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On Starting Fresh or Starting Over

A New Year and a Clean Sheet of Paper

It’s early January, which has many people looking ahead with a fresh perspective, and hopes for a great year ahead.

There isn’t necessarily anything magical that happens when the calendar changes years, but it’s as good a time as any to take stock and think about how we can make the future better.

I have a natural tendency to look at things from a longer term perspective than most people, a habit inherited from my father, which has served me well.

Because I work with families who are preparing for an intergenerational transition of one sort or another, it’s also pretty important that I be looking far out into the future, to help them see around proverbial corners they might not have imagined yet.

The Need to Double Back – (Two Steps Forward…)

In these weekly blogs I like to share my thoughts about the challenges that doing this work with families brings with it.

A particularly frustrating part of guiding families on their journey is that the pacing of the work is so hard to predict.

See When a Family Trip Becomes an Expedition.

Family members usually enter the work with someone like me with high hopes of progress, and it helps when we can offer that hope, but that progress is rarely simple or quick.

During a recent conversation about this with a colleague, they mentioned that this work is “iterative” and that really resonated with me.

So let’s look at how iteration fits with my title about starting fresh or starting over.

Starting Over Feels Too Negative

Let’s dispense with my bias right away; the idea of “starting over” with almost anything makes it feel like everything that came before was a waste of time and effort.

I get that this is how family members sometimes feel when things stall and we need to get into yet another iteration of discussing a subject, but this is where I will always reframe it to highlight the progress that’s been made.

Making a fresh start, from a new point of departure, feels more like you’ve been making some advances, even if it’s really only the fact that you’ve now found yet another way that didn’t work, and can cross it off the list.

Getting Closer to a Resolution

Let’s go back and explore a bit more about the concept of iteration, with the help of my friend Mr. Google.

I’ll cut and paste some of the salient phrases that came up on my search:

  • the repetition of a process

 

  • as a means of obtaining successively closer approximations to                     the solution of a problem

 

  • a new version of a piece of computer hardware or software

As I work with a family it’s not uncommon for someone to express frustration and ask “Didn’t we already settle this?”

My typical reply is “Yes, but…” and then some explanation about how it now appears that we no longer have a consensus around whatever resolution we thought we had, so we need to re-address it with fresh eyes.

The last point above relating to new versions can also be used to reframe things in terms of “version 2.1, or 3.0” of something the family is working on.

Yet Another Opportunity to Start Fresh

Getting into a regular meeting cadence with a family offers regular opportunities to make a fresh start.

The family convenes and we remind one another of progress made previously, and we try to make new headway.

See Ideas on Dealing with the “Family CRAP”.

It doesn’t always go as planned but as long as the family members are sharing and hearing one another’s perspectives, and efforts are made to better understand each other, that’s good.

Agreeing to meet again soon to further advance discussions is also key to sustaining some kind of momentum.

When You Really Are Starting Over

Family governance work can be prone to stalling out at times, for any variety of reasons.

There can be fatigue and a couple of delayed meetings and there’s a need to begin again.

This is often an opportunity to change up the outside experts you’re using, like bringing in a new coach for a sports team after a slump.

Often when I have arrived on the scene I am not the first person they’ve ever hired for such a role, and so I try to add something fresh, so we’re not just rehashing old stuff.

We’re always looking for progress, not perfection.

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A “Renovation Project” for your Family

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.

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Replenishing Your Family’s ATM

Or Refreshing Your Views on What It Is

As yet another year is about to disappear into the past and we look out ahead at a fresh calendar ahead of us, I want to throw out one last idea that came to me a couple of months ago.

Regular readers know that I’m always looking for fresh ways to talk about the challenges that families face as they prepare for an upcoming generational transition of their business or wealth.

I pick up various ideas along the way, assemble them into some kind of memorable combination, and try to share them here on a weekly basis.

Along the way, more and more people have been picking up on my writings, so I continue to oblige you with my missives.

I’m immensely grateful for the positive feedback I get from these blogs, in case there’s any doubt about that.

What Are You Paying Attention To?

A couple of months back, in a context I’ve since forgotten, I heard someone mention that you can tell a lot about what is important to someone by trying to focus on where their attention is placed.

