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Key Challenges to Serving Enterprising Families

Progress Continues; More Work Remains

During the past decade, the ecosystem of those serving enterprising families has continued to evolve.

I entered the field in 2013, following a calling to work with families that occurred during my progression through the Family Enterprise Advisor program.

Despite the positive evolution, many significant challenges remain, with more professionals than ever engaged in trying to overcome them.

This week we’ll look at a few of them, trying to add some clarity and hopefully nudge things forward.

We’ll delve into five areas I jotted down during discussions with colleagues over recent weeks.

Plenty of Need, Comparatively Little Demand

This is an challenge I first mentioned over a decade ago, in Would You Like to See the Menu, or the Recipe Book?

That post concluded with “The need is huge, even if it has not yet manifested itself as a huge demand. Nobody can “corner the market”, but we can help to grow the demand, by continuing to spread the message.”

Since writing those lines, I’ve continued my efforts to spread the message, and many others have joined me.

I wish there was more evidence of improvement, but by and large, the needs of many enterprising families for support on the family side of their generational transitions continue to go unmet.

More and more such families are demanding help and guidance, but too many remain unaware that professionals exist to serve them.

The “Other 99%” Issue

It’s becoming clear that the most progress is being made at the top end of the wealth pyramid, where there’s more at stake and the complex needs of families demands more sophisticated planning.

When advisors encounter families wanting support, but those families lie somewhere below the top tier of the wealth spectrum, we often hear a lament about the difficulty in serving those families in an economical fashion.

This work is complex and well-trained and experienced professionals don’t come cheap.

Finding ways to serve such families remains a challenge, and there’s no simple solution I can see today.

See Formula 1 Racing and Working with 1% Families.

Advisors Teaming Up: 1 + 1 = 5

A related challenge can come into play somewhere in between the wealth levels we’ve touched upon.

While some families can afford whatever support they could ever require without a second thought, and others have difficulty justifying the investment in even one professional to support the family part of their generational transition, there remains a wide swath of families in between.

Turning their need into demand requires matching it with a proper supply of professionals to serve them, and even a superstar advisor will have difficulty meeting all of a family’s needs.

But every single time I’ve teamed up with another professional in service of a family, the results confirm my favourite equation, 1 + 1 = 5; that is, a team of two advisors will give five times the results of a single professional.

Multi-Disciplinary Advising – Dancing Well Together

And once again as I move from one point to the next, there’s an interesting segue.

Two advisors teaming up is waaaay better, but only when they know how to work together!

Everyone preaches “multi-disciplinary teams” and “collaborating with other advisors”.

Everybody says that they do this, and some of them even try hard to do it. But it is really, really difficult to do this well.

Some clients also resist paying for a group of professionals to spend time together, not recognizing that it willl surely save them in the long run because the work will be done right.

The Price Is Right – Uh, Maybe Not

And once again I managed to create an interesting segue, talking about money and professional fees.

A couple of weeks back I had conversations with two respected and experienced colleagues, and we talked about what we charge clients and how we structure our engagements.

One day, I heard about a friend not taking on any engagement below a five-figure monthly retainer, and the next day another shared that he bills out at an hourly rate less than half what I typically charge.

In short, we’re all over the map, and that adds to the difficulty for clients as they search for support.

A range of fees is natural of course, but remains another element that families need to evaluate and consider.

Spreading the Gospel, Slowly

Our ecosystem continues to evolve and the gospel is being spread, by more and more experts.

See Spreading the Gospel, Let Me Count the Ways

There’s lots more to be done. Many hands make light work!

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Who’s In and Who’s Out of the Family Project

A Fresh Look at Defining “Who’s Family”?

Writing this blog each week allows me to see subjects come up again over time, and realize that evolution affects things in many ways.

The world is evolving, the ecosystem of professionals serving families continues to grow and make progress, and my practice is always maturing.

Some “evergreen” subjects show up in different ways for families and those who serve them.

For example, Continuity Planning; Who Is at the Table dates back to 2019, and this week we’ll revisit that subject from a fresh angle.

I’ll also introduce the idea of a “family project”, thanks to a fluke of vocabulary.

