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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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The Benefits of Having a Trusty Confidant

There’s Value in Just Feeling Heard

Working with family members who have complex relationships with each other is nothing new to me. 

My specialty is working with enterprising families, which is the term that my field has come up with to describe not only family businesses, but also families that have attained a certain level of wealth, usually as a result of having owned a business somewhere in their past.

We looked at some of this a few weeks back, in Difficult Family Conversations and the Gift of Facilitation where we examined the benefit of having a neutral outside resource to help ensure that important conversations are safe and productive.

This week I want to slide over about 90 degrees and talk about this from another angle, and that’s family members having someone to speak with about whatever their concerns are, some sort of “confidant”.

As a coach who also works in many one-on-one situations with members of such families, I’m quite familiar with the value of that as well, along with the challenges of playing that role.

Confidential  =>  Confide  

As usual I like to share how these posts come about in my mind, and this one followed a somewhat circuitous route, which isn’t unusual.

It started at a family meeting I was facilitating, where one of the G2 members asked me if the one-on-one calls I was having with them were “confidential”.

I hadn’t been asked that question in quite that way before, and in retrospect, I wasn’t happy with the way I responded.

Upon reflection, it became clear that there’s only one right answer, and that’s an unequivocal “Yes, of course!”

Somehow the idea of something being “confidential” felt like a very high standard, which it is, but I needed a simpler way to think about it, which I’m now sharing here.

Much like back in 2016 with Putting the Consent into Consensus (Part 1) and (Part 2), it took some thinking about root words that are at the core of longer words to give me the clarity I was searching for.

When you examine “confidential”, you can see the word “confide”, which now jumps out at me, but it didn’t before.

Had I been asked “Can I confide in you?”, I know my answer would have been quick, positive, and reassuring.

Confide  =>  Confidant

When it comes to blog subjects, I like to expand upon wordplay, and that’s how we get to “confidant”.

If you want to confide in someone, you need to have a confidant.

So whereas I was initially just going to write about the confidential nature of this work, we’re now venturing into the value of having a confidant, and the challenges of being one.

These days there are even phone apps powered by artificial intelligence that do a lot of this in the absence of a human version.

Of course I believe that a human confidant is the best kind, but that doesn’t mean that any old human will play the role well.

There’s a certain amount of baseline empathy required to play the role, as well as an ability to listen to people without judgement.

The Ability to “Be With” Someone

Lately I’ve been sharing a number of nuggets in this blog that I have used when speaking with people for years, so allow me to throw another log on that fire.

When I did my coach training (with CTI) over a decade ago, one of our course leaders noted that in his view, 80% of coaching comes down to two basic things.

The first of those I mentioned above, and that’s listening without judgement.

The second one is the “ability to be with”, to which I added the word “someone” in my sub-head, because it feels more complete that way.

I also speak a lot about the difference between “doing” and “being”, and the idea of knowing how to “be with” underscores that quite well.

Using a Coach as your Confidant

Regular readers know that I have been working with a coach for over a decade, which is something any good coach will do.

Working with my own coach makes it easier for me to convince people to hire me as a coach; because I eat my own cooking, so to speak.

A coach becomes a confidant, and a good coach/client relationship will get better over time.

As the client gets more and more comfortable confiding in their coach, everything improves.

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My Favourite Oxymoron: “Adult Children”

Are They Adults, Or Are They Children?

This week we’re venturing into an area I really enjoy discussing with folks who live and/or work in the family transition space.

There are so many topics to think about, as hundreds of my posts here over the last decade will attest.

But in the end, some are so fundamental that we sometimes don’t even really see them, and that’s where I want to go now.

Families I work with all have a generational transition to consider; they may be in the middle of one, currently digesting a recently completed one, or planning the next one.

What they all have in common is that they involve family members from more than one generation.

“Parents” and their “children” are simple ways to describe them in the early stages, but once the younger generation rise into adulthood, continuing to treat them as children becomes an issue.

And still calling them “the children” or “the kids” is something I’m always working to stamp out.

“Offspring”: Correct, But Off-Putting?

I wish I could recall which colleague of mine first mentioned the idea that “adult children” can be considered an oxymoron.

But it has stuck with me, and I share it often in conversation to useful effect, so it’s time to share it here as well.

As a result of trying so hard to not use the terms “children” or “kids”, I end up overusing the word “offspring”, which has its own drawbacks.

