If Only So-and-So Would Just…
This week we’re going to look at a subject that’s never far away when families get together and things don’t go exactly according to plan.
We’re going to start with a LinkedIn post from one friend and colleague from California and then include a parable from another in Australia.
We all want everything to go well all the time, and because life happens, sometimes things don’t turn out the way we’d hoped.
So, what then?
Well, in too many families, the first thing that happens is finger pointing to find the one person who is at fault, so we can blame them.
Of course, none of it is ever MY fault!
Section 01
Tech Issues on a Live Webinar
Emily Bouchard shared a story on LinkedIn that she started with what she stated was a line she uses frequently when working with families:
“Everyone is at fault, and no one is to blame.”
I immediately sent myself an email with that quote and put it into my “Blog Ideas” folder for safe keeping for a few weeks.
She went on to explain that she and a colleague had put on a live webinar the day before and where some tech glitches lead to a sub-optimal experience.
She then owned her part of it and noted that she invited her team to do the same.
Doing this requires a certain willingness to be vulnerable and that’s a leadership skill that most teammates appreciate.
She could probably have skipped over the part she played in it and focused on either the technology or some other person.
But she didn’t, because like so many problems, it was actually the result of a bunch of little things that just happened to come together at the wrong time.
Section 02
How Would a Sports Team Handle This?
This got me thinking about sports teams who compete to win every game but always end up losing on at least some occasions.
It can be tempting to point out one person’s miscue, but every game presents many opportunities for someone to influence the result.
After the game, during the coach’s press conference, does he usually call out a single person who made a mistake as the cause of the loss, or does he mention that there were a few areas where the team could have performed better?
What about the players when they answer reporters’ questions?
Every now and then, some will misspeak and call out a particular teammate, and then we never hear the end of the fact that they threw someone under the proverbial bus, even though there was surely lots of blame to go around.
Start the trade rumours, because that won’t play well in the locker room.
Section 03
The Family as a Team? Yes, Again!
A few weeks ago, in On Connection, Belonging and Learning in Families, I brought up the concept of thinking about your family as a team.
There are certainly a lot of potential benefits to treating your family as if they are a sports team, especially if you’re a fan of metaphors like me.
Of course there are other sports comparisons that can be made, and we need to distinguish between everyone being on the same team, as opposed to competing against each other.
As I noted in Kissing your Sister — Playing for a Tie in FamBiz, a family should not be trying to beat each other, and playing for a tie is how a family really wins.
Section 04
A Worthwhile Parable for Families
My Australian friend John Broons shares a great parable about blame in his book, Creating a Thriving Family Business — Progress, Not Perfection.
His story about Somebody, Everybody, Anybody and Nobody is one I even pulled out and read to a family during a meeting I was facilitating with them.
It helped me drive home a point about being more specific when assigning a particular task, lest it not get done and then spark the blame game.
Section 05
Plenty of Blame to Go Around
One of the aspects of trying to find the one to blame that really bothers me is that it’s always backward looking.
Dwelling on how things got where they are and who caused us to be in a sub-optimal place is not productive in getting us out of where we are.
If you want to examine everything to see who’s responsible for a situation, you will probably end up uncovering many contributors.
Can we instead look to the future and how we can organize ourselves so we can improve our situation?
Yes please.
At A Glance
From Blame to Building Forward
Tap each card to reveal the shift.
+Shift IReframe the Fault
“Everyone is at fault, and no one is to blame.” — Emily Bouchard
+Shift IIOwn Your Part First
“Doing this requires a certain willingness to be vulnerable and that’s a leadership skill most teammates appreciate.”
+Shift IIIDon’t Throw a Teammate Under the Bus
“There was surely lots of blame to go around… that won’t play well in the locker room.”
+Shift IVPlay for the Same Team
“A family should not be trying to beat each other, and playing for a tie is how a family really wins.”
+Shift VBe Specific About Who Does What
“Being more specific when assigning a particular task, lest it not get done and then spark the blame game.”
+Shift VILook Forward, Not Back
“Can we instead look to the future and how we can organize ourselves so we can improve our situation? Yes please.”
In last week’s Coming Down from Yet Another Rocky Mountain High, I noted that I wasn’t going to share much content from the Rendez-Vous of the Purposeful Planning Institute in that post, but if you’re a regular reader, I’m sure you knew to expect that I’d share some takeaways soon enough.
There was some wisdom shared from the big stage in the opening plenary session, of course, and I’m going to combine that with something I got out of a breakout session that followed.
Next week’s post will also likely combine some bits from different parts of my fulfilling week with so many wonderful colleagues.
If you liked Learning Life Lessons as a Family a few weeks ago, we’re going back to the world of learning once again.
