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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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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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The “Plan A” FamBiz Transition Mirage

Many Families Want This, Few Will Achieve It

For those of you who read my weekly musings regularly, you probably think that I spend a lot of my time writing about the challenges that families face as they prepare for intergenerational transitions.

You certainly aren’t wrong, as I spend more of my time on this than most others. However, I spend a lot more of my time talking about these subjects all the time.

And sometimes, like this week, the things I hear myself saying over and over, in various contexts, eventually spark the idea in me that I’m overdue to share some of these “talking points” in writing.

Which brings us to the idea of “Plan A”, which I’ve talked about often, as well as the “mirage” part, which I just conceived as a “hook” for this blog post.

So Many Families Have the Same “Plan A”

Now I don’t have any statistics on this, but I have spoken with dozens and even hundreds of families over the years to some degree of depth or another, and I can confidently say that roughly 2/3 to 3/4 of families arrive at a similar point when considering what they’d like to happen, after the parents transition out of the business.

It’s some version of the following: “We want all our kids to own the business equally and run it together”.

“OK, great”, I reply, “Let’s call that Plan ‘A’. One of the first things I like to do, is to get a good idea of whether or not I think your Plan ‘A’ has a reasonable probability of success”.

Most heads nod along with that, but at this point their view of that probability of success is usually much different from mine.

Not as Simple as It May Seem

Coming to this conclusion as a great way to go is pretty easy to understand, because it seems so neat and tidy, and every parent would be thrilled to achieve such a wonderful, harmonious result.

There’s a variation, which may be even more common, where the hope is equal ownership and lead roles for some subset of their offspring, notably those who’ve been working for the business.

There are plusses and minuses to each, of course, but my main point here is that decisions around who’s going to run the business and who is going to own the business are complex enough on their own, and when you blend them together, you aren’t making things simpler.

I don’t disagree that such results would be lovely, if they can be pulled off. But I defy anyone to find me more than a couple of examples where this “Plan A” has been successfully executed and sustained over time.

I dealt with some of this back in 2017 in We Treat Them All Equally – That’s Good, Right?

Different Interests, Abilities, Motivations, Etc.

Let’s start by looking at the idea of having a sibling team run things together, and the challenges this can pose.

Each sibling has different interests and motivations for working in the family business in the first place, but of course this isn’t always a deal-breaker.

Where things get tricky is that the siblings typically have very different abilities to perform well in their roles.

When you try to put together a good leadership team, one of the keys to success is for all of the people on the team to accept and respect their positions relative to one another.

When Sis is the President and Junior is in charge of the shipping department, then it’s clear to me who should be making the big decisions, but when they’re all part of the family, that often gets blurry.

Ownership Is Another Complicating Factor

Setting things up for a sibling group to run the business is already difficult enough when none of them are owners.

When you add in the ownership question, things get even more complicated.

See The Challenges of Working with a Flat FOOT Enterprise which I wrote for the FFI Practitioner in 2022.

That feeling that as an owner, I get to have an equal say in everything is quite pervasive in a lot of families.

A willingness and ability to recognize hierarchy among a sibling group is not a given, and can take a lot of work.

Should We Be Looking for Plan B or C?

The good news for people like me is that these challenges are good for business, as families can use my guidance.

Starting to sketch out Plan B or Plan C often helps.

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What to Do VS How to Do It

The First Part Is Comparatively Easy

It feels like it’s been a while since I’ve given a shout out to my late father in this space, so in some ways this may be overdue.

He was an immigrant entrepreneur who lived the Canadian dream, arriving here with next to nothing as a teenager, and he went on to build a very successful family enterprise.

While working for him in various capacities during my younger years, I got to hear some important words of wisdom that will never leave me.

In addition to one of my favourites, about the fact that simple and easy are NOT the same thing, there’s the one hinted at above in the title to this post.

Experts Telling You What to Do

In the field in which I now spend all of my time, working with enterprising families and accompanying them through the challenges of their intergenerational transitions, I always meet families who’ve received great advice from expert advisors.