My Bias Towards More “Familiness”

Regular readers will recognize my long-time penchant towards wanting to include more family members in continuity planning, as it has probably been a top “hobby horse” of mine for over a decade.

While I continue to believe that most families should be working to expand the number of seats at this proverbial table, I want to acknowledge that there are in fact logical limits to what’s beneficial.

Just because “some is good”, that doesn’t automatically mean that “more is better” in all cases.

This idea has come through loud and clear recently in my role as a project team advisor for participants in the Family Enterprise Advisor program.

During the past couple of cohorts where I’ve worked with a multidisciplinary team of professionals, tasked with finding and serving a real family enterprise, I’ve also managed to invite myself to the final presentation of all the teams in the cohort.

There’s a lot of learning in those sessions, for the participants, the instructors, and the lucky team advisors who attend.

The “Do No Harm” Maxim Comes to Life

When a team of people enrolled in an executive education program gets unleashed to go find a family and offer to engage them in a discovery project, there need to be some guidelines in place.

One of those, borrowed from the world of medicine and the Hippocratic Oath, is the very simple maxim of “Do No Harm”.

Having witnessed end-of-project presentations by several teams over the past number of months, I got to see a couple of versions of this, and I want to share those perspectives here.

What I’ve come to discover is that there are a few ways to look at “do no harm”, beyond simply thinking and stating “let’s not make things worse”.

A couple of the presentations I saw actually extended the concept to the choices made when deciding which family members would participate in the family project.

Finding the Goldilocks Number of Participants

As an advisor to teams embarking on these projects, one of the first questions I get asked is “how many family members do we need?”

Because a 4-5 month-long project is a bit “artificial” as an exercise, landing on a reasonable number, ideally around 5 to 8 people to interview, is a critical question.

As teams present their project journey to classmates, the question of “who’s in/who’s out” always gets shared.

My little “A-Ha’s” from these revolve around the “do no harm” angle.

One team noted that a sibling in their project family was excluded, because of the fear that they would “do harm” to the functioning of the project. I thought that was a novel way of expressing the reason for that exclusion.

Another team noted that in the family they worked with, a sibling was excluded based on the perception that being involved in the project might be harmful to their mental health. This is more aligned with the traditional view of “do no harm”, but with an individual, mental health twist.

My Fluke of Vocabulary: “Family Project!”

It’s interesting to me how an artificial construct like a team project for executive education can lend itself to learning about how a “family project” might be embarked upon by a family.

When I work with a family in the “real world”, we also spend time evaluating and considering just who should be included in our work together.

This isn’t as simple as you might think, and it truly is a “family decision”. 

Starting small, and then eventually expanding the group later, are always ideas I put out there.

Creating a situation where everyone is invited, but nobody is forced to attend meetings, is also encouraged.

Any “family project”, especially related to embarking on family governance, requires lots of thought and planning.

 

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Clarity for the Family – The Good and the Ugly Versions

Providing Clarity Can Bring Change of All Kinds

One of the aspects that I love about my practice serving enterprising families is the variety of situations I get exposed to.

And sometimes the way things flow from one day to the next brings up interesting juxtapositions that kind of make me shake my head.

This happened again recently, and it made me realize that I wanted to share something about that here, but I needed a way to tie the cases together in a semi-coherent fashion.

So I landed on providing clarity, and we’ll see if I can turn this recent set of circumstances into something useful and entertaining.

Good and Ugly Versions (Also Sometimes Bad)

With apologies to Clint Eastwood and the movie title from back in the ‘60’s, we’re only looking at two scenarios I’m currently dealing with, so there is no “bad” version, just “good” and “ugly”.

Working with family members who own a business or assets together can bring me into situations with lots of promise for helping them achieve even greater things, and these are always fun to get involved with.

Other times, I get called in when things are going off the rails a bit (or a lot), which sometimes has me trying to help them avoid the worst outcomes. 

As you might imagine, these types of clients are not as much fun to work with.

As a self-confessed “life-long-learner”, I look at such cases as a learning laboratory for me, and a chance to work on different skills, like mediation.

The Swiss-Army Knife Approach

When I think about why some client situations seem attractive to me, part of what sometimes gets me interested is that chance to try to add value in cases where the outcome may not be rosy.