Section 01
Learning With and Learning From
The breakout I attended was expertly led by Nathan Dungan and Jeff Strese, who’ve been part of the PPI community for years, and I’ve participated in their sessions in the past, so I knew I wouldn’t be disappointed.
But with four simultaneous opportunities to choose from, FOMO is always right around the corner at every Rendez-Vous.
They named their breakout “Learning With, Learning From, and Learning For”.
The first two are pretty standard and common, while the third had me saying “hmmm” to myself.
When I work with a family, it’s always nice when I can help create opportunities for them to learn with each other.
When they can also learn from each other, that usually works well too, especially when it isn’t simply “top down”.
Section 02
Taking One for the Team
When they got to the part of “learning for”, I raised my hand because I wanted to make sure I understood where they were going, and I imagined that I was not the only one who might have been unclear on what they meant.
I asked,
“I imagine that the ‘learning for’ is NOT about ‘what are we learning this for’”.
Nathan thanked me for the question and gently noted that mine was actually a “why” question, poorly phrased.
When they talk about learning for, it’s more about doing the learning for the benefit of the family, including the other members of the family.
When I wrote the sub-head above about “the team”, it was to try to emphasize this point.
When a family learns for each other, they are demonstrating a commitment to being part of the family team.
When I can help a family think of itself as a team, I’m cooking with gas, as they say.
Section 03
Connection and Belonging – Great Teams Have These
So now let’s loop back to the title of this blog and the wisdom I jotted down during the opening plenary session.
For a transition of wealth from one generation to the next to succeed, connection and belonging are not optional extras.
They are fundamental to success.
You have surely seen cases where wealth has passed from one generation to another where the successors were not properly connected to the source of the wealth, where that missed opportunity jumps up and slaps you in the face.
Or where those who inherited the financial wealth did not feel like they belonged to the family that created it and therefore struggled to find the meaning behind their windfall.
This is not rocket science, it’s actually pretty simple to understand.
And simple doesn’t mean easy, so it does take intention and effort.
Section 04
Everyone Wants to Be Seen and Heard
For a family to be connected in a way where each person feels like they truly belong, every last one of them needs to be seen and heard.
Most families have at least one member who isn’t really getting that, and they may feel less like they’re part of the team.
I’m not trying to lay blame here, but in the families that I’m privileged to work with, it is something I am always trying to tune in to, to try and nudge things in a slightly better direction.
Facilitating family meetings requires me to notice such misalignment and do whatever I can to make sure that the quieter voices are heard and that each person’s viewpoints are heard by everyone else.
Most families aren’t necessarily naturally good at being a family team together, but if I can help them learn how to be just a little bit better at it, and they can begin to learn for each other, that’s progress.
There Are Better Ways to Think About This
Once again, we’re going back to LinkedIn as a source of inspiration for this weekly missive.
Between events I attend, conversations I have with clients and colleagues, and my favourite social media site, these cover the genesis of 95% or more of what I share here.
The post in question is part of a weekly series I’ve been enjoying, from Pierre Dupont, who is several generations removed from the founder of the eponymous industrial behemoth.
His series, Projecting Wealth Across Generations, is full of great ideas and viewpoints.
In a recent instalment, he mused about the dangers of treating a family’s wealth as a “pile of money”.
Section 01
Three Possible Outcomes for the Pile
He shared the following:
“But left without intention, a pile tends to do one of three things:
- dissipate quietly,
- sit frozen out of fear, or
- become the thing the family fights over.”
In the comments, I thanked him for his succinct list, and shared a thought:
“I’ll add that these three results are NOT mutually exclusive, and the pile can end up checking more than one box over time, and #2 and #3 often occur together!”
Section 02
Reality Check from My Dear Wife
As I occasionally do, I bounced my idea for this post off my wife of 33 years, who happens to be part of a family where some of those 3 outcomes may or may not have occurred.
She nodded and said “Yeah!”
I didn’t need her blessing, but I was glad to know that this brief list resonated with her.
I should note that this list is not to be confused with a related one about “who gets your money after you die”.
That one is popular with those advocating for philanthropy, because the three places your money can go after death are: the government, your family, and charity.
But that’s a subject for another post.
Let’s get back to dissipation, fear, and fighting!
Section 03
Flinging Open the Doors of the Brinks Truck
Let’s start with the fear of dissipation of wealth.
Here’s an analogy I’ve used with a family I’m working with, who’ve experienced a recent liquidity event.
See Integrating the Wealth into the Family.
I explained to the rising generation that their parent had spent several decades building a wealth creation engine, but they are now faced with a brand-new challenge that they hired me to help them work through.
