount of frustration in her voice, likely amplified by the number of times she’d experienced this (Merci AV).

So often this is the result of well-meaning professionals who were trying to do right by the family, but who, for a variety of reasons, ended up supplying “standard” documents that did not respond to the “custom” situation of the family in question.

All Good, We’ll Just Revise Them!

I noted above that this occurred a while back, and yet I’m only writing about it now, because I wasn’t sure there was enough there for a blog post until this past week.

I had the opportunity to be part of an annual forum over a couple of days with other professional who serve UHNW families in Canada.

While most of the peer groups and events I’m involved with are dominated by those who work the “family circle” around process, relationships and family dynamics, in this group I was a part of a small group of such specialists, surrounded by technical experts from the tax, trust and estates world.

The discussions we had brought this subject back into focus for me in a real way.

A Case Example Brings It Home

We were assigned into breakout groups to discuss a case loosely based on the Yellowstone TV series.

It was during my discussions with lawyers and tax specialists that it became very clear that it didn’t really matter what the family wanted, because if John died before they could get it all signed, sealed and delivered, they’d all be stuck with whatever his last will stated.

The Antithesis of “Plans Are Useless”

Back in 2019, in Plans Are Useless, Planning Is Indispensable, we looked at how important it is for families to come together to discuss and clarify what they want to happen in the future.

But unless EVERYONE agrees, they’ll be stuck with what’s written in the legal documents.

Best keep them current; but that takes work, time, and intention.

Let’s get going then.

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On Peer Groups and Feelings of Infidelity

Sharing and Learning from Each Other

Working with enterprising families is naturally quite challenging and not for everyone. 

It can also often feel quite lonely when you are the only person who comes from outside the family system that you’re working with.

For those and many other reasons, I’ve always been on the lookout for any way possible for me to interact with peers who do this kind of work in one fashion or another.

Sharing and learning with other professionals who work with similar client bases in related ways, or even in almost exactly the same way, can be a very enriching experience.

Regular readers will recognize that many a weekly post here has its genesis in some sort of peer group experience, of which this is simply the latest.

Different Formats, Similar Results

I’m writing this piece on after having just completed two of my favourite group meetings, and they were very different yet equally enjoyable and stimulating.

One group convenes in person for one weekend annually, and fourteen of us gathered recently.

The other is a monthly hour-long Zoom call, where there were 10 of us this latest time.

The former group also added monthly Zoom calls in the past few years to great success.

Something that these groups have in common is that as members get used to being together, the conversations get easier, friendlier, and thus much deeper.

Each gathering feels more and more like a safe space to share, and that’s when the good stuff comes out.

The Meta View of Work with Families

What I also find incredible is how often the work we do together as a group mimics what we’re all trying to do with the families we get to work with.

Like how I just talked about the safe space and the comfort level that grows the more we gather together as a group.

Another such angle is around the leadership of each group, which can vary but is typically rather informal.

A related question surrounds the various roles that each participant plays and is expected to play, and whether or not such roles and leadership are fixed or will vary over time.

Sometimes It Feels Like I’m Cheating

As these peer groups mature, the closeness that members feel for each other can begin to feel pretty intimate, which is a feeling I enjoy developing with peers.

But my personal experiences are a bit different from most such members, I think, because I’m involved in a handful of such regular group gatherings with like-minded professionals, and it almost feels like I’m cheating on one group when I spend time in another!

I say that because in many of these meetings, someone will utter something like “I love these get-togethers with you all, because this is the ONLY place where I can talk about this stuff”.

Whenever I hear that, and it happens several times a year for me, I get a bit of a guilty feeling because I have a few other places where I get that warm and fuzzy glow.

But that guilt normally quickly morphs into gratitude for the fact that I have other such deep relationships, and even get to do this in more than one language.

Jealous of the Families We Serve

The concept of jealousy doesn’t only happen around the peer groups I’m part of.

Sometimes it can be the families themselves that can make me feel a pang of jealousy.