I work in the world of family wealth, and some people focus on the wealth part, while others, like me, prefer to focus on the family part.

More and more advisors to such families are recognizing the need to take a more holistic view and try to integrate both, with varying degrees of success.

But the families themselves are also susceptible to focusing too much on one to the detriment of the other.

The subtitle of my first book (SHIFT your Family Business) way back in 2014 was Stop working in your family business, Start working on your business family.

I hope you can see both contrasts I was making there (family vs business; working in vs working on).

Show Me Your Calendar and Bank Statements

On a related note, I’ve heard on more than one occasion the idea that if you want to know what’s important to someone, you can get a very good idea by looking in just two (or three) places.

“Show me your calendar” gets at the idea that if I can see where you spend your time and what kinds of things you’re doing with it, I will get a very good idea of your priorities.

Likewise, if I were to look at your bank statements and see where your money is going, that would also have lots of useful evidence.

If we add in your credit card statements (that’s #3) I bet I’d have a pretty clear picture of what you enjoy doing and what you hold dear.

Okay, so where’s all this going?

Attention, Time, Money – Your “ATM”

If you’ve been paying really close attention to what I teased in the title above, you’ll have noted that I was walking you through a mnemonic; ATM, for attention, time, money.

If you think I may have created the “Family ATM” idea as a false narrative to draw in readers who might wrongly assume I was going to write about parents who regularly feel the need to dole out cash to their kids, well, you may be onto something.

But of course the two ideas are far from mutually exclusive!

Families who pay attention to the messages that their parenting sends, and who spend their time educating their offspring about the value of money and about the family’s wealth, are less likely to feel like an “automated teller machine”.

Additionally, a family that spends a small part of their money on hiring outside help to deal with this subject are likely to feel even less solicited by “cash calls” from their rising generation.

 

Peppet’s M/L/F Ratio Revisited

Last year in How Can a Family Office Enrich You, I shared an idea from Scott Peppet that I love.

He talks about the ratio of time that family office people spend on what he calls their three main areas of focus, which he calls the M/L/F ratio.

Those letters stand for Money, Legal, and Family.

He contends that most family offices are around 70/20/10, and I think that’s the same ballpark I’d put them in too.

But he and I both agree that the Family number should be much higher.

The families themselves should also be monitoring their ATM’s.

Are you spending enough time considering all the human capital your family has to offer?

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Communicating Clearly – Verbs Matter

Common Understanding Depends on Clarity 

This week’s post may turn into a bit of a rant about the words that I’ve heard some people use in certain situations that make me shudder because I feel like they are unclear or badly chosen.

We’ll go through a few examples to set the stage and then hopefully move into some lessons for families and their advisors as they work together in preparation for an eventual transition from one generation to the next.

As it turned out, I heard a couple of these utterances in quick succession recently, and that put this on my radar.

It also made me think about how so often the key word that rubs me the wrong way is a verb.

Let’s jump in and see where this takes us.

Working with a Coach

For the first example, I need to begin with what I consider to be the proper verb.

I am a coach and I have a coach (as all good coaches do).

When I think about this kind of relationship, I always talk about “working with” a coach.

Imagine how my ears reacted when a was sitting in a room listening to a presentation and I heard someone mention that another person was “seeing a coach”!

Yikes; wait, what?

Clearly the person speaking is either confused or ill-informed.

You see a therapist or a psychologist or name another profession here, but you do not “see” a coach.

No disrespect to anyone who is seeing such a person, I don’t want to add to any stigma around that.

Perhaps if you are dating someone who happens to be a coach I will excuse it, but otherwise, NO.

Being Part of a Board

The next example comes from having heard someone mention that they sat on a board.

Having done my share of sitting on boards over the years, there was a lot more work being done than just the sitting.

I recognize that there are some boards where there are a bunch of people who do little more than sit, but I’ve never been part of one and likely wouldn’t stick around if that were the case.

I prefer to say that I am part of a board, and being part of one for several years recently was very rewarding for me and I learned a lot from it.

Yes, there are “seats” at a board table and they are led by a “chair”, but please, no sitting on boards for me.