It was as if that wealth creation engine had suddenly transformed into a Brinks truck full of cash, which has now landed in the family’s backyard.
Now the parent isn’t going to suddenly fling open the doors of that truck and invite everyone to help themselves to this “pile of money”.
They are also not going to say, “Hey kids, look at MY cash, you’ll get it when I die”.
Making the financial wealth freely available will surely see it dissipate.
Section 04
Frozen Out of Fear
What sometimes occurs when the fear of dissipation is too great, is that the financial wealth gets put into complex trusts or other structures to make sure it doesn’t get frittered away.
That’s the other extreme of the continuum and isn’t necessarily a much better result.
The wealth creator has often ended up in an unforeseen situation of suddenly having more wealth than they need, but they also don’t want their hard work to blow away into the wind after they die either.
There are plenty of professional advisors out there who know how to structure wealth in ways to make sure it lasts forever, and clients can easily be swayed by their arguments.
Section 05
Family Fights Over Money Are Not New
Families with a great deal of wealth have been fighting over it for centuries and estate litigation is one of the fasted growing areas of the law for attorneys.
This will not change anytime soon.
Section 06
The Secret: Avoid the “Pile of Money” by Talking About It
The best way to try to avoid the extremes of dissipation of wealth and freezing it out of fear, and all the fighting in between, is to have the family discuss it openly.
This needs to be done over time, on a regular cadence.
See Ideas on Dealing with the Family CRAP.
It isn’t just some undefined pile of cash.
It needs to become something the family co-creates, along with a purpose and mission and a strategy to have it fulfill its and the family’s potential.
Progression is often slow, and that’s even better.
See Your Family’s Continuity Journey — Progress or Paralysis.
Get help and get started.
At A Glance
The Three Fates of an Unmanaged Pile
Tap each card to reveal the fate — and the way out.
+Fate IDissipate Quietly
“Making the financial wealth freely available will surely see it dissipate.”
+Fate IISit Frozen Out of Fear
“The financial wealth gets put into complex trusts or other structures to make sure it doesn’t get frittered away.”
+Fate IIIBecome the Thing They Fight Over
“Estate litigation is one of the fastest growing areas of the law for attorneys.”
+AlsoFates Are Not Mutually Exclusive
“The pile can end up checking more than one box over time, and #2 and #3 often occur together!”
+The Way OutCo-Create Purpose, Mission & Strategy
“It needs to become something the family co-creates, along with a purpose and mission and a strategy to have it fulfill its and the family’s potential.”
Teach Your Children Well
There’s a trend in my field that I’m noticing around the idea of learning, where the concept of having a “learning family” seems to be in vogue.
I think that families that can get all the way there will be well served by this type of thinking, and yet I know most families will never get there, and the majority of those are simply not realistic candidates for it in the first place.
I have some friends and colleagues who label themselves as “fractional chief learning officers” for families and I wish them well because that sounds like a very rewarding career.
My work is typically done “upstream”, as in, way before a family can even begin to consider themselves a learning family.
But the idea of having the family learn together is usually not far from the work I do.
Section 01
Left to Themselves, What Do Families Do?
As someone who plies his trade as a resource to families, I often find myself talking about what happens to families who choose not to engage an independent outsider like me to support them.
I help families have the important conversations they know they should be having, but, left to themselves, they aren’t having.
When families are left to themselves, lots of things that need to be done don’t even get put on the to-do list.
Okay, this was supposed to be about learning, wasn’t it?
Yes, sorry for the diversion; and when you think about learning, you almost automatically think about teaching, the other side of the same proverbial coin.
In a family, there’s a natural tendency to think that the parents should teach and the children should learn.
Section 02
Is “Adult Children” an Oxymoron?
Parents as teachers and kids as learners works well when the kids are still children.
In most of the families I work with, those “children” are now adults, which some people call adult children.
I’m familiar with a quote that states that “adult children” is an oxymoron; they’re either adults or they’re children.
I like the contrast this paints.
Let’s use that contrast to highlight the fact that once they’re adults, the ways that learning and teaching happen need to be updated to reflect the adult-to-adult relationship reality that now exists.
Families can and should begin to learn together, and the idea that learning only flows in one direction, i.e. “top down”, needs to be scrapped.
Section 03
I Want to Teach You a Lesson
We’re more than halfway through and I have uncharacteristically not yet shared the genesis of the idea for this post.
Alas, we’ve arrived.
In a family I’m working with, I’ve got a situation where a parent wants to make sure one of their offspring learns a lesson from something they overlooked about a decade ago.
As their family advisor, I agree that this young adult would do well to understand their misstep and learn a lesson from it.
The problem I’m wrestling with is that there’s a parent who seems to want to use this occasion to “teach them a lesson”.