For some reason “offspring” calls to mind animal husbandry, which isn’t typically helpful.

As I prepared to write this, my adult daughter was visiting and I noted that the expressions “adult daughter” and “adult son” do not suffer from the same predicament.

So my son will always be my son, and my daughter will always be my daughter, but they have already ceased being my children, because they are now adults.

The Rising Generation > The Next Generation

The words and language we use are important, because there are connotations to just about any word that can either work for us or against us.

Many colleagues have now embraced the expression “rising generation” when speaking about the group formerly known as “next gens”.

It’s a subtle shift, but seems to be well received in most cases.

The problem with “next” is that, like tomorrow, it seems like it never actually arrives, and so the “next gen” bemoan the fact that they continue to have to wait their turn.

Of course “rising” begs its own set of questions too, including the fact that the idea of finally “getting there” remains forever elusive.

Counting the G’s

Working with families and their various generations also frequently brings us to labelling each generation with a number.

“G1” is typically assigned to the generation that created the family wealth, and their offspring are dubbed “G2”, while their grandchildren become “G3” and so on.

See: The Special Sovereignty of G1

Of course those numbers are subject to change over time. 

I’m currently working with one family where the sibling group used to be part of a larger G3 with their cousins, but who we’ve now relabelled as G2, since a family liquidity event resulted in their parents and aunts and uncles each going their own way for their next chapter.

Adult-To-Adult Relationships

The biggest concern I have with people calling grown adults “children” is that it literally infantilizes them, even when it’s not being done intentionally.

One of the biggest constant challenges I work on with the families I serve is to get them to treat each other as adults.

The adult-to-adult relationships I strive to encourage are best for everyone, and within families this can be really hard.

And it also happens at both ends of life; continuing to treat those in their 20’s, 30’s and 40’s as children on one end, and then having those in the “NowGen” begin to treat their parents in their 70’s and 80’s as having passed their expiry date on the other.

Acknowledge Reality, But Don’t Dwell On It

I fully recognize that families are never run in a completely democratic fashion, and certain people play more central decision-making roles than others.

But when people feel compelled to constantly “flex” their position on others, that does not bode well for long-term collaboration.

Please refrain from calling adults “children”, and stop treating grown-ups that way too.

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Getting What You Want – Is That All There Is?

Reminder to Occasionally Reflect on What’s Important

In this week’s missive I want to go to a place that I probably don’t venture to often enough, maybe because it’s a bit deep for many of us.

We’ll be looking at some very basic human needs here, as hinted at in the title. 

We all work towards getting what we want, but that changes as we go through life, and many of us have a tendency to keep making efforts in the same old direction, even when what we want has imperceptibly changed.

So if you’re game for something that may force you into reflection mode, let’s proceed. 

I know that writing this will push me into some areas of discomfort too, so we can do this together!

Dusting Off an Old, Odd Inspiration

Regular readers know that I use an email folder titled “Blog Ideas” to keep track of and store various inspirations that hit me from all over as I go through my days.

This week I’m dusting one off that’s been there a while, with “Baby Reindeer” in the subject line, of all things.

That’s a reference to a Netflix TV series from early 2024, that caught fire in the pop culture world back then.

I’ll spare you the gory details, but during the final episode, I actually paused the video to write down a verbatm quote from the main character:

   

                    “There’s nothing like getting everything you 

                          want in life to realize it’s not for you.”

 

Hmmm, there’s a lot to unpack there, and many of the people I deal with in enterprising families could stand to reflect on this too.

Back to Me Versus We Again

In the family enterprise context, this realization can be very striking, because as a family leader from the “NowGen” progresses through life, considerations about their “NextGen” invariably begin to rise into consciousness.

We’re back in the world of “Me vs. We” again. See: From “Me to We” and from “Mine to Ours”

That quote above can be looked at in many ways, of course. 

In the context of the TV series, it was the character’s realization that what he thought he wanted at the outset wasn’t actually resonating with him anymore now that he’d met that goal.

This happens to me all the time; I think of something I really want and then either work towards it or purchase it, and eventually realize that it isn’t giving me what I was hoping for.

In families this plays out in various ways too, so let’s look at some of those.

“I’m Doing All of This for You”

We’ve all seen some version of “I’m doing this for all of you”, whereby someone (who usually goes by the name “Dad”) exclaims that they’re working very hard for everyone else’s benefit.