Such cases cause me to stretch and learn, and add more tools to my tool chest, or more prongs to the Swiss-Army knife that I sometimes like to think of myself as.

So let’s get into some of the details of my recent schedule, which saw me with the “Sanders” family on Thursday, followed by the “Fletcher” brothers case Friday.

The situations are about as far apart as they can be for people in my line of work, and I pride myself on being comfortable in either scenario.

Optimizing the Post-Liquidity Family Office

“Rob Sanders” contacted me last fall, after hearing about me from someone he trusted.  

Their family had begun some work on their “Family Office project” a while back, but the firm they used wasn’t able to continue to guide them on their journey.

After speaking with him and learning about the situation, I realized that this was a case where my partners at Blackwood Family Enterprise Services would be able to create a more detailed and durable solution in line with what the client was looking for.

We entered into a full “discovery project” with all family members, culminating in an all-day, in-person family meeting, which took place on a recent Thursday at an airport hotel of a large Canadian city.

By the end of the day, every family member had a great deal more clarity of what the family was trying to do, and how each family member could play a part.

We set the stage for some follow-on guidance that we can continue to provide the family going forward.

 

Keeping Things On the Rails a Bit Longer

After a fun and productive day with the Sanders family, I drove less than an hour and spent the night in another hotel, wondering how different the following day with members of the Fletcher family would be.

A month or so back in The “Plan A” FamBiz Transition Mirage, we looked at how so many families wrongly assume that passing down equal ownership and management responsibility to the next gen will work out well.

The Fletchers are a textbook case, and when two siblings can’t even speak to each other, it makes it difficult to run a company together.

When you layer in other complex family dynamics, things can go south in a hurry.

The clarity that I’m trying to help bring to them is that what they’ve attempted to do isn’t working.

I’m also trying to help them clarify what options they have ahead of them to minimize the damage that they may be doing to their family and their business.

Unfortunately, sometimes avoiding the ugly is about the best we can do.

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On Humility and Hubris in Family Enterprises

Is It One or the Other, or the Right Balance of Each?

When you’re lucky enough to get invited into a family to work with various family members, you face an interesting learning curve.

You want to learn a lot about each person quickly, so that you can begin to add value based on the assessment you make of each person you meet.

But in most cases, the first family member you meet gives you some clues as to what you can expect from the others, which creates a clouded perspective when you finally meet each one.

It’s always interesting to hear parents, for example, tell you about their offspring, and then when you meet their next gen, you end up shaking your head, amazed at how different they are from what you were led to expect.

When you realize that this happens in over 90% of the cases, you learn to take everything with a grain of salt.

Making a Quick Assessment

I had a recent case where I had a very brief meeting with a G3 parent, about helping their business onboard a G4 member.

We’d arranged a 3-way Zoom call for a chemistry meeting, but Dad had to miss the call, so I got to spend some good one-on-one time with his son first, before I got the benefit (or curse?) of Dad’s version of his son’s qualities and faults.

Instead, I got to hear a bit about Dad from his son, which then had me arrive at that next call with Dad with some expectations based on Junior’s comments.

Hmmm, I thought, this is getting interesting.

And that’s when I began to realize some of the specific parts of each of their demeanors that I was subconsciously analyzing.

So that’s where we’re going this week, but not without a surprising twist that I came to thanks to a quick Google search.

My Initial View: Humility > Hubris

This was a company I’d heard of, in their second century and going on to their fourth generation, so I expected a certain amount of hubris from both of them.

I was pleasantly surprised, however, to note much more humility than hubris, which I actually shared with the father when I spoke with him.

In my mind, because both these words start with the same two letters and I conjured them up together in this case, I thought I might be on to something.

I imagined some sort of “HQ”, or H Quotient, like IQ or EQ, but where you divide someone’s humility score by their hubris.

A lot of humility in the numerator and little hubris in the denominator would make for a high (good) score, whereas the opposite would give a low (bad) score.

Or Is It: Humility + Hubris?

But maybe I wasn’t carving out new territory here, so I Googled “humility hubris quotient” and when I saw the results, well let’s just say that I learned something.

You can Google as well as I can, so I won’t rehash the results, but it became clear that I wasn’t the first try to find something useful in the interplay between these two words.