And that has a very different look and feel, along with the sub-optimal consequences I fear it will entail for their relationship.
See also Questioning Someone Vs. Asking Questions.
Section 04
A Difficult Attitude Adjustment for Parents
The old “I teach, you learn” the parents used when the kids were actual kids stops working for them at some point and begins to work against them.
Getting those parents to recognize this is often one of the most difficult parts of my work.
Thankfully, some begin to get it and make the necessary adjustments, but some don’t ever get there.
See On Sovereignty and Self-Righteousness in Families.
There’s something I eventually remind parents of when they’re stuck here, and it’s about looking to the future instead of being mired in the past.
Section 05
The Almost Inevitable Eventual Role Reversal
When your children were babies, they relied on you 100% for food, shelter and even cleaning up after their natural bodily functions.
If you live long enough, that script will eventually flip, and you will be the one relying on them to oversee someone taking care of those things for you.
If that script flips abruptly, you may not like what you reap.
In an ideal circumstance, there will be a long period (decades) where the adult-to-adult relationship is relatively horizontal, and not “one up, one down”.
You can all learn together, from each other.
At A Glance
From Top-Down to Horizontal
Tap each card to reveal the shift.
+Shift IHave the Missing Conversations
“The important conversations they know they should be having, but, left to themselves, they aren’t having.”
+Shift IIScrap “Top-Down”
“The idea that learning only flows in one direction, i.e. ‘top down’, needs to be scrapped.”
+Shift IIILearn a Lesson, Don’t Teach One
“That has a very different look and feel, along with the sub-optimal consequences I fear it will entail for their relationship.”
+Shift IVRetire “I Teach, You Learn”
“The old ‘I teach, you learn’ … stops working for them at some point and begins to work against them.”
+Shift VPrepare for Role Reversal
“If that script flips abruptly, you may not like what you reap.”
+Shift VIGo Horizontal
“The adult-to-adult relationship is relatively horizontal, and not ‘one up, one down’.”
Lots of Areas to Work on Together
One of the reasons why working with families on intergenerational transitions is so complex (and so interesting!) is that there are many transitions, or transmissions, that need to take place.
They run kind of in parallel and sometimes in series, and they overlap in many ways too.
We’ll delve into this idea, inspired by a recent article that happened to focus on how artificial intelligence is affecting these challenges.
So, we’ll be looking at wealth, values, authority and identity and how families want to make sure that all of them trickle down the family tree.
Section 01
Hat Tip to a Fellow FFI Fellow
The article in question is from the fantastic weekly FFI Practitioner (you don’t need to be an FFI member to subscribe, and it’s free) titled The Fifth Inheritance: Can Artificial Intelligence Transmit Judgment Across Generations?
Its author is Patricia Annino, an FFI Fellow and FFI Award winner, and it raises lots of great questions about how A.I. can be useful to families and those who serve them.
I want to focus my blog on what almost felt like a throw away line that grabbed me, because it matter-of-factly noted the four subjects that I don’t feel are recognized as well as they should be.
Here’s the line:
Historically, families have sought to transmit four things across generations: wealth, values, authority, and identity.
Followed by:
Artificial intelligence may introduce a fifth inheritance: judgment.
Section 02
Lots of Focus on Wealth and Values
When I look at Annino’s list of four inheritances, it feels like they divide easily into a couple of pairs.
There’s always a great deal of attention (too much!) paid to the wealth, especially the financial component, so there’s no surprise that it sits atop her list.
Similarly with values, as soon as anyone points out that the financial wealth is not the only thing to consider, a large majority of those working in this space with families will quickly mention the importance of transitioning family values from one generation to the next.
And with wealth and values transitions getting so much attention, many families, and the experts supporting them, will think that list of two items is long enough already.
Section 03
What About Authority and Identity?
We’re now getting into a couple of more difficult areas, and one where many families struggle.
The idea of transmitting authority in a family is naturally difficult in many cases simply due to math.
If authority is currently concentrated in one person or a couple (one household), what happens when the next generation is comprised of more people, in more than one household?
That’s what I mean by math, because we’re introducing the idea of division of authority.
Ideally the wealth will have benefitted from enough multiplication so that when it gets divided there’s still plenty for all. But are families also dividing the authority over that wealth?
It takes a lot of effort and intention to work all of that out, and it’s rarely easy.
Likewise with identity, attempting to maintain a singular identity over numerous households takes more work than most families are willing to undertake.
See The Special Sovereignty of G1.
Section 04
To Transmit or To Transition?
One word that Annino used stood out to me and that was her choice of the word “transmit”.