Doing an MBA

The third example has been living inside of me for a few decades, since I did my MBA.

There was in fact plenty of “doing” during those two years.

My pet peeve version of this one is when I hear people talking about “getting” their MBA.

If you feel like you just “got” an MBA, as opposed to putting in the effort to “do” it, then it probably wasn’t worth it.

If I mention that I’m going to stop at the grocery store, my wife might ask me to “get some milk” (and I’ll typically reply “Yes, Dear”).

You don’t just pick an MBA up off the shelf.

Much like the sitting on the board, it’s all about the meaningful effort and lived experience.

The Family Enterprise Angle on All This

I noted off the top that this missive might seem like a bit of a rant and so far it probably comes across as such.

But I typically bring my thoughts together in a way that can be useful to families as they work on transitioning their business or wealth to the next generation, so allow me to attempt that now.

I encourage people who are part of an enterprising family to work with a coach, because the perspective they will gain from that will surely be worthwhile.

I also suggest that families put together some sort of board with independent (i.e. non-family) members, and hopefully one where there is more than just sitting going on.

It need not be a full fiduciary board, put at least a formal advisory board often makes sense.

Go Do an MBA

Finally, especially if your family still has an operating business, by all means consider doing your MBA.

Make sure you go to a school where there will be lots of “doing” involved, because that’s the part that makes all it worthwhile.

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When a Family Trip Becomes an ExpeditionWhen a Family Trip Becomes an Expedition

It’s Better to Prepare for the Long Haul

This week we’re going back to the world of metaphors, which is familiar territory for me and my regular readers.

The inspiration for this post comes from a recent peer group call, where one colleague had just returned from a trip to the base camp of Mount Everest.

The facilitator of the call said she couldn’t wait to hear about his trip, and he quickly corrected her saying that it was not a trip, but an expedition. 

The next voice on the call was mine, thanking him for the metaphor that I’d be turning into a blog post about family governance, and so here we are.

A Guided Family Governance Journey

Every week in this space we look at the challenges faced by families as they prepare to transition their “enterprise” from one generation to the next.

Note that the word “enterprise” in that sentence is shorthand for “business(es) and/or wealth and/or assets” owned together as a family.

As someone who enjoys working as a guide for such families on their governance journey, I’ve seen first hand how much of an expedition this work can turn into, which is much more involved than a simple “trip”.

I’ve written about this work as some sort of voyage on a few occasions, as well as the fact that my work ends up being a bit like that of a tour guide.

See: Progressing Up the Family Governance Mountain and Going Far? Go Together. I’ve also noted the guide aspect in Choosing your FamBiz Tour Guide.

Just What Are We Getting Ourselves Into?

Another important aspect to consider when thinking about this subject is that most families who embark on this work enter into it without a firm understanding of how involved it can become.

So while the advisor/facilitator may recognize that it can turn into a full-fledged expedition, we’re sometimes better off selling them on a simpler trip, lest we scare them away.

Of course at the outset, even the one guiding the family never really knows the extent and breadth of the work ahead of us all, but because we have experienced other versions of the journey with other families in the past, at least we have an idea of what it might look like.

If a family is only prepared for a trip, it’s best that they have engaged a guide who’s also experienced in expeditions, who can help level the family up and support them along the way.

More Than Just a Day at the Beach

Let’s take a look at this metaphor with the help of my good friend Mr. Google, to see how he can shed some light on the contrasts between a trip and an expedition.

The definition of “trip” is: an act of going to a place and returning; a journey or excursion, especially for pleasure.

For “expedition” we get: a journey or voyage undertaken by a group of people with a particular purpose, especially that of exploration, scientific research, or war.

I’ve got to admit, that last part about “war” threw me off a bit, although it certainly emphasizes the degree of difficulty or danger involved in an expedition versus a trip.

A Group Journey with a Purpose and Some Exploration

Let’s look at some of the words that resonate when considering the world of families preparing to transition from one generation to the next.

It certainly is all about the group as opposed to an individual.

There is indeed a particular purpose, although I can assure you that it is rarely completely clear to all family members, especially at the outset. 

The importance of making sure the purpose is clear to everyone cannot be overstated.