The biggest A-Ha came from a “Humility Hubris Index ‘HHI’”, because that doesn’t look at this idea as a quotient, where one is divided by the other, but as a product, where you might multiply them together.

The implication here is that both are necessary traits, and that success in many areas depends on the presence of both. 

So maybe it comes down to finding a good balance of both.

A Coach’s Perspective

When I think about families I work with, for me to be able to coach family members, they absolutely need to be above average on humility. See Humble and Kind from 2016

As for where family members stand in terms of hubris, those who’ve been instrumental in building the family wealth typically exhibit some high level of self-confidence; but it doesn’t always reach the point of being “excessive”, which is where it becomes hubris.

Consider how different family members exhibit each of these traits too, because each person likely scores differently.

Also think about how their hubris shows up in business situations versus within the family, and then do the same for humility.

I think I’ve got something here, and I plan on continuing to work with it. 

Hopefully I’ve given you something to think about too.

 

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Learning and Collective Intelligence – From SG-FECC ‘25

My Annual Favourite Events Tour Begins Anew

Every year there are a series of events in the family enterprise space that I make every effort to attend, as a way of keeping up with the field and picking up topics to share about here in this weekly blog.

Regular readers will recognize that SG-FECC, the Schlesinger Global Family Enterprise Case Competition, is always the first one on my calendar each year, as it takes place during the second week of January.

I’ve been fortunate to be able to serve as a judge there almost every year for the past decade, and I typically share something about it here each time.

This year is no different, but I’m taking a bit of a different angle on what I’m sharing this time, as I had a bit of an A-Ha moment.

I always leave that event inspired for the future, and this year is no exception.

The Judges’ Preparation Sessions

The competition between teams from a couple of dozen Universities begins on Wednesday, and the best teams make it to the final round on Saturday.

There is a different family business case for each day, and while the teams are busy preparing to present their solution to the case, the judges all get together to prepare for what we expect to see during the students’ presentations.

While I’ve been involved in these sessions over the years, typically over two days of judging each year, this year resulted in a bit of an A-Ha moment for me.

The hour and a half or so we spend together with our judging panel, along with the panels assembled for the other divisions, is really an exercise in collective intelligence development.

Collective Wisdom + Intention & Effort = Collective Intelligence

I think most people are familiar with the term “collective wisdom”, and all of the assembled judges each arrive with their own life history related to family business in some way.

Among us are other consultants like myself, but also academics who study and work with family enterprises, as well as people who are part of business families.

So we begin each day’s discussion with a great deal of wisdom in the room, but then there’s an intentional effort to take all of that wisdom and turn in into collective intelligence through sharing.

A thoughtful discussion takes place, lead by experienced professors who are used to leading such discussions, where we talk about the case, as well as what we expect the students to present.

This is done first with the entire group of 25-30 people, all sharing our thoughts, perspectives, questions, and ideas.

After that we spend time with our individual judging panels, getting to know one another and planning some questions we expect we’ll want to ask during the Q & A section.

Now Let’s Share Again

Then to make sure we’ve gleaned as much as we can from the group, we go around the room and share some more.

Each lead judge shares some of the items that their panel unearthed, so that we can all learn from each other again.

My big take-away is that when you have a bunch of people in a room, all of whom are bringing their own experience and wisdom, it takes some effort and intention to really maximize what everyone can walk away with.

Time and a facilitated discussion are needed to make sure that we get the most out of each other.

As someone who works with groups of family members, there are some reminders and lessons there.

And It’s Never Sufficient!

Inevitably, though, at least one of the student teams will present something nobody expected or foresaw, despite the efforts made to get out ahead of them.

And herein lies another lesson for those who work with families.

We can prepare all we want, even discuss in advance with colleagues who have been working with families for decades, and we never know what might arise.

We always need to be ready for the unexpected, and be prepared to deal with whatever happens to show up that day.

And the Winners Are….

After Saturday’s finals, the winners of the Undergraduate League are from the University of Alabama, and the Graduate League champions are from Babes-Bolyai University (Romania).

Kudos as always to the awesome team of UVM volunteers who make it all happen without a hitch.

I look forward to returning again in 2026.