I like that word better than “transfer” and I have written about my dislike for that word in the past. See Don’t Transfer Family Wealth, Transition It.
I just asked my friend Mr. Google something about transitioning identity, and some of what he came back with was way off the mark, believing I wanted information on a very different kind of transition that some families must deal with.
But coming from a family whose former business was fabricating towers used by electricity producers for their transmission lines, the idea of transmitting wealth, values, authority and identity will surely grow on me.
Section 05
How to Transmit Judgment and Wisdom
The article was centered on how A.I. is being used to preserve the judgment of the wealth creator after they die, and it’s clear that there have never been more ways to do that than right now.
She uses the word judgment, and I like to equate that with wisdom.
The ability to consult a bot to learn what grandpa would have done is interesting but must rely on those asking to then come together and agree on how they’ll interpret that wisdom together.
Learning to have the judgment to use our forefathers’ judgment will be a difficult human task for many.
At A Glance
The Five Inheritances
Tap each card to reveal what’s being transmitted.
+Inheritance IWealth
“There’s always a great deal of attention (too much!) paid to the wealth, especially the financial component.”
+Inheritance IIValues
“The importance of transitioning family values from one generation to the next.”
+Inheritance IIIAuthority
“Transmitting authority in a family is naturally difficult in many cases simply due to math.”
+Inheritance IVIdentity
“Maintaining a singular identity over numerous households takes more work than most families are willing to undertake.”
+The Fifth — Inheritance VJudgment (or Wisdom)
“Artificial intelligence may introduce a fifth inheritance: judgment. She uses the word judgment, and I like to equate that with wisdom.”
On Inclusion and Belonging in Groups and Families
Regular readers (thanks!) know that I’m involved in a number of groups of professionals who work in some area of the space I work in. See On Peer Groups and Feelings of Infidelity.
All such groups go through phases of evolution, and the way things have always been done needs to be refreshed from time to time.
As it turns out, a few of my groups are at such inflection points, and in some of them, the actual membership of the group is in question.
This evoked thoughts about how we think about and discuss important questions, like the ones in the title of this post.
We’ll start by examining this in groups of unrelated people and see how things apply in families, especially those hoping to transition their wealth (in all its forms) to the next generation(s).
Section 01
Self-Directed Peer Group Stories
One of the peer groups I’ve enjoyed being a part of for the past few years is moving from a paid model, where a membership fee is what gets you in (after pre-qualifying), to a self-directed group set to begin in the fall.
This is a huge change, because the onus of organizing and facilitation will fall on volunteers instead of “staff”.
At our recent final “paid” meeting, the discussion around how we (may or may not) move forward was quite lively and yet not necessarily conclusive.
This will involve not only who is in or not, but who will be responsible for what.
Section 02
The Ever-Growing Membership Model
Another group has been around for decades, and the culture there was such that if you ever came to one of the annual retreat weekends, you were a member for life.
This has created an unwieldy number of people on our email list and difficulty in knowing who is even interested in still being part of the group.
We’re at the early stages of implementing an annual membership fee to weed out those who would prefer not being contacted anymore, but I can tell you that those discussions have been much more involved than you might expect.
Section 03
A Few More for Good Measure
Yet another group I’ve been a part of has seen its leadership change hands every few years, and we no longer have someone monitoring attendance so as to remove those who are AWOL.
And yet another group, one that’s “included” in one’s membership in an institute, is currently figuring out who gets to be part of one of its many “learning circles” as we move into our second year of operation.
Having members not show up and yet maintaining a waiting list for others has become problematic.
Finally, a group I created in 2020 is now undergoing our own self-reflection on how we continue to evolve, although that membership has typically been governed by who I’ve chosen to include.
Section 04
Who Gets to Be Part of the Family Project?
One of my favourite ways I’m brought in to work with a family is helping them get started on their “family governance journey”.
Nobody reacts well to the word “governance”, so I like to think of it (and sometimes talk about it) as a family project.
The simplest way to explain it in many cases is to say that we’re trying to figure out the best way for “my wealth” to become “our wealth.”
So obviously, deciding who gets to be part of this project needs to be done with great care.
But while this is easy to say, it’s not necessarily easy to do.
See Who Gets to Decide Who Gets to Decide, and Continuity Planning: Who Is at the Table?
Section 05
“The Family Has to Decide”
All the veterans of this work will say that these decisions need to be made by the family, and they are correct in that it is not up to an outsider to make decisions like this for the family.
Some families would likely prefer to have someone else impose such decisions so that they could then proclaim innocence before anyone who did not agree.
The toughest questions surround whom to include, and when.
I always suggest starting small, because it is easier to add people later than to remove someone.
I also have a suggested rule that nobody is forced to come to family meetings, even if they are invited to participate.