This doesn’t happen as often, but I have had (and still have) some client families where I admire what they have built as a family who regularly enjoy each others’ company.

What these situations have in common is that there are people who come together to talk with each other and spend time with special people in their lives.

It’s All About Affinity

One of the founders of this field is James E, (Jay) Hughes Jr., and he talks about creating a “Family of Affinity”.

For any peer group to have staying power (not all do) you need to create the type of culture around how you “are” together, even more than what you are going to “do” together.

Peer groups that begin to feel like an affinity group will do better than those where that culture doesn’t get developed.

Each group member bears some responsibility for its culture; I like to think I’m doing my part.

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You Want a MEDAL for That?

Well, Hard Work Can Justify It!

A few weeks ago in The Elusive Perfect Cookie-Cutter Solution, I lamented the fact that the work that I do with families seldom allows for a formulaic approach.

Because each family is unique, every business is different, and the people who compose every family are one-of-a-kind individuals, much of this work involves starting fresh and doesn’t allow for a lot of “cut’n’paste” operations.

But there are naturally some aspects of the work that do repeat themselves in many cases, so this week we’re going to take a look at things from that angle.

And, as I’ve done a number of times in the past, I’m going to share a mnemonic way of remembering the sequence I’m sharing.

From my headline, which includes one word in ALL CAPS, you may have already guessed that MEDAL is what we’ll be working with.

(If you’re curious about past mnemonics, see: Start Cleaning Up your M.E.S.S., Is your Continuity PAL in Danger, and Seeking Resources to Get Back on Kilter).

Going for the Gold (Medal, That Is)

The first letter in Medal is M, and in my case, M is for Meet.

Everything starts with a meeting, and new phases of any work almost always necessitate a meeting as well.

A meeting, in many cases, involves me sitting in a room with a number of family members together, or it could be meeting virtually.

It could also be just me and one or two other people, and those situations, while more often virtual these days, can also be in person.

But important phases of most process work involve some sort of coming together to discuss things with others.

E Is for Exchange and Explore

Let’s not to minimize the meeting aspect of this, because for larger groups of people, simply getting everyone together at the same time and in the same place can be a huge obstacle.

Virtual meeting technology has made this easier in recent years, but even with Teams and Zoom, coordinating schedules with busy people is a huge lift in many cases.

Now that you are together, meeting, what are you going to do to maximize the fact that all this brain power is in one place for the next few hours?

This is where the E’s come in, and for me the two biggest ones are Exchange and Explore.

Exchanging is about both giving and receiving, which in the case of information involves talking and listening.

You brought everyone together, now let’s hear from them all.

If you accentuate the Exploration mode, to see what you can discover together, that’s even better.

D Is for Discern and Develop

So you had your Meeting where you Exchanged and Explored, and now you are each back in your own space, for the coming days, weeks, months, etc.

If each person then takes some time and makes some efforts to Discern what was learned and tries to figure out how to Develop something from what was discussed, that could be useful.

Integrating new learnings and reflecting on current realities allows the Explorations and Exchanges that you had at the Meeting take root.

A Is for Act and Advance

Now that something new has taken root as a result of the Meeting, the Exchanges and the Discernment, what’s next?

Well, hopefully you can find ways to Act and Advance ideas, projects, journeys, or whatever you are trying to accomplish together.

Too often there’s inertia that needs to be overcome, so this is a reminder to put things into motion with Action and Advancement.

New ideas were conceived and now new ways forward have emerged, which need to be Acted upon in order to Advance.

Some of these items can be done individually, others will involve additional folks who were part of the initial Meeting.

L Is for Loop Back and Meet Again

Eventually the progress that you have been making on your own or with a small group will come to a natural arc where it will become time to repeat the process again.

This is where you need to Loop back and Meet with the group again and enter into the next iteration of the process.

Coming together again in a Meeting, to once again Exchange and Explore, will begin the next cycle of the work that needs to be done.

After the next meeting, you will once again retreat into solitude or a smaller group, to Discern where you now stand, and Develop next steps.