One of the issues the families can quickly run into is that while the “what to do” part of the advice sounded great, it fell short when it came time for the “how to do it” part.

Back to Dad, I can hear him saying for the umpteenth time, “First we need to figure out what to do, then we’ll worry about how to do it”.

He was good about finding the resources to help with the first part, but he was even better at figuring out the steps required to succeed at the second part.

He would listen to all sorts of ideas and advice, but would make up his own mind, always considering how to put the solution into place.

Examples from Family Wealth Transitions

Almost every time I get introduced to a family, there’s already been a good deal of work done with other professionals, to get some of the structure in place for their eventual wealth transition.

There are typically wills in place for the parents, there may have been some estate freezes in place to crystalize the value of a business for one generation so the growth can be more easily held by the next one, sizeable insurance policies may be in place, and some level of trust structure may already exist.

These families will have been well advised on these tools by well-meaning professionals, all of whom have served a number of other families with similar products.

These all fall under the heading of “what to do”.

The assumption that few have questioned along the way is, how is this all going to work with the members of my family?

“Well, just have a family meeting to tell them all” may be the extent of the advice they receive for that part. If only it were that simple.

The Tail Wagging the Dog

In such cases, which remain the norm, many decisions have already been made, before any conversations are even attempted with their offspring.

These plans are being made for a group of people, but those people, for whom all of this is ostensibly being done, have never been consulted.

The silent expectation that “we know best” is a given, along with the one about “they should just be happy with whatever we give them”.

I look at this as the tail wagging the dog, or a “bass ackwards” way to go about things.

And I recognize that I’m in the minority with this view. 

And I’m good with that.

Complexity and Co-Creation

In most families, the way to go about things that I outlined above is sufficient. But I’m not talking about “most families”.

When there is sufficient wealth that complex tools and structures are required, then it behooves the families to engage in much more thoughtful efforts to get it right.

The idea is to make the wealth last AND the family last, and that takes work.

A few months ago in The Family Conversations You Know You Need to Have we looked at some of this. Note the plural “conversations”, because this is not a “one and done” discussion.

The “How to do it” part can also benefit from some outside, unbiased guidance and support.

Families left to themselves can seldom achieve the level of discussion and conversations between generations that is necessary to get everyone into co-creation mode.

Thankfully, there are more people doing this work now to help them.

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Clarify the Facts, Weed Out the Interpretations

Make Sure You’re Clear with These Distinctions

This week we’re going to explore some territory that can become rife with confusion, in the hopes of leaving readers with a better understanding of what often sets the stage for things going of the rails.

We’re staying in the land of families who are planning on transitioning their business and wealth to the next generation, which we already know can be pretty complex.

When I work with such families, it takes a certain amount of time and a number of meetings (both one-on-ones and in groups) before I feel like I have a good handle on all of the facts.

One of the toughest parts of this work is to be sure that I am actually learning objective facts about the history and current context, because so many people slip into sharing their interpretations of the facts, without even realizing the distinction.

The Family Diagram (or Genogram) Example

Those who do this kind of work, accompanying families on this journey, often start off gathering facts and immediately begin drawing a family diagram (or genogram).

This remains the best way to capture many important details about the extended family tree, including birth order of siblings, and facts like dates of birth, marriage, divorce, and death.

The old sports expression “You can’t tell the players without a scorecard” often comes to mind when I do this.

When colleagues of mine talk about this tool, someone eventually asks, “Do you share the genogram with the family?”

My answer is always, “It depends”, which sometimes leaves people underwhelmed.

But this is the perfect example of distinguishing a genogram that includes only facts, from one on which interpretations and subjective assessments have been added.

I’m fine sharing a 100% facts-only genogram with family members, if only to make sure that I have the facts correct.

Don’t Be Like Elaine from Seinfeld!

I typically follow up my explanation with a story about the potential danger of having my interpretations seen by the wrong audience.