A family project will evolve with time, and the goal is to have decisions become more democratic over the years.
Get started with a small group and go from there.
At A Glance
Rules of Thumb for the Family Project
Tap each card to reveal the principle.
+Rule IReframe Governance as a Project
“Nobody reacts well to the word ‘governance’, so I like to think of it as a family project.”
+Rule IIFrom “My” to “Our”
“The best way for ‘my wealth’ to become ‘our wealth.’”
+Rule IIIThe Family Decides — Not an Outsider
“It is not up to an outsider to make decisions like this for the family.”
+Rule IVStart Small
“It is easier to add people later than to remove someone.”
+Rule VInvite, Don’t Force
“Nobody is forced to come to family meetings, even if they are invited to participate.”
+Rule VIGrow Toward Democracy
“The goal is to have decisions become more democratic over the years.”
Coming off a weekend spent with peers, I’m still basking in the warmth of positivity we all gave one another during our precious time together.
Existing relationships were deepened, some relatively new ones rose to a new level, and a couple of brand new ones are off to a great start.
Of course these thoughts always get my juices flowing on considering how such ideas also affect the work we do with the families who entrust us with helping them “hold their space” safely.
So that’s where we’re headed this week, looking at gratitude and feedback, and how they play into deep connections among people.
Let’s get going.
Grateful for the Professional and Personal Connection
Last year after that same peer group’s annual weekend, I wrote about how I sometimes felt like I was cheating on these friends because I also interact with peers in several other groups.
See On Peer Groups and Feelings of Infidelity
But this year when we went around the table for our check out comments on Sunday, I realized that this group is a bit different, and it actually felt like the connections were deeper.
Some combination of the size of the group, the culture we’ve developed and nurtured, the quality and depth of the conversations and just how we all seem to feel so safe to be vulnerable together, all add up to its specialness.
We have many things in common on a professional level because of the ways we all work with families, and we have personal connections.
Gratitude for Sharing in Client Conversations
During one of our sessions that recent weekend, we worked on the idea of giving feedback in a more constructive way, called “feed forward”.
My friend Mr. Google’s AI overview just informed me that this concept originated from coaching and leadership guru Marshall Goldsmith, and it’s summed up nicely as:
“a proactive, future-oriented communication approach focused on providing suggestions for improvement, rather than analyzing past mistakes”
It’s actually just a small tweak in approach, which can yield huge differences in results.
I’ve noticed myself giving feedback in one-on-one conversations with clients where I want to use this more.
I already make sure that the members of my client families know that I truly appreciate when they’re completely open and real with me.
Feedback + Gratitude = Deeper Connection
When you work with an entire family group, there’s often some sort of family hierarchy in place, which may stem from seniority in generations, positions inside the business, or even birth order.
In order to properly serve the entire family system, facilitators like me need to make sure that while we recognize that such hierarchies may exist, we are not beholden to them.
We need to make sure that even the folks who feel like they’re lower down the pyramid are important to us, and thereby to the rest of the family.
It can take a while to establish a deep enough connection with each family member for them to truly believe that while we are there to serve the whole family, that includes every last one of them.
I believe that my giving them grateful feedback, increases the odds that they buy into me as their advocate.
The Better I Understand, the Better I Can Serve
Trying to reconcile each person’s desires, viewpoints, fears, and wishes is complex enough when you don’t actually understand what those are.
When I sense that an individual has been vulnerable with me by sharing something that they likely haven’t shared with others in the family, I thank them and remind them that I can best serve them and their family when I get each person’s true input.
When your professional work can sometimes be summed up as “family relationship specialist”, it’s important to develop and maintain deep connections with every family member.
If I want to help a family get along well enough so they can come together productively to make important decisions about their common future, they all need to trust me enough to allow me to play that role.
Building and Maintaining Trust Is a Forever Challenge
So whether we’re dealing with peers who also do this kind of work or with the family member clients themselves, the way we are is often at least as important as what we do or what we say.
So Much Common DNA, So Little Consistency
As someone who spends much of my time thinking about how families function together, I’m always eager to enter any real world “laboratory” to observe members of the same family as they assemble for whatever reason.
So imagine how lucky I felt over the past couple of months when I “got to” attend not one, but two, “celebrations of life”, the events formerly known as funerals.
Over the past decade or two, it seems we’ve finally found a way to put the “fun” back in funerals.
Thanks to the conscious choices to delay these events for several weeks after death, some of the grieving is allowed to happen in smaller private groups in advance.
By the time the greater extended family and friends group gathers, a much lighter atmosphere allows for more of the celebration we now usually experience.