You’ll figure out the next Acts and Advancements, and Loop back again.

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On Role Clarity for Family Enterprises and Advisors

Minimizing the Stepping on Each Others’ Toes

When dealing with family members who work together, certain subjects come up all the time.

One challenge I’m always working on is making things more clear for everyone, because much of the confusion that such families face comes from the fact that there’s a lack of clarity around so many subjects.

This week we’re going to zero in on one type of clarity, and that’s “role clarity”.

Of course even though we’re going to try to focus on one seemingly small subject, we’ll quickly see that even this single question of role clarity has many tentacles.

Who Does What, Sounds Simple Enough

In its simplest form, role clarity comes down to answering a very basic question, who does what.

Ideally, each task is handled by someone who’s competent at it, which is not always the case, of course. 

And it’s in such situations that we sometimes begin to see cracks, which bring up other, related questions.

These questions are usually less about the role itself, and more about who is assigned to it.

Who “wants” to do it and who “has” to do it are a couple of variations.

Let’s throw in who “gets” to do it, which sometimes also applies.

See Who Gets to Decide Who Gets to Decide from 2017

Ability, Competence, Desire

Ability and competence surely enter into it, but so does desire, especially in families where some tasks arise that don’t necessarily fall under a category where people are paid for taking on certain roles.

Competence raises the question of “who can do this for us?”

As I wrote those last sentences I flashed back a few decades to a time where my sister, who was studying to become a CPA, was assigned the task of keeping the books for our family holding companies.

She was not thrilled, to say the least.

She was, however, competent, and in retrospect, my Dad should have been applauded for trying to get other family members involved in aspects of his family business. Paying her probably would’ve helped.

Today’s Roles, Tomorrow’s Leaders

When you consider transitioning a business from one generation of the family to the next, you also need to consider a number of roles that will be handed down from the current leaders to those who are expected to succeed them.

These roles, where someone needs to learn to transition in, while another needs to learn to transition out, are often fraught with potential conflict.

I typically recommend a very gradual approach in these situations, because it’s quite likely that there will be several years where two people overlap in what used to be a single role.

Breaking things down into tasks and responsibilities makes sense in such cases.

And having regular check-ins is also key, so that everyone is clear on who will do what for the next while, so that things don’t fall through the cracks (which they will, inevitably).

You Do Your Part, I’ll Do Mine

Last week, in Giving Your All in the Family Enterprise, we looked at an aspect of how each party must hold up their end of things.

Over-communicating is always better than under-communicating.

Roles are always an important area to do some regular level-setting, and that doesn’t only apply within families, but also between advisors and the family.

Regularly Re-Designing the Alliance

As a coach, my training included a lot of reminding us to regularly check in with our clients on the “alliance” that we must continue to design and re-design together.

See Discovery, Contracting and Designing Alliances with Families

I’m not as good at this as I’d like to be, and sometimes that causes issues with clients.

In cases where the senior generation member has agreed to pay me to work with a rising generation future leader, this is really key.

What they think my role is, and what they want me to be doing, because it’s what they think my role should be, doesn’t always line up with the way I see my role.

When parents give orders that their offspring don’t follow, and then the parents hire someone else to tell them instead, in order to change the messenger, that isn’t usually a good strategy.

Hiring a coach to help them learn to lead in their own way is a better way to go.

Regularly communicating what my role is, and why it’s important for me to play my role that way, is something I’m continuing to work on. Wish me luck!

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Giving Your All to the Family Enterprise

How Much Does Everyone Need to Give?

Working with enterprising families brings with it a wide variety of challenges, as I and many colleague friends will attest.

Working in an enterprising family also brings challenges of course, and those of the family members become those of their professional advisors by extension.

The interplay of these protagonists always provides much fodder for people like me who love nothing more than to share what goes on in this fascinating work.

My greatest hope is that these missives continue to make people think, and hopefully learn, and ultimately help advance this nascent field.

So what am I getting at with my “giving your all” tease? I’m glad you asked.