I then ask if they recall the episode of the TV show Seinfeld, where Elaine goes to the doctor. 

At one point the doctor leaves the room, but Elaine’s file remains on his desk, and while he’s away, she cannot resist the temptation to open the file and see what’s inside.

There she finds that he has noted that she is a “difficult patient”, and things go south from there.

And it’s the perfect explanation for why I prefer to keep such notes in my head, and never write them down anywhere.

Interpretations Among and Between Family Members

A big part of the work I do revolves around helping family members have conversations around difficult subjects.

They know that they should be having these discussions but can’t seem to hold them and have them go well when left to their own devices, which is why having a facilitator can be a huge help.

One of the simplest ways that I can be helpful is to make sure that they know the difference between assertions that they make that are facts, versus those that they make that are their own subjective interpretations of facts.

An example might be useful. “Sam doesn’t care about his job, he never gets in on time” is not the same as “Sam got in half an hour late today, and it also happened twice last week”.

I think you can tell the difference.

But when personal accusations start flying, things can devolve quickly. Ergo the importance of having a neutral third party involved to keep things calm.

Let’s Agree on the Facts First

It’s amazing how simply making sure that the parties all first agree on the facts can be helpful.

A respected colleague recently shared that this is because the part of the brain that deals with facts is separate from the part that gets all tangled up in emotions, so deliberately insisting that people take the time to use their thinking brain can be very helpful.

When someone is charged with keeping the parties focused on the reality of the facts, more productive and less emotional conversations can proceed.

Family members just tend to act more civilized towards one another when there is a non-family person at the table.

If that person also understands their role and knows how to play it, that’s even better.

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60,000 Hours to Build, 10 Hours to Transfer

Can We Please Spend a Bit More Time on the Exit?

Part of what I enjoy so much about sharing my musings with readers in this space is that I get to bring together ideas from lots of sources and try to combine them in interesting ways every week.

This time we’re going to start with an idea I got from a new colleague, bring in some previous posts, and then incorporate some other ideas that I happened upon on LinkedIn.

Along the way, we’ll bring in various metaphors, and hopefully give everyone some new ideas around how we think about transitions from one generation to the next in a family enterprise context.

Building a Business, and then Exiting It

Let’s start by explaining the numbers in the title of this post. During a recent peer group meeting, a new colleague who happens to be a financial planner, shared an expression that’s become common parlance in his field.

“We typically mention that a business owner usually spends 60,000 to 80,000 hours building their business. But then when it comes time to transfer it, they usually spend between 8 and 10 hours on that.”

Well let’s just say that I’d never heard anyone frame it this way, so I jotted it down and knew that I’d soon be expounding upon this idea here.

This particular peer group is for those who work with family enterprises and family wealth, and this new member of the group has long worked with non-family business people, so a straight sale to an outside party is what he was mostly referring to.

So let’s look at this from a family business viewpoint.

Ten Years or Fifteen Minutes?

One of my first thoughts when I heard the 60,000 to 10 ratio was a blog I wrote about three years ago, Contrasting Transition Timelines – 15 Minutes or 10 Years.

That line was from an acceptance speech for a Family Enterprise of the Year Award, where the recipient related the story about how, decades earlier, his father took only about 15 minutes to transfer the business to him, so he found it hard to believe when professional advisors would tell him that a good transition can take 10 years.

The moral of the story is that he now understands and agrees with the ten years, and that his father’s quick exit was pretty much a unicorn event.

The fifteen-minute version has the senior generation leader exit quickly, while the ten-year plan creates and allows for a period of shared leadership.

The Escalator Analogy

I also thought about an analogy I like and have written about, the one about the escalator.

See The Crowded Escalator Problem in Families

When someone is riding an escalator and they’re approaching the top (or bottom), they need to get off, and not step backwards.

In the case of the shared leadership period, it’s important for the parties to stay a safe distance apart, but you don’t need to wait for someone to disembark before getting on, because many people can ride together.