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Agreement Before Understanding Equals Potential Chaos

Only in the Dictionary, Nowhere Else

This week we’re returning to some territory that’s been covered here before, but is so important that I want to underscore it again, with some new insights.

Almost a decade ago I first shared some thoughts on this subject in Understanding AND Agreement, noting that it’s important for both to be present, even though in many family enterprise situations you can have one but not the other.

In the intervening years, as I’ve been involved in and exposed to many more real world family scenarios, I’ve become more convinced that the only place agreement should come before understanding is in the dictionary.

Otherwise, the potential for chaos is high.

A Simple Example, Thanks to My Dad

My late father gets a shout out here every once in a while, and it’s usually positive, but not always.

See: No Dad, Coaching Is NOT “Helping Losers”.

Some of his teachings are indelible though, and this one is the perfect simple example about the importance of understanding before agreement.

“Work out all of the details first, and THEN agree to the price, otherwise you’ll end up in an argument”, he repeated many times.

Let me break this down, as it relates to a specific scenario where two parties are trying to agree to buy and sell something to one another.

Let’s take a house as our example. If we agree that I will pay you $500,000, but we haven’t yet defined all the terms and conditions, we’ll only end up with arguments later.

Exaggerating to make my point, imagine if, I thought it was clear that all the furniture was included, and that you’d move out in 10 days, and that I’d pay you $10,000 per year for the next 50 years.

Based on those terms, I’m sure you’d insist on revisiting the agreed price, or more likely kibosh the whole deal.

The Family Project Case Example

Regular readers may recall that I serve as a team project advisor for some participants in the Family Enterprise Advisor program of FEC.

See When Sudden Health Issues Threaten Transitions for another recent post about this.

A team I worked with recently came to the same conclusions about the importance of understanding before agreement quite readily.

Here’s an excerpt from a note I wrote to myself when I recognized their inspiration for this post:

“We need to make sure everyone understands what is owned, how it’s owned, who manages what, who is expected to own and manage after, etc., before they can agree to the new scenario”

One of the biggest thrills I get in that project advisor role is seeing teams “get it”, i.e., seeing them grasp the real world part of what they’ve been learning about working with families, “in theory” during their course work together.

There’s nothing like dealing with real people trying to work through their challenges to help you “feel” your way to such breakthrough learning.

It Still Happens Far Too Frequently

A key takeaway reported after following that program is how important it is to work together as an interdisciplinary team of advisors, because no one person can serve all of a family’s needs.

In fact, much of the work of a project team just involves all of the team members coming to a common understanding of the family’s current reality.

When you try to provide solutions before you understand where the family is, never mind where they’re trying to go together, you’re often just adding to the confusion and complexity.

There really is no substitute for actually speaking with all the family members to figure out if they all understand things the same way, because in reality, that’s almost never the case.

Slowing the Family Down Is Hard

When I’m engaged by a family to work with them, it’s not unusual for them to want to make some quick progress.

One of the hardest aspects of this work is making the family slow down so that all family members can come to the same understanding of where they are, so that we can then co-create the future together.

Family leaders from the “NowGen” usually have a good idea of what they want, and assume that the “NextGens” should just agree to Mom and Dad’s plans.

That internal family desire for quick agreement runs counter to what I’m espousing here, so getting them to slow down so everyone understands, first, is a common obstacle, but well worth trying to work through.

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Lower the Heat but Increase the Light in Families

A Couple of Multipurpose Metaphors

Whenever I consider blog topics to write about here, the ease with which I see opportunities to slide in a metaphor or two is right up there.

Working with families who are trying to get out ahead of the challenges of transitioning their wealth or business to the next generation, there are always plenty of subjects I can write about.

After over a decade of sharing my thoughts here each week, I’m sometimes surprised to discover that some truly fresh ideas continue to come forth.

This week we’re going to look at a couple of thoughts that flashed through my mind recently, and try to take away some memorable lessons.

Good Old Mainstays: Sun and Fire

Metaphors come in all shapes and sizes, but I guess that sun and fire are among the more useful starting points.

Both provide heat and light, and trying to make sure you get the amounts of each right can be tricky.

Not enough light can be a problem, but so can too much, and the same goes for heat.