“I’ll Give It 100%”

We all know that 100% is literally the maximum that one can give, but that doesn’t stop people from becoming hyperbolic at times and stating that they’ll give it “110%”.

I don’t make much of a distinction between those two numbers, and in fact I’m probably more inclined to have confidence in somebody’s claim that they’ll give it 100% compared to another who ups that figure.

This makes me think back to my late father who always hated it when anyone said “I’ll do my best”. To him, that was almost a guarantee that whatever was being discussed would not be done.

I just realized as I typed that sentence that while my Dad would’ve agreed with what I wrote, he also had a huge disdain for the word “hate”, but I digress.

I’ll do 100% of My 50%

The true inspiration for this post is an expression I first heard a few months back during yet another peer group call that I was on.

A relatively new colleague of mine noted “I always tell my clients that I will give them “100% of my 50%”.

I noted this back then and planned to blog about it, but it gathered dust for a few months.

Then, when this group convened again recently, she repeated that expression, and I knew it was time to write this (Merci CM), because I had never heard anyone else phrase it this way, and it felt like it was worth sharing.

All this was part of a discussion surrounding how we advisors are limited in how much we can do because the family (or some subset of family members) aren’t holding up their end of things.

Serving Families with Process, Not Content

When people learn about this work with families, one of their biggest A-Ha’s is almost always around how it’s all about process, and helping families make progress together.

See A Different Look at Process Versus Content

We aren’t typically responsible for much of the content of what the family is trying to create, although we are certainly there to make sure that things get done.

When we enter into a family system, and begin to get to know the family members and what they’re hoping to accomplish, we begin to create a picture in our minds of what’s possible, typically based on what we’ve seen in other families.

The difficulty sometimes lies in the fact that the family needs to want to put in the work as much as we do, and that’s not always the case.

In fact, that recent peer call had me suggesting to one presenter that the family whose story she was sharing with the group may just be one of those cases.

We, the advisors, can’t want it more than our clients.

When It Starts to Become Easy 

The work that we hope to help families do can be hard for them, and in fact it always requires intention and effort.

With more and more repetitions for the advisors, though, it can start to feel easy for us, and that can create its own share of problems.

Back to that call with my peers, that was also going on for a member of the group, who was dealing with a bit of imposter syndrome because of it.

Being there for a family, and being with the family members as they try to figure out their “stuff” together, isn’t something that everyone can do well. 

See On Connection and Empathy When Accompanying Families

If you happen to be one of those people for whom it feels easy, please make sure you don’t fall into the trap of thinking that your assistance isn’t worth anything.

We’re still giving it 100% of our 50%!

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The Elusive Perfect Cookie-Cutter Solution

This Is Not Science, Rocket or Otherwise

Serving enterprising families is fascinating work for a number of reasons.

There’s typically a good deal of complexity to deal with, meaning that a number of specialist professionals are required to properly serve all of their needs. 

That’s already quite a bit of work, but that assumes that you’re looking at the enterprise and the family as two monoliths, which of course neither of them is.

So it stands to reason that it will be nearly impossible to come up with any kind of “standard process” that can be used, or any “cookie-cutter solutions” in this world.

But that doesn’t mean that nobody’s looking for those.

The Insatiable Craving for Simplicity

Over a recent three-day span, I had a few interactions that brought this idea to the fore for me, so let’s see what we can learn by looking at some of the details.

There was an event put on by a local professional society about Family Offices, and I was invited by a friend and colleague to join his firm’s table.

The panel on stage described how each of their single family offices works, and I found it to be quite informative, because the reality of each family represented was so different, and therefore the stories about how they do things differed greatly as well.

Some of the other folks at my table came away with a different impression though, believing that their dissimilar stories meant that some of them didn’t seem to know what they were doing.

There is no “right way” to build a family office, and certainly no simple formula either.

A New Potential Client Introduction Meeting

The following morning, a colleague invited me to join him for a meeting with a potential new family client, at the client’s accountant’s offices.

