Coming Down from a Rocky Mountain High
Over the years since I’ve been sharing my thoughts in this space on a weekly basis, there is one particular source of inspiration upon which I have drawn far more ideas than any other.
Regular readers can likely guess that I’m referring to the Purposeful Planning Institute, whose members long ago became my “tribe”.
I first attended PPI’s annual RendezVous in Denver in 2014, where it became evident for me that this community was unlike any other group of professionals I’d ever encountered. (I’ve yet to come across anything else even close to it since either.)
Having just completed our first in-person RendezVous since 2019, I’m coming down from my Rocky Mountain high and will share my experience.
Highest Membership Numbers Yet
I should explain my role with this group a bit further before I expound upon the “humble brag” that I’ve already set up here.
I’ve been serving on the Wisdom Expedition for RendezVous for 5 years now, including the past two years as its leader.
Wisdom, along with its sister expedition, Experience, both sit below the Vision Expedition, which is responsible for each annual RendezVous gathering.
The result is that the organisation benefits from a leadership group numbering a couple dozen committed believers, and that breadth has always been a hallmark of PPI’s success.
So when John A. Warnick, PPI’s founder and our fearless leader, shared that PPI’s membership is now over 450 people, there were many people in the room who beamed with pride, as this is the highest number since PPI’s initial RendezVous in 2011.
Pent Up Demand for Connection
Reconvening with one’s tribe is always great because although we’ve remained connected virtually in the interim, this is a group of “huggers” and many were long overdue.
And, at the same time, there were so many new faces this year too, and that bodes well for the future.
Our theme was well selected, “The Fundamentals of Human Connection” and I’m quite sure we won’t stray too far from that in the future either, as it is what sets the PPI community apart.
What we all have in common is a desire to better serve the families we work for, and doing so requires that we go deeper, and connect not just with our heads but also with our hearts and souls.
A Community and Its Members
Between sessions over the three days, there are lots of long breaks built in, during which relationships can be built and or rekindled.
By the final day, I kept returning to the same comments in my discussions:
The whole of our community is greater than the sum of its parts, for sure, AND, so many of those parts are really fantastic to begin with.
As I often remark, the way we think about our professional community also happens to have many parallels to the work we all do with families.
Not all families realize how important it is for them to work on developing all of the human capital they have at their disposal in their family.
As we have the privilege to work with such families, part of what we often need to do is to nudge them in this direction, and encourage them to consider every family member and their individual development, and not simply be satisfied that the family remains wealthy or that their business continues to succeed.
A Few Highlights for Good Measure
Following RendezVous each year I typically blog about some of the highlights, but I didn’t leave myself much room this time.
From our opening keynote from Akasha to the closing salvo from David York, there were many other great moments in between.
The Dream Building session featuring Amanda, Cathy and Marlis was off the charts, the FRED Talks that I was honoured to introduce were all home runs, and the two Purposeful Connections speeches were wonderfully touching.
I was looking forward to finally meeting my friend Cindy Radu in person, but thanks to a late Covid diagnosis, she was forced to submit hers on video, and she blew everyone away nonetheless.
I always go to RendezVous to refill my proverbial “pitcher”, from which I pour for the other 51 weeks of the year.
As usual, the many firehoses that were present made it overflow and I left all wet, and very fulfilled.
See you again next year.
Are We All Looking Forward to the Same Thing?
Recently while dealing with a family where some of the members kept wanting to rehash events from the past, it became nearly impossible for me to get them to concentrate on leaving old squabbles behind and instead try to focus on looking forward instead.
That got me thinking about how simple this can sound, yet still be hard to get people to buy into.
There are of course many reasons to look backwards on occasion, but if you drive your car while staring at the rear view mirror, you will run into trouble (or something else) relatively quickly.
So this week, I want to share some of my thoughts about the whole idea of looking forward as a family.
Setting the Past Aside – At Least for Now
I’m not suggesting that families never think about or talk about the past.
There are plenty of times and occasions and reasons to do that, but if you spend too much time there, when you really should instead be trying to work productively towards some common desired future, those looks backward too often end up usurping all of the positive energy you’ll need to make progress.
There are times when you need to agree to set the past aside, at least for now.
I wrote about this many years ago in There is No “Rewind” Button.
“As a Family” Changes Over Time
As we turn our focus to looking forward “as a family” I guess the first musing I have is that the idea of looking forward as a group of people can get a bit tricky, because each member of the group has their own pair of eyes with which they do their own looking.
So the group, the family in this case, needs to do some work to try to establish a common future towards which they are all looking.
This is important work that I think many families should undertake because the results will usually be useful in