And trying to control the sun or fire each come with their own challenges.

But wait, isn’t this supposed to be about families? 

Indeed, so let’s go there now that my setup is complete.

How to Get More of One, without Too Much of the Other

The ways in which I describe the work I do continue to evolve, and lately I typically mention the importance of families having the important conversations they know that they need to be having.

Many of these discussions continue to be delayed and avoided because they can be fraught with anxiety, lest something not go well.

It is very common for most family members to be in the dark about both the planning that their parents have done, and are also still considering.

Turning up the light, so as to show more family members what’s in the works for the future makes lots of sense here.

The trick is to increase the light, without turning up the heat.

The biggest factor that inhibits these conversations is the fear that someone will feel like they’re getting burned.

 

Smokey the Bear to the Rescue

Now that I’ve set up my whole premise, we’re getting to the hard part of writing this missive.

The underlying reason for my sharing here is to inform and entertain, and also present myself as a potential resource to families doing this work.

Thankfully Smokey the Bear just popped into my head as I searched for a way to extend the metaphor towards a solution.

Fire is important but also has the power to be quite destructive, and the world has seen more than its share of wildfires recently.

When I work with a family, a major goal of mine is everyone’s psychological safety, making everyone feel safe around a small campfire, while making sure that the potential for things to get out of control is minimized or eliminated.

Adding Light Slowly, without Heat

It’s relatively easy to see how too much heat can be dangerous, but the same can apply when families attempt to “rip off the Band-Aid” and share everything in one shot.

I wrote about this back in 2017, in The Dimmer Switch Vs. On/Off.

I get the reasoning behind this, but it remains a very common way that families think about sharing financial information with their rising generation.

So often they have been concealing everything for so long, that once they decide this can’t be sustained, they feel like they need to go “all in” and share everything in one meeting.

Here the metaphor is people in a pitch dark room, and then switching on powerful floodlights all at once.

This can be very disorienting, and can inflict serious damage, leaving scars as deep as those from too much heat.

Holding the Safe Space for All

I noted earlier that families often postpone important discussions because they aren’t sure they know how to have them well.

The good news is that when families bring in a skilled facilitator to help them get started, they can learn how to be with each other in ways that honor everyone’s safety and desire to share their input.

A space that’s safely held for all participants is key to the family being able to co-create their future together.

Finding the balance of enough light without too much heat is the key.

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From “Me to We”, and from “Mine to Ours”

And the Subtleties That Make Them Different

There often comes a time in the evolution of a family when the leaders recognize that a shift needs to happen regarding the wealth they’ve accumulated.

Some make this shift more easily than others and some never get there.

My first book, which came out a decade ago, addressed some of the challenges involved.

I think the title is self evident in this context: SHIFT your Family Business – Stop Working In Your Family Business, Start Working On Your Business Family.

At some point, the founder/wealth creator needs to figure out how to go from Me, to We. 

Not Always an Easy Shift to Actually Make

Many a family business founder has faced difficulties here, notably because they’re so strong-willed and driven and had success due to their individual leadership qualities.

They are great, people tell them they’re great, and they want to keep going and building more wealth. They’ve caught lightning in a bottle and are having fun.

Eventually, though, many get to the stage where the concept of sharing the wealth with their family starts to click.

They’ve likely been saying for decades that “they’re doing all this for their kids” anyway.

 

Saying Something Is Easy – Doing It Is Hard

So that idea of letting go of the “me” attitude towards a “we” attitude kind of makes sense.

And in the end, it isn’t that hard to at least “say” that you’re moving forward on the basis of “we”.

Between the saying and the doing, though, there’s usually a lot of work to be done.

Expanding the circle outwards beyond oneself is an idea that most people can get their mind around, in theory. But putting it into practice can get tricky in a hurry.

The minute you begin to take concrete steps and writing checks, a multitude of questions come up.

We’re Moving Into “Mine to Ours” Territory

The simplest way to summarize the point I’m trying to make here is that “Me to We” is more theoretical and therefore easy to conceptualize, while the “Mine to Ours” is where we get into the action stage, and complexity rears its ugly head.

Let’s take a brief detour into the land of philanthropic giving. 