The CPA has mentioned this family to my colleague, and he then invited me to tag-team with him to see if we could serve this family as a team.

Because this fits with my favourite equation, “1 + 1 = 5”, i.e. with two advisors, the client will get five times better service than from one, I eagerly joined him.

The family representative who attended the meeting, like most others, asked questions of us, as they always do.

When we left the meeting, it dawned on me that almost all of their questions were around understanding the process that we’d use.

And as usual, I left with the feeling that they didn’t seem satisfied because the answers we gave seemed to be on the vague side.

In truth, we really won’t know what we’ll be doing until we’ve met all the family members and can understand the challenges they’re facing.

Somehow sharing that “we’ll meet with everyone individually and then bring you all together and then we’ll see” isn’t what most people want to hear.

Speaking with Coaches and Colleagues

Later that day over a lunch with some colleagues, while I noted that my current clients were all so different from each other, I also lamented the fact that that doesn’t always help us when trying to attract new clients.

The reaction at the table was interesting, because some of them nodded along, while others seemed more perplexed by my comments.

Over a decade ago, in Family Business Advising: Art Vs. Science, I was already complaining about some of these challenges.

That blog post ended with me sharing an analogy about “paint-by-numbers” as bridging the gap of the art and the science of this work.

I consider myself much more of an artist in this work, and so I don’t believe in a scientific approach to it, in much the same way as I hate almost any image I’ve ever seen that was made with A.I.

The next day when meeting with my coach, I brought this up with her, and the result was that I’d write about it this weekend to see if that helped!

I Like Cookies Too

Some people prefer all their cookies to be identical, so a cookie-cutter is perfect for them.

I prefer my cookies in a variety of shapes, so I like to hand-craft mine.

Every family is different, and in turn so are each of the members of each family.

Maybe this is just going to be one of those “forever challenges” for me that I’ll just have to learn to live with.

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Wants Versus Needs in the Family System

Both Are Important, But Distinctions Are Key

When I share ideas here around the challenges families face when transitioning their assets from one generation to the next, it’s not uncommon for me to use a “compare and contrast” style.

I just went to my website and plugged the word “versus” into the search feature, and I got lots of hits, from back in 2016 to 2024.

This week’s topic is a rather basic one, but as usual, we’ll look at the distinctions between need and wants from a few different angles to see what we can unearth.

Once again, the story of this post originated in one place, and then veered into a different direction after a case call with peers.

Writing an Article Versus a Blog Post

Creating interesting and useful content takes many forms, and some will naturally be more suited to one’s style than others.

Having written a couple of books, a few white papers, and a handful of articles for publications, by far my favourite format is blogging.

Last week in The Toughest Challenge: Keeping the Family Together, I mentioned that I’ve written some articles for a particular website over the years. (The search feature there is also handy.)

A few months back, I began writing a piece for them on the subject of wants versus needs, from the angle of rising gen family members and to what degree the family’s wealth could realistically be available to them.

But talking about how making sure the next gen family members get everything they need, but not expecting to get everything they want didn’t have enough meat on it.

I got about a quarter of the way into it before abandoning it, as I was missing a certain spark to make it compelling. So it gathered dust in a folder somewhere, until…

Yet Another Meaningful Peer Case Call

Once again I was taking part in a group call with peers, discussing a real live family case I’m working on.

And all of a sudden, people were asking me questions like “What does the patriarch really want?”, to which I replied that I wasn’t sure if he really knew the answer, and that his actions certainly weren’t lining up with what he said he wanted.

We then discussed situations where what people say what they want and what they truly want do not always line up.

But then as so often occurs, someone with a different background and training, in this case psychology, came at things from a new perspective.

All of a sudden we were talking about how so many issues arise from those who have “unmet needs”. 

Bang, there it was, wants and needs coming together again.

And having zero to do with the rising generation and how to avoid entitlement.

Basic Units of Analysis?

One way to think about both of these is that they are possibly two of the most basic ways of analysing what people are attempting to satisfy or achieve.