Catching Up with Relatives After Many Years
Considering how rich with information post-life celebrations can be, it’s almost surprising to me how seldom I’ve written on them.
In fact, I think I need to go back 10 years to Family Business Flashback to find the last time I wrote specifically about a family funeral.
A couple of months ago I attended a celebration of the life of someone who was more of a distant relation, but was still someone with whom I had had many interactions.
Pam was quite gregarious in life and it was great to hear her daughter Laura eulogize her and make everyone laugh.
What stayed with me was when Laura shared something that had occurred between Pam and a grandson, and then she contrasted how his other grandmother would have reacted very differently.
I’ve begun to share this with some people, and ask them to compare their two grandmothers and note whether they were similar or different.
I know that mine were polar opposites, and so are the grandmas of my offspring.
It kind of feels like “opposites attract” but one layer above and even more magnified.
Another Pillar of Our Past Now Gone
The more recent event was my aunt Liz, my late father’s older sister.
She’d been instrumental in our family’s immigration to Canada story, and without her bold first move, my parents would surely never have met, and so whose blog would you be reading now?
One of her granddaughters shared so many stories that brought laughs to the assembled family and friends.
I congratulated her for the speech afterwards, and we laughed at how Liz would probably not have appreciated everything she shared, but that it was great that she did so anyways.
It made me flash back to when I eulogized my father, and it enabled me the opportunity to share some sides of him that many people were likely unfamiliar with.
I feel like I “humanized” him for some who were only used to his tough exterior, which felt safer to do with only his ashes in the room, and not his judging glare.
More Random Life and Death Musings
The opportunities to be with extended families as they gather like this are an interesting vantage point to view how resilient some family members are.
When many people from a family branch have survived various tragedies over the past few decades, it can be reassuring to see how they continue on courageously nevertheless.
Perhaps there are lessons there on how strong a family can become when they learn to rely on each other, even if they have more practice at it than they wish they had.
Understanding a family’s history can take a while when you’re hired in to work with them, and you can never get to the level of depth that you can in your own family.
Family History Lessons Travel Differently by Branch
Another interesting fact that emerges is that lessons about the family’s past aren’t typically shared to the same degree in every family branch.
Some stories from Aunt Liz’s eulogies about their family’s pre-immigration past were “brand new” to some of my cousins, whose parents rarely share about those olden times.
Every branch evolves in its own way, and siblings are all their own people despite overwhelming similarities in their DNA.
But although we all evolve into different beings, our shared history and roots can remain a huge strength to be tapped into.
In the end, everyone’s life deserves to be celebrated by family and friends.
Allocating Budgets Is Never Simple
When I sit down each week to compose something worthwhile for families facing challenges around their wealth transitions, my inspirations come from all sorts of directions.
This week, we’re taking our cue from the world stage, starting with how various governments face choices regarding where to deploy their resources, and then we’ll see if we can find some parallels to the realities faced by multi-generational families.
I know lots of people who’ve begun to minimize their consumption of news for the sake of their sanity, but the subjects I’ll touch on also happen to be evergreen and therefore ubiquitous, so don’t worry about following along.
Government and Governance, Ugh!
A dozen years ago when my first book, Shift your Family Business came out, I was happy that I chose the title “Governance, Ugh!” for chapter 9.
I wanted to underscore the fact that for most people, that word does not resonate well.
At the time I didn’t necessarily connect it with the more common word, “government”, which also has more negative connotations than positive ones.
When I ask my friend Mr. Google about the root word for government, its A.I. summary returns, in part, “… the act of directing, controlling, or steering a community”.
I like the fact that “directing” and “steering” are there, but also that sandwiched in between is the harsher “controlling”
Controlling the Flow of Funds
In the end there are final decisions that need to be made, and ultimately the buck needs to stop somewhere.
The world’s major governments are often caught in interesting dilemmas when they always seem to have plenty of money to spend on certain priorities like waging war, but never seem to have anything left to spend on feeding their hungriest people.
On a smaller scale more locally, whenever there’s talk about some new venue for a sports team, the argument “but what about our crumbling hospitals” is never far behind.
Decisions always involve choices, and it’s usually difficult to satisfy everybody.
So what does this look like in families?
When the Family Owns an Operating Company
As I was planning to write this piece, my initial idea was to focus on “family wealth” as opposed to “family business”, but then I happened to check my email one day and decided to touch on both.
I continue to read lots of content from all over the place in this ecosystem, and I don’t mind giving the occasional shout out to those who consistently put out good stuff.
So when I got the newsletter from Mercer Capital with the headline Capital Structure as a Reflection of Family Priorities I knew I wanted to include a link.
That piece looks at risk tolerance and control, long term vision and evolving stakeholder needs, as well as family dynamics and liquidity needs.