There’s an expression used by those who work in that world that I’ll paraphrase here, because I think it rhymes with the challenges faced by families figuring out how to share their wealth.

It goes something like this: “It’s easy to give away money. It’s difficult to give it away well”.

When it comes to figuring out how to share one’s wealth with family members, truly stepping into the “from Mine to Ours” in practice, it is really hard to do this well.

Back to Equality Versus Fairness Again

Back in 2017 I tried to address some of this in We Treat Them All Equally – That’s Good, Right?

In simple and straightforward situations, equal is fine; but very few of the situations I come across in the families I work with are simple and straightforward!

We’re venturing towards one of the biggest overall topics I deal with, even though I don’t love the way it’s typically labelled.

I’m talking about family governance, of course, as regular readers may have guessed.

I just put “family governance” into the search feature on my website and, unsurprisingly, hit the motherlode. Here’s one good place to start: Three Pillars of Family Governance from a Pro.

That post quotes Barbara Hauser noting that transparency, accountability and participation are all required.

How Are We Going to ___________ Together?

If you want to dive into that motherlode of posts, please be my guest. I can save you some time and give you a quick summary of what family governance boils down to.

The subheading above has a blank in it, into which you can plug the following three phrases:

  • Make decisions
  • Communicate
  • Solve problems

That’s the gist of family governance, but as usual, even though it’s simple to say, it is hard to actually do.

Making “Mine to Ours” Actually Work

Going from my wealth to our wealth takes time and practice, and typically evolves over years and decades, not days and weeks.

There’s no substitute to having regular family meetings to discuss matters in a productive way.

Families need to learn how to make decisions, communicate, and solve problems together.

They need to learn how to operationalize transparency, accountability and participation.

Few families can do this all by themselves, so finding someone to facilitate the process is a great idea and a good place to start.

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The Not So Glamorous Life of Family Enterprise Advising

It’s Not What People Imagine

When I meet someone and the topic of the work that I do comes up, the conversations can go one of two ways.

Typically, people don’t really get it and the subject quickly gets changed, and that’s usually fine with me.

Other times, when folks are curious, it soon becomes apparent that the kinds of families who engage my services are often those who are part of the “one percent”.

That’s when things can get interesting, but not likely for reasons you might expect.

Another Peer Call Inspired Post

Regular readers know that I’m involved with a number of peer groups that meet on some sort of regular basis.

Many of my weekly missives here are inspired by something that occurs during such calls, and this is yet another of those.

This happened to be the monthly group that I started almost five years ago, where friends and peers gather to discuss cases we’re dealing with.

As we were waiting for everyone to log onto the Zoom, a couple of us were commiserating on the banalities and lowlights of some aspects of the work that we do with families.

That’s when one noted, “Working with ultra high net worth families is not as glamorous as people think!”.

Dispelling this myth can lead to looks of disbelief from new acquaintances.

Flying On Private Jets Is Rare

While I have been to some nice places to facilitate meetings for families, I’ve yet to travel on any family’s private jet.

In fact, I know of only two colleagues who have shared that that’s an experience they’ve enjoyed, and I know lots of people who work this space.

While it’s very interesting to deal with successful people and their families, we are there for a reason, and that is to work for them, and with them.

We are not there to be friends with them and hang out with them, although that does happen to some extent, of course.

In fact, as I’ve shared with many colleagues over the years, when our relationship starts to slip into this territory, it becomes harder to do our work well.

A certain amount of professional distance is required.

Objectivity, Transparency, Equality

I wasn’t planning on going in this direction here, but that last sentence sparked me, so I’ll continue down this train of thought.

While we are usually brought into a family by one person, in order to serve the whole family as our client, we need to demonstrate constant objectivity, and not ever appear to favour one person above others.

This is not as simple as it might sound, especially for professionals who’ve been trained to serve the master who’s paying them.

We need to serve every family member as equally as possible, and do so in a very transparent way, very overtly, so all can see that this is what we are doing.

Anything we do that gives off even a hint of preference towards certain family members just makes our work harder, if not impossible.

Back to the Lack of Glamour

Thanks for abiding my digression, but it’s another aspect of this work that few appreciate unless they’ve been there.

Another reason that there’s little glamour is that doing this work with families is not easy, because the easy families aren’t the ones who usually reach out for our support.