I really love the part about exploration, because when done properly, there is plenty for the family members to explore about each other as they develop their abilities to work together as they integrate the family’s wealth into their future lives.

Discerning the Next Steps of the Expedition

Families and their individual members make progress at different speeds, so the facilitators who guide them need to continuously try to gauge what they can handle next.

It’s also very difficult to plan too far ahead because you never know what is going to emerge next.

As they decide on what values they hold dear, that will affect how they see their vision and their mission.

All of these parts are intertwined and require flexibility and lots of repetition to keep everyone safe on the journey.

Choose your guide wisely.

 

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How Much Wealth Is Enough? (Various Versions)

A Question with Many Different Answers

When you tell people you work with successful families who are planning to transition their wealth or business to the next generation, you often get lots of curious questions.

The queries are all over the map of course, but it usually doesn’t take very long before they want to better understand just what kind of wealth level we’re talking about.

As someone who is loathe to peg a specific dollar figure on this, I tend to get creative with my responses.

While it’s very true that the complexity level of the particular family is more important than their financial net worth, few people are satisfied with that answer.

So this week, we’re going to examine the question, “How much wealth is enough?”, from a couple of viewpoints.

Let’s Start at the Highest Level

Of course the highest level version of the question is a more existential one, i.e. “How much is enough?”, and that one also resonates with the same demographic.

Those who are driven to build a business do often continue to work on building ever more wealth, even when they have already accumulated more than they could ever spend in their lifetime.

I suppose those like me who work with such people should be thankful that these people exist, because without them we would have way less work!

But this post isn’t about that version of the question.

The spark for this blog came from a lunchtime conversation at a recent conference with someone I just happened to sit next to that day.

Is There a “Sweet Spot” in the Wealth Pyramid?

My lunch companion also works with family clients in a similar tranche of the “wealth pyramid”, i.e. not at the base with those typically labelled as the “mass affluent” or “penta-millionaires”.

Nor do we normally get asked to work with those at the very top, who we may term “mega-billionaires” or even just “regular” billionaires.

In between, there’s a space that normally gets lumped into the “Ultra High Net Worth” (UHNW) category.

The actual dollar values that various people ascribe to the upper and lower limits of that category fluctuate with time and depend on who you ask, of course.

For the sake of simplicity, I’ll share the most common figures I’ve heard, which have the lower end in the $30 – 50 Million area, and the top end somewhere between $500 Million and $1 Billion, give or take a rounding error.

Counting Families, Branches, or Households?

Our conversation got more interesting when we got to the number of family members we deal with, which likely arose when I brought up complexity.

But then I offered my preferred simplifying metric instead, which is to look at the number of households that are to be supported by the family wealth.

Let’s go there now, because this is where my A-Ha Moment from that discussion came from.

The founder starts a business to support one household, that of his immediate family.

Fast forward a generation, and assuming they have three offspring, that becomes four households, as each branch starts their own nuclear family.

When you repeat that after another generation, the numbers can grow quickly.

Numerator vs Denominator, from One Gen to the Next

Whereas at the beginning of this post we were looking at the numerator in the equation, we can’t forget about the denominator, and that’s people or households.

The complexity grows as the wealth level and number of family members increase.

But let’s get to the A-Ha Moment I teased above.

At the lower level of the UHNW space, when you think of a family with, say $40 Million of net worth, that’s significant as long as we’re talking about one household.

If that’s now going to support 5 households (assuming four branches), you’re now looking at a seven-figure dollar number for each, and the threshold for serving such a family may no longer be reached.

Nine-Figures, So It’s Still Eight After Dividing

My “revelation” during that discussion was that you almost need to be looking at a nine-figure number for a family, so that after the next generational transition, you’re still looking at eight figures per household.

Investing the time and effort into family governance doesn’t make sense at all levels of wealth.

Families will only make those investments when they can see the value over the long term, and their tranche in the wealth pyramid can play a big role.

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When Grand-Dad “Isn’t There, Yet”

Each Generation Has Its Own Timeline

Working with multiple generations of a family is always challenging for plenty of reasons.

One of that’s almost always present is the that each person in the family is on their own timeline, based on their age and life stage.