Somehow when decisions revolve around an operating business, decision making can be expected to be more, well, “business-like”.
Of course such expectations can quickly be dashed.
Family Wealth – “Post Liquidity Event”
Since more of my work now involves what I call “family circle” issues than business circle ones, we’ll now move over to how decisions around money and what it can be used for are made when the family’s wealth is mostly liquid.
See Huge Liquidity Events – Great News, Right?
Most wealthy grandparents will support some of their hard earned dollars going towards their grandchildren’s education, yet they may frown on Bobby III arriving at their house in a Lamborghini that was bought with those funds.
So maybe Bobby III should wait until the wealth creator has passed away before splurging.
The question of what is an appropriate use of a family’s wealth is ever-present, and there is not one right answer that suits every family.
Families need to work this out amongst themselves.
The older generation members naturally have more say, but eventually the family needs to hear everyone’s ideas around how these decisions will go.
Who Gets to Decide? – The Answer Evolves
Writing this conjured up memories of a long ago post (almost 9 years!) titled Who Gets to Decide Who Gets to Decide.
The generation in control will often tend to hang on to that authority as long as possible.
I typically encourage them to open things up slowly once their rising generation are adults, but I’m not always able to convince them as easily as I’d like.
Having them “practice” living with and managing wealth makes sense, even if they do sometimes end up spending some on things we’d prefer they didn’t.
What’s the Key Difference Maker?
Each week here we look at something related to the world of successful families and the challenges they face when attempting to ensure that their success will continue through their next generational transition.
While many people still use terms like “succession planning” and “wealth transfer”, I prefer “continuity” and “transition”, and I’ve written about these choices often here over the years.
I also like to refer to a family’s journey together because that is ultimately more important to their success than any “destination” they plan to reach. See There Is No Destination
That journey can be filled with good progress in a positive direction, or it can sometimes get bogged down into some version of paralysis.
So this week I wanted to look at what the key difference is between those who continue to move forward and those who instead get stuck and feel paralyzed.
We Don’t Talk About the Important Stuff
Since around the time I wrote The Family Conversations You Know You Need to Have about a year and a half ago, whenever I speak about the work I do, I typically talk about helping families have important conversations.
Almost every family will acknowledge that these conversations should ideally be taking place, yet, left to themselves, they are unable to make progress.
And so when I heard a friend and colleague recently put it in a simple way that was new to me during a recent webinar, I knew I was onto something I needed to share here.
Like me, he is a big fan of the idea of good governance, and he shared the following quote:
“You can’t govern what you can’t talk about.”
(Thanks CY.)
Governance: Communication and Decision Making
The simplest definitions of governance usually mention communication and decision making.
When you add a bit more meat to that skeleton, you start to look at the key questions that surround those simple (yet not easy) concepts.
Some of these include the following:
- WHAT subjects do we need to discuss?
- WHEN are we going to talk about them?
- WHERE are we going to do this?
- WHO needs to be part of this?
As families figure this stuff out, in what normally becomes an evolving trial and error process, they can hopefully establish some sort of governance system.
Progress or Paralysis
I just hinted that this involves some “trial and error” for a reason.
Too many families believe that they can and should be able to figure all of this out in one sitting, rip off the band-aid, and move on to other, more interesting matters, like running the business or managing the wealth.
Unfortunately, attempts to do too much too fast are fraught with the risk of things breaking down and then the conversations stop and we are once again paralyzed.
When a family is able to convene and have some conversations, sharing information and viewpoints, and then come together again at a future meeting and continue to talk, progress is always possible.
Remember my wise colleague’s maxim that you cannot govern what you cannot talk about.
Back to the Family CRAP Again
A few months back in Ideas on Dealing with the Family CRAP, I introduced a mnemonic to help remember a key point, and it’s now time to dust it off because it is pertinent to this week’s topic.
Recall that I was suggesting that the secret to success is to Convene Regularly And Productively, i.e. C.R.A.P.
Convening just means coming together or bringing together for a meeting or activity, but it also doesn’t just happen by itself.
Meetings need to be planned and scheduled, agendas need to be prepared, a time and location need to be agreed to.
No, it isn’t rocket science, but it does take some intention and effort.
And the families who make these efforts will see the benefits over the long term.
Positive Peer Group Feedback
I recently shared my friend’s quote about not being able to govern something if you aren’t able to talk about it in yet another peer group setting.
It resonated very well and one member even thanked me for it as we were sharing our closing thoughts.
That feedback was a nudge for me to write about it here, and getting feedback from these posts is also something that feeds my desire to continue this weekly habit of mine.
Let’s keep families talking, so they won’t become paralyzed.
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