The questions my colleagues were asking were attempts to understand what was at the very heart of what the person was trying to solve for, and trying to zero in on such ideas is almost always a useful exercise when attempting to understand a situation.

In many ways, when working with a family system, we need to try to get at what’s driving each person individually, in order to then try to help them reconcile all the people’s needs and wants into some way forward that tries to maximize the wants and needs of the entire family.

And that’s why this work is not easy; but having ways to try to better understand everyone will always be helpful.

Needs = Must Have; Wants = Nice to Have

So if we try to go full circle here and look at the “versus” part of what I set up, I guess we need to contrast needs and wants again.

Perhaps we are trying to create a situation where every family member gets all their needs met, because these are the “must haves”.

If we can achieve that, we can then move on to the wants of each person, because these are less important, and fall under the “nice to have” heading.

I hope this brain dump of mine has been useful to readers, I know it has forced me to think through these questions a bit more.

If others benefit too, that’s icing on the cake.

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The Toughest Challenge – Keeping the Family Together

A Fresh Inspiration Triggers Others from the Past

Since I discovered this field of supporting families in their generational transition challenges a bit over a decade ago, I’ve come across lots of ideas that have made me nod my head in agreement.

Many of the common ones have faded into the background due to repetition, and then someone expresses one of them in a certain context and in a fresh way, and they come crashing back into mind like a tidal wave.

Watching a webinar recently, I had one such experience, and it called to mind other times when expressions around related ideas also hit me it memorable ways.

Thankfully I have a weekly outlet for my thoughts as a way to unpack and share them; thanks for coming along for the ride again.

Business and Wealth Continuity Are the Easier Part

If you aren’t aware of Dave Specht’s Authors at Drucker series yet, you may want to check it out. His monthly interviews are archived on Youtube.

The most recent one featured two authors of a great book I just got from Amazon, and it features the quote that inspired this post, from Sara Hamilton of FOX (Family Office Exchange).

Right around the 51-minute mark, she states that keeping the family together is the hardest challenge of all, compared to keeping the business or the wealth together.

It was one of those lines that had everyone in the know nodding along, but that most people wouldn’t truly appreciate, unless they had first hand experience working with families in such situations.

I jotted it down as a blog post idea, and in the intervening days, it brought back other memories of well stated ideas to share around this concept.

 

Why Does Everyone Want to Deal with the Wealth?

Another great resource for this field is the website CanadianFamilyOffices.com, and not just because if you plug my name into their search bar, a bunch of stories in which I’m quoted will show up. (Along with several that I’ve written for them).

This particular one is from a respected colleague, and the money quote is right in the title.

The headline reads, “Advising in Canada ‘All About the Money, Because That’s the Easy Part’”.

Allow me to note that it’s the easy part for the advisors, and usually the easy part for the families too.

That’s what makes this “family circle” work such a challenge, most advisors aren’t comfortable doing it, and so that makes it difficult to engage the families who actually need the support.

The Scariest Runs on the Mountain

So keeping the family together is the hard part, and everyone prefers to deal with the money because that’s the easy part, but what about the professionals who actually do work with the families?

Well, we come from a variety of fields of origin, and even for those with lots of training and experience on the human and psychology side, this is complex and challenging work.

As I noted in Building Processing Time into your Process, even seasoned facilitators find that this work with entire family systems is like going to your favourite ski hill and seeking out the “Double Black Diamond” runs.

That line with the skiing analogy is one I’ve repeated on a few occasions, and I’ll continue to do so (until this gets easy, which it never will).

It’s Great Being Rich, Thanks, But….

And as long as I’m reminiscing about nice quotes from colleagues about this work, I’ll tip my hat once again to Travis Harms, whose line I shared in Finding the Liquidity Sweet Spot for your Family.

He was talking about families who’ve achieved a high level of wealth, but who’ve chosen to keep the bulk of it concentrated in ways that minimize the ability of the heirs to overly enjoy the fruits of that wealth.