While it may seem counterintuitive, the younger ones, who presumably have a longer life ahead of them, are typically less patient, while those closer to the exit are rarely in a hurry to change things.

This week we’re going to look under the hood at some of these issues from the point of view of a practitioner working with a family, attempting to reconcile some of these natural differences.

An FFI Breakout Session as Inspiration

Regular readers are used to learning that many of my inspirations for these blogs come from conferences I love to attend where peers share their work for the good of the whole ecosystem.

A few weeks ago in Boston at the FFI Conference, I was privileged to introduce a couple of dear friends who were leading such a session, and the hardest part of being their host was that I was also charged with ending it on time, and yet nobody in attendance wanted to leave!

While I took lots of notes, one of them continued to jump off the page at me, and it was the quote, “Yes, but Grand-Dad isn’t there yet”.

My presenter friend was relating a story about a granddaughter who was frustrated with the pace of change in her family, which she shared with their family coach and facilitator.

He was stuck in a role familiar to me and many in the room that day, as the one working between the generations, trying to bring them together.

Close to Home with My Own Clients

It isn’t always Grand-Dad. 

This anecdote rang true for me with a current parent I’m working with, where their rising gen is showing some impatience with the pace of change that the family leader is willing to accept.

Hard earned wealth typically comes with certain character traits that make those responsible for it reluctant to release the control they’ve always had.

Such loosening of control over decisions rarely happens quickly, and impatience from the younger family members is unfortunately the norm in most cases.

There is no quick fix, and this is just another illustration of the necessity of looking at these questions in terms of a long process rather than a single event.

It’ll take some time before Grand-Dad gets there, and that’s perfectly normal and understandable,

The Human Capital Angle

The beginnings of this post were in my mind the other day during a peer call that brought it back into focus.

A colleague was sharing her frustration with a client who was a business founder, and she noted that he displayed low empathy.

Others on the call noted that this is unfortunately rather common for hard-driven founders.

As someone who believes strongly in the importance of human capital, this bothered me.

When I think about a family’s human capital, it means that every member of the family is afforded the ability to become their best self.

Any family that has amassed significant wealth is in a position to use some of that wealth for the benefit of each family member.

Wealth as a Magnifier

Like so many other complexities that affect families and their relationships with each other, wealth if often a huge magnifier.

A family of lesser means may have similar issues, but the presence of significant wealth can blow things out of proportion quickly.

It’s unfortunate when I see families who have the potential to use their wealth positively for the family’s human capital, but where the low empathy of family leaders creates resistance, and actually decreases it.

A Guide to Accompany the Family on this Journey

Let’s wrap up by looking at the role that a coach or facilitator can play when guiding a family on such a journey.

When people from each generation can sit together and have civilized and productive conversations about sensitive topics like this, progress can be made.

It isn’t easy for families to have such discussions on their own, so the courageous ones bring in an outside, independent specialist to hold the space for them.

It can (and does!) make all the difference in the world.

We can get Grand-Dad there, with some time and patience.

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Carve More Than the Turkey – Carve Out Family Time

A Seasonally Inspired Post

Writing a weekly post on the challenges of generational transitions for families has seen me compose more than 600 of these blogs over the past dozen years.

Almost all of them are what content experts would dub as “evergreen”, that is, not tied to anything in the news or seasons.

Every once in a while, though, I get inspired me to write something that is not evergreen, and this is one such occasion.

Thanksgiving is a huge family holiday in the USA, and as a Canadian who consumes more than enough American culture, I’m actually a bit jealous of our southern neighbours.

Our Thanksgiving feels more like a “second Labour Day”, coming just six weeks later, on another Monday.

A Random Comment During a Presentation

A few weeks ago, in On Learning by Doing and Advising Others, I shared that I managed to get myself invited to the final day of presentations for the FEA Program, where I act as a project team advisor.

It was during one of those presentations that a team member was sharing that their team had managed to encourage their project family to “carve out time” for meetings.

This was the week after Canadian Thanksgiving, so maybe that’s why the turkey carving image lit up in my head.

In reality, though, the image of someone carving a turkey in front of the whole family at the table is much more of an American one.