Families who have achieved a certain level of financial wealth do not automatically have everything in place to run smoothly and perfectly, despite their desire to make it appear that way.

The wealth almost always brings with it a great deal of complexity in all their family relationships.

This complexity leads to a need to have important conversations about how that wealth is going to be deployed and shared, now and in the future.

These are not conversations that are always easy to have among family members, hence their need to bring in specialized independent outsiders.

Never a Dull Moment

I hope that highlighting the lack of glamour doesn’t come across as a complaint, because it took me decades to even find this space.

I’ve finally found my calling, and now do something that fulfills me.

It might not be flashy or sexy, but it is nonetheless important for the families I get to serve, and that’s plenty for me.

 

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Finding the Right PACE for Your Family Meetings

How Do We Know We’re Getting It Right?

This week we’re returning to a subject that comes up in one form or another on a somewhat regular basis here, and that’s the good old “family meeting”.

When you work with families who are in business together, or who own assets together, there are typically a number of regular meetings that occur on business related matters, or areas where owners come together to have important discussions.

Holding family meetings, which are largely “by and for family members” is often overlooked, or seen as unnecessary or superfluous.

In reality, they’re sometimes avoided because they can be a bit awkward and uncomfortable, usually for those who should be the ones calling them(!)

Let’s see what we can learn by looking at this again this week, from the perspective of “PACE”.

My PACE Has Nothing to DO with Speed!

I’ll forgive you if, when you saw the word pace, you thought that I was talking about something related to speed.

In reality, while speed is an important consideration for how such family meetings actually happen, that’s not where we’re going now.

If you’re interested in posts related to that angle, please check out: Choosing your FamBiz Tour Guide, or A Family Marathon without a Map.

The new idea I want to share this week is an acronym that I’ve come up with (accidentally, as usual) to think about evaluating every family meeting, just before adjournment.

And the letters in my acronym (or maybe it’s a mnemonic?) are P.A.C.E.

Making Progress, Not Achieving Perfection

Let’s start at the beginning, which is obviously the P, which for me is Progress.

In fact, my main idea is that at the end of a family meeting, I like to ask about whether the people in the meeting feel like we made progress together.

So in fact, my acronym is like a formula, that might look like this:

                              P  =  A + C + E

So it’s a way to check on the meeting participants’ views on progress being made, or not, according to three criteria, the A, the C, and the E.

As the one who’s typically facilitating and leading such meetings, I’m always hoping to see lots of heads nodding as I go over them.

If instead I’m getting confused looks, there’s a lot of information in that too, most of it pointing us “back to the drawing board”.

Back to Alignment and Engagement, Again

Regular long-time readers won’t be surprised to see that Alignment and Engagement are part of my progress check, as I’ve written about this pair one several occasions. 

See, notably: Family Engagement and Family Alignment – Chicken and Egg

I like looking at them together because I see them as kind of like two sides of the same coin, although that isn’t quite it.

My main message here is that if you are looking to improve alignment, one way to do that is to check your engagement level.

And if you are looking to improve engagement, you might need to look at your alignment.

In any event, I always try to make sure I’m thinking about making progress on both of them in every family meeting.

“Are we more aligned after the meeting than before? Was everyone engaged?”

I Can See Clearly Now

Having alignment and engagement as part of my criteria is helpful for making a memorable word like PACE, because vowels are helpful. But of course another consonant was needed, and thankfully this was an easy one.

One of the biggest reasons that families need to come together to meet and discuss is because there’s usually lots of complexity to their lives, and that makes lots of things unclear to many family members.

This means that there’s a premium on clarity.

See: I Can See Clearly Now, from 2016

The end of any family meeting is a great time to check in on this question too.

“Are things more clear now than they were at the beginning of the meeting?”

Hopefully you get mostly “Yes’s” to that one, but if you don’t you will certainly have a better idea of what you need to focus on during the next meeting.

The Next Meeting

So before you end a family meeting, please consider doing this PACE check.

And, of course, like my dentist and chiropractor do so well, make sure that we have the next date on everyone’s calendar, so that we all know when we are getting back together again, to continue to make progress on our alignment, clarity, and engagement.

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