Congestion, Cohabitation, Turbulence

At the outset I mentioned some LinkedIn posts that I came upon as I was preparing to write this post.

A colleague had written something about a period of shared leadership as a “Période de Congestion” (this was in French) and I recognized that labeling it that way wouldn’t likely encourage families to work this way.

“Congestion” is often used here in referring to traffic jams and such, so I thought maybe “cohabitation” could work better.

As our comments went back and forth, she added that “turbulence” is also a term that gets used to describe this period. (Merci Martine!).

I suppose that just because it doesn’t sound lovely is not a reason to discount it, in fact I completely encourage it in almost every situation.

Learning to manage it well is the trick, of course.

Yes, It’s Messy. And It’s Necessary

For family enterprises, and for situations where there’s no operating business, but there is significant wealth and assets that are owned together with family, it’s important to make sure that what you are setting up is a transition, not a simple transfer.

See Don’t Transfer Family Wealth, Transition It

The time period where the leadership transitions will be messy at times, and that’s expected and completely normal.

And it is so necessary to make sure that the knowledge, skill, relationships, leadership and confidence are all moved down from one generation to the next.

We’re talking months and years, not minutes and hours.

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Musings from a Decade of FFI Conferences

Musings from a Decade of FFI Conferences

Hanging Out with Friends and Colleagues in London

Sometimes anniversaries that happen to be a “round number” give us pause to reflect.

I had such a birthday in August, and have now just attended and participated in the 2024 Family Firm Institute (FFI) Conference in London, an event I’d first attended in 2014, in Washington DC.

In the intervening decade, many things have evolved considerably: the FFI as an organization, me and my practice in this field, the number of people I now consider friends and colleagues there, and of course the field of serving enterprising families itself.

This week I want to share some of my musings around this collective evolution, because while much remains the same, it feels like even more has evolved, for the better.

Let’s Take It from the Bottom

On the last day of the conference, it seemed like almost every conversation I had with other attendees ended up veering towards marveling at how fast the whole field seems to be changing lately.

Between families who are kick starting things post-Covid, to new entrants in the field, to the continued move towards Family Offices, to professionals moving form one organization to another, it seems like the level of activity has never been higher.

And that’s a good thing, mostly.

Lots of change is necessary, but it won’t all be for the better in the short term, as mistakes will be made, firms will take steps that will turn out to be false starts, and families will continue to try to figure out who can best serve their needs, which remain difficult to define.

But there seems to be lots of effort and energy present to better serve families.

Learned and Learner Colleagues

Thinking back to a decade ago, at my first FFI Conference I knew only a handful of people, and thought I was there just to learn.

Being new to the field, of course there was a lot to soak in, and it was clear that this could be a long process.

What I had not appreciated going in was how much of an impact my new and growing network of colleagues would have on my learning curve.

At each successive conference, London’15, Miami’16, Chicago’17, London’18, Miami’19, Virtual’20, (I missed London’21), Boston’22, New York’23, London’24, I’ve gained new friends and colleagues, and we continue to all learn together, from one another.

We all learn better by sharing what we’ve tried and what’s working (and what’s not), all in the spirit of moving our relatively young field to evolve and mature.

Evolving in My Fifties

If your view of human development is that once we become adults, we have peaked, you may want to stop reading, lest your views be dispelled.

I had just turned 50 when I first attended, and I was entering a field I had just discovered existed.

I also knew that although much of my life experience was extremely relevant to this work, I needed to evolve and grow as a person, and gain the skills and behaviours necessary to do this work well.

I had lived my life believing that the “business circle” was paramount, but had now (finally) clued into the fact that it is in the “family circle” that the most difficult and important work happens.

That transition is not as simple as it may seem, and I’m happy to report that my efforts have been worthwhile and rewarded.

FFI Colleagues Rising to the Challenges

I’m not sure if it was due to my “newness” to the field back then or not, but it seemed to me that in those bygone days, many of those who presented during the breakout sessions were sharing their great successes and flexing in front of their fans.