Luckily, US Thanksgiving still lay ahead, so I made a note to write this post so that it would be timely for readers on the other side of our border.

Convening the Family Regularly and Productively

The reason this idea of carving out time was so salient for me is that I had also recently written about how important it is for families to convene regularly and productively.

In fact, Ideas on Dealing with the Family CRAP was all about that.

I guess this needs to be clarified here because we’re talking about the family getting together to share Thanksgiving Dinner, and this is important too, but what I’m getting at is something different, and very much complementary to family meals.

My major audience is families who either have a business that they run and own together, or who at one time had a business and who now have a certain level of wealth that they are concerned with passing down to the next generation.

It’s great when all family members also enjoy the pleasure of each others’ company over a family meal, either on special occasions or some other regular of irregular basis.

But such families also need to carve out time to talk about things as a family, because all family members are stakeholders in what the family owns, even those who are not part of the business or the current ownership or management of what the family owns.

Separate Meetings to Untangle Family and Business

Families who are in business have a habit of mixing business and family way more than they should.

Subjects get blended together and an effort needs to be made to set aside time for separate meetings, in order to untangle areas between the business and the family.

Family governance, one of my favourite subjects, is all about having family meetings that focus on all family members, as they relate to the business or the family’s wealth that is to be transitioned some day.

See Progressing Up the Family Governance Mountain

Carve Up the Subjects into Separate Meetings

There are always plenty of subjects to talk about when a family gets together, and when they also run a business together, it’s so easy to just jumble up the topics that get discussed.

When I started working full time for my Dad’s company, I still lived at home, but that didn’t last long because he continued work discussions at the dinner table and into the evening, and I needed a break, so I moved out.

I acknowledge that it can be difficult to keep subjects straight and stay on topic, and that’s why having an independent outside facilitator makes so much sense.

Family members are almost always looking for more clarity, and it’s completely normal for some family members to have more clarity than others, which is why this is so key.

See Clarity for the Family – The Good and the Ugly Versions

It’s not easy to get into the habit of having regular family meetings but it’s such a difference maker, and more families should be having them.

 

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What Does This Family Need, Now?

The Question That’s Always There

Each week here I discuss topics relevant to families who will be undergoing some sort of generational transition in the near future.

This work is complex and always needs to be done on a bespoke basis, because no two families are alike.

But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t some ideas that keep coming back, over and over again.

And sometimes those are the simple nuggets that help clarify things in a way that are more helpful than you could ever expect.

So this week I want to offer up one of the simplest ones out there, and that’s a question I always return to, time and time again.

And that’s why I used it as the title for this post: “What does this family need, now?”

THIS Family, Not That Other Family

It’s only a six-word question, and we’re going to spend the rest of this post looking at half of them in detail.

The first one is “this”, and that’s important for reasons already hinted at above.

Of course we can and will think about other families we’ve worked with before, but that can become a trap if we do it too often.

Every family is different, as already noted, but there’s also a time element to think about, but maybe I’m getting ahead of myself here.

We could also concentrate on the word “family”, to remind ourselves that we’re always considering the good of the whole family, and not any particular family member, which can often default to the one who’s paying us for these services.

What They NEED, Not Necessarily What They Want

The next word I want to highlight is “need”, and that’s because too often we end up paying attention to what the family wants, rather than what they need.

I realize I may be sounding a bit too much like a smarty-pants here, hinting that I know better than the family does, but I’m going there anyway.

Quite often what families come to us for when they hire us, based on what they say they want (because it’s really what they think they want) is not exactly what they really need.

Or at least the overlap of a Venn diagram of what they want and need is not a perfect circle, and usually far from it.

The Importance of Discernment

This work requires lots of discernment, and of course the tact to not point out what I just wrote above as overtly as I just did.

See On Discernment and Resourcefulness for Family Clients

My good buddy Mr. Google says that discernment is: 

         “the ability to see the big picture of what’s going on and 

           then to divine what needs to be done as a next step”

Fans of Patrick Lencioni, will recognize that his most recent book, The Six Types of Working Genius, includes discernment as one of the six.

It’s also one that lands in the top two of my own strengths, along with engagement.