Here’s how I put the quote from a family member that I love:        

                      “Yes, thanks, it’s great that we’re wealthy. 

                         But, can we also have some money?”

 

When you think about that line, it nicely underscores why this family work is as difficult as it is.

The risk preferences and lifestyles of various family members can be all over the proverbial map.

Helping families reconcile all of these issues, around topics that make for difficult conversations, is fraught with danger.

As families grow there are natural forces that drive each branch and person towards a desire for independence.

There are lots of good reasons to try to resist those urges and stay together, but that doesn’t make it easy!

 

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Three Circles or a Three-Ring Circus?

There Are So Many Ways to Look at It

There aren’t many bigger fans of the Three Circle Model than me. I first wrote about it almost 12 years ago now, in Three Circles + Seven Sectors = One A-Ha Moment. 

(Mandatory hat tip to John Davis and the late Renato Tagiuri.)

And while that first post discussed some of the wonderful results of this simple model, it really only scratched the surface.

The interdependence of the Family, the Business, and its Ownership are well demonstrated by the model, using the Venn Diagram to illustrate the overlaps of different people within the three systems.

In the intervening years as I’ve explored this world, worked with many families and colleagues in it, and shared my thoughts here weekly, I’ve lost count of how often the three names of these circles have helped add clarity.

There’s always something going on in at least one of the circles, but just having them there to point at the differences is always comforting.

Clarifying Where to Focus Now

Regular readers (thanks!) know that I’m privileged to belong to a few different peer groups that get together on some regular basis to discuss various aspects of our work.

During one such recent call, some colleagues were sharing their experience working together with a shared client.

As the financial planner was explaining his work with the matriarch on legal structures (Ownership), he noted that some relationship issues (Family) were raised, leading him to bring in a fellow colleague who’s a psychologist.

After some progress was made, more focus on particular structures became a priority, so a lawyer was then brought in to find the ideal arrangement for this family (back to Ownership).

This was all being done to create a sustainable company (Business) that would survive the generational transition (Family).

The circle they focused on moved around, as did the professionals who took the lead, yet without these three handy labels, this would have been more difficult to follow, both as they were actually proceeding and in how this story was being shared.

Labelling the Current Phase of Work

As I considered this peer call and my new appreciation for the Three Circles, I thought I’d share some current client examples for illustrative purposes.

The “Raymond” family has an operating company where the G1 parents are planning to soon step back and retire. We’ve been doing lots of work with their three G2’s plus a married-in.

We’ve been concentrating on the Business issues, involving the Family members plus a handful of other non-family employees.

The looming question about what Ownership will eventually look like has been pushed back a bit until we make more progress on the other circles.

Another client, the “Vincent” family, has me coaching a single G4 who has just entered the Business after working elsewhere for the past decade.

For now, it’s mostly about the Business and his role as a Family member as he learns about the operations with a view to eventually taking over the CEO role at some point.

We haven’t spoken much about Ownership for the time being, but it’s clear to everyone that details of an Ownership transition are not far off.

A Couple More Examples

The “Parsons” family had a recent liquidity event, where the G2 sibling sold the Business they took over from their father.

So we don’t spend any time on Business issues, concentrating on the Family, along with how they can prepare the G3’s to be stewards of the wealth they’ll soon Own.

Then there’s the “Samson” family, who also had a liquidity event a few years ago. We spend some time on Business matters, as a couple of the G2’s plan ventures into new enterprises.

Family cohesion and engagement are big areas, as well as using the wealth they Own in philanthropic ways that align with the Family’s values.

What Connotations Does “Circus” Elicit?

In my blog title, I used the term “three ring circus” for a reason. I was hoping for some intrigue and to perhaps hint at the prospect of chaos.

While chaotic situations do arise, I’m there to tone them down and add clarity to the situation so everyone can make progress.

Separating things into the three different circles, or rings, is a very useful way to put matters into sharper focus.

Simply asking questions like “Is this a Business issue, or a Family matter?” can do wonders.

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