My time in London recently was much different, as most of the presentations I attended were given with a great deal of humility and a willingness to learn from the other professionals in the room.

The global nature of the organisation continues to be one of its greatest features, as we all benefit from learning how this work is done in different cultures and geographies.

I continue to hope that the Family Firm Institute will grow in wonderful ways and create the environment required for this community of peers to meet, share, and learn from one another, for the benefit of enterprising families everywhere.

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On Connection and Empathy When Accompanying Families

The Two Basic Elements of Coaching Success

Working with families and other professionals who serve them as they plan their intergenerational wealth transitions can be rewarding, but also quite tricky at times.

The advisors who help out with structure and content solutions have interesting situations to try to resolve for, but for those who work more in what I often call the “family circle”, it can be even more complex.

The “soft issues” are actually the “really hard” parts of making everything work out in the end.

When I decided to plunge into this part of the field over a decade ago, the best advice I got (and which I have since shared with many others) was to go an do some coach training.

Listening Without Judgement, What a Concept!

When this was suggested to me, I did a Google search and was overwhelmed, so I went back to the person who gave me the advice (thanks JM) to help me narrow my search, she pointed me straight to the Co-Active Training Institute.

After my first 3-day weekend workshop, I was hooked, and I told my wife that even if this did not help me in my business, it would be sure to make me a better husband and father.

Over a decade later, I often share one of the most profound take-aways I got from the whole process, regarding the two main elements one needs to master to be a great coach.

I’ve share them in conversation countless times, but now realize that I haven’t shared them here explicitly enough, so here goes.

One of my coaching instructors at one point said, “Eighty percent of coaching comes down to two things: ‘listening without judgement’, and ‘being with’.”

Another Inspiration from a LinkedIn Post

I post on LinkedIn regularly, and also go there to find out what else is going on in my professional circles.

One day while scrolling my timeline there recently, I saw a post that read, “EMPATHY is listening without judgement”.

In my work, high empathy is a key success factor, and I typically score pretty well on that metric, but I’d never thought about it in terms of “listening without judgement” until now.

But if forced to argue one side or the other on that, I think I’d prefer to defend that thesis.

I know plenty of people who listen with lots of judgement, including family members, and upon reflection, they’re far from empathetic.

I value my empathy, and believe that empathy is truly a worthwhile “value”, especially in my work with families.

What About “Being With”?

So I began to consider what value could be ascribed to the concept of “being with” someone.

After some Googling and poking around the internet, I finally landed on “Connection”, and I was pretty happy with that.

Until, that is, I looked into my family facilitation toolkit and pulled out a Values Edge card deck.

I went through it and was disappointed not to find a card with the word “connection” on it, although there were several others that were pretty close.

So I’ve decided to settle on Empathy and Connection as keys I learned from coach training, as they apply to my work with families.

But I still have a problem figuring out what to call this family circle work.

Coaching, Facilitation, and Accompanying Families

Earlier I referred to those professionals who work on structure and content as key advisors who work with families.

The family work that I specialize in is all about process and relationships.

It involves coaching and facilitation, with an emphasis on the family’s human capital, but it’s hard to put a label on those.

As I noted last year in On Coaching, Parenting and Sub-Optimal Translations, I really prefer the French word for coaching, “accompagnement”, because what I do is truly “accompany” a family on their journey together.

Guidance and Holding Space

This work involves a number of skills and ways of being, including empathy and connection, which are valuable abilities when working with groups of people.

There’s also a lot of guidance and holding the space involved, which are also difficult to put a simple label on.

See also Choosing Your FamBiz Tour Guide and Holding the Courageous, Compassionate Space for a Family.

As I await the “perfect” name for this work, I have a Zoom background banner calling myself a Family Legacy Guide, and a business card where I call myself an Independent Advisor to Families.

Not perfectly clear, but clear enough.

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