NOW, Not Last Year, Not Next Month

As a family makes progress what they need from their advisors continues to evolve.

What they needed last year is different from what they need now, and if we get too far ahead of ourselves we may inadvertently be leading them into areas they aren’t yet ready for.

There’s a need to constantly try to assess and calibrate what we should be doing next.

Having other peers who also do this work can be helpful in getting some outside perspective on next steps too.

WHAT They Need, And Also WHO

I want to wrap up by looking at something that can be difficult to admit, and that’s the fact that sometimes what the family needs now is actually a new person to come and do this work with them.

It can be very gratifying to get a family to a better place and have them “graduate” from your services.

It’s also nice when you can see that moment before your client and exit before they fire you.

Sometimes a fresh person coming in to work with a family is just what they need, not unlike a sports team firing a coach who has “lost the room” and bringing in someone new with a different style and way of being.

In any event, the constant asking and re-asking of the question, what does this family need, now, is always a good place to return to when planning next steps.

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Where Everybody Knows your Name, and Job

Just Being with Others Who Get You

There are certain times and places where everything is just a little bit less of a hassle.

I’m currently in Boston, after spending the past few days at the Family Firm Institute’s annual conference here this week.

Such events offer an opportunity to catch up with lots of colleagues who do similar work, with similar client families.

Yesterday someone asked how I was enjoying the event and I replied that it was nice to be able to reply to the question “what do you do?” with a simple answer like “family governance and facilitation” and be met with an understanding nod, as opposed to a quizzical look.

Later on at dinner, a long time friend suggested tying in the title above, from the Cheers theme song, since we were in Boston (thanks AM!).

Knowing Others Facing Similar Challenges

All of those in attendance work with families in some way or another, and we all understand that every family is different, and that’s part of what makes this work interesting and challenging.

Nevertheless, despite the heterogeneity of families, we can all learn from one another, because in many ways, all families are the same.

See The Elusive One-Big-Happy-Family

When the work you do is so niche that most people you meet on a plane or at a party might require a detailed explanation, it can become tiresome to try to give more than a cursory response.

Spending time at a conference with others who face the same circumstances, with families as well as with curious acquaintances, offers a nice respite.

Let’s look at some examples from the past few days.

Mutual Apologies About a Tough Client

It was great to speak with another advisor who’d referred a client to me since the last time we were together.

But because that client situation did not work out great in the end for me or for the family, it was a bit awkward to talk about.

However, over the next day or so, as we interacted with others and shared minor details about the situation, it became funny because we realized that we were each apologizing to the other for what occurred.

He was sorry for the referral “gone wrong”, and I was sorry for the way it worked out too. Not every client is a good match for every advisor.

Imagine my surprise when I learned that the client was now starting to work with another long time friend and colleague.

I offered to share info with them, or not, should they choose to want my perspective on that family’s situation.

Parallels to the Family Business World

Having worked in the family business my Dad started for many years, I am also intimately familiar with the concept of everybody knowing my name, both inside and outside the company.

As I now coach those in similar circumstances, I sometimes refer to their name also doubling as their title, as in “you don’t really need a title, your name tells everyone almost everything they need to know”.

The fishbowl effect for such rising generation family members makes it important for them to have some coaching around this, as well as the opportunity to join peer groups so that they can commiserate with others who get them.

Everybody knowing your name has both advantages and disadvantages, of course.

The Latest Research and Books

The conference is also a good place to learn about the latest research and books available in the field.

I brought along a copy of a book I’d recently purchased because I knew that the authors would be there and I could get it signed by both of them.

I’ve had a grand total of one person do that for me (thanks PH!) and wanted to pay it forward.

Fewer Canadian Attendees

I also got to reprise my role as the unofficial, self-appointed, Canadian Ambassador to any international conference I attend, where I place Canadian flag stickers on the nametags of every fellow Canadian I meet.

For some reason I did not need nearly as many as I have in recent past years, but let’s not go there now.

I did get to use one of my favourite lines around smaller groups than expected, by saying we were going for quality instead of quantity.

Next year will be FFI’s 40th anniversary, and I’m looking forward to gathering with this group again in NYC.

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