This altruistic view of one’s efforts often fills a need for someone to be seen as unselfish, even though those who are ostensibly on the receiving end of those efforts may be shrugging their shoulders and thinking “I didn’t ask for this!”.

These situations are all about efforts that are being made for reasons that end up being less than well thought out.

If you don’t stop to reflect, and hopefully discuss things with other family members, you can end up wasting a lot of effort.

What Am I Even Doing Here?

Another common family enterprise scenario where efforts occur only to be called into question years later involves NextGen family members who take on roles with unrealistic expectations.

Often they hope for a quick path to the top, only to realize that the top spot is occupied by someone who isn’t in a hurry to give it up.

Other times, they come to realize that the parts they expected to be fun and glamourous end up being neither.

Those who begin to reflect on this sooner rather than later come out ahead in such cases.

Getting Out of your Own Head

While I set out in this post to try to encourage more self-reflection, it strikes me that in a family business context, actually getting outside of one’s own head is even more important.

Having conversations with other family members, whether they are directly affected or even only indirectly, seems like a no-brainer.

But too often, strong-willed people don’t trust anyone else more than themselves, and they continue to pursue paths that aren’t actually leading to a useful place.

Periodically stopping to reflect, and discuss, is always a good idea.

 

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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 a 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 will 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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Difficult Family Conversations and the Gift of Facilitation

How I Talk About My Work

Not a day goes by where I don’t have at least one or two conversations about the kind of work I do.

I don’t know if people who have more “regular jobs”, like teachers, cops, or accountants, spend as much time sharing details and examples of the work that they do.

But for me, because I work with families, all of whom either own a business together or share ownership of significant assets, there’s often a good deal of intrigue about what it’s like and what this work is all about.

In most cases, one of the elements that precipitates my being called in has something to do with an intergenerational transition, either in the future or the past, or some combination thereof.

Because I speak to many people about all this, from prospects to clients to colleagues and others, I get to “workshop” different ways to talk about my chosen career.

Once I get comfortable with some phrasing that seems to resonate when I speak to people, I like to share more in writing here.

The Conversations They Know They Should Be Having

What I usually mention first is that there are conversations that the families I support need to have, in order to make sure that everything is clear and that family harmony is preserved.

These conversations are typically about subjects that family leaders already know they should be having; I’ve never mentioned that “you should talk about this as a family” and had a reply like, “Really, I never thought about that”. They all know.

But if they know that they should be talking about these things, then why aren’t they doing it already?

Well, there are a few reasons, namely that they’re difficult conversations, most people don’t know how to start these discussions, and they’re scared that things will go wrong.

These are all valid reasons that explain why most families prefer to “kick the can down the road”, and maybe do this next week, next month, or next year.

Left to Themselves, Most Families Won’t Go There

When people know that they should be doing something but can’t seem to get started on their own, they can simply give up.

Eventually, though, what often happens is that things change for the worse, and then the necessity of having these conversations actually goes up, and waiting too long has even bigger negative consequences.

This often has them searching for help, but so many of them don’t know where to turn.

Thankfully, the ecosystem in which I work, supporting enterprising families, continues to grow and become better known.

What most of these families really need to get started is someone to facilitate these discussions for the family.

Facilitation: From “Facile”, i.e. French for “Easy”

Regular readers know that as a lifelong Montrealer, I’m bilingual, having learned French as a child, and I continue to speak it every day.

The words “facilitate” and “facilitator” have, as a root word, “facile”, which anyone who knows a moderate amount of French knows means “easy”.

And that’s exactly what the role of a facilitator is, to make things easier.

Difficult conversations are hard to start, because there’s always a fear that things will degenerate quickly and go off the rails.

A good facilitator knows how to lead such conversations, by building trust with all participants in advance, and doesn’t get scared when the temperature in the room starts to rise.

Age, Experience, Training, Demeanor

A number of factors usually have to come together to make someone successful in this work.

Some of the top ones that come to mind are age, experience, training, and demeanor.

Older people are typically better at this than younger ones, because they can hopefully command more respect from everyone involved.

Those who have lived experience in some of the matters that the families they serve are currently facing will generally be better able to deal with things in a more practical way too.

While many of the qualities come more naturally to some than to others, the amount of training that people have in the specific areas of facilitation, coaching and mediation techniques is also quite relevant.

All of these boil down to one’s demeanor and comfort level dealing with families in situations that can be very emotional.

Important conversations can be difficult, but having a good facilitator along to guide the process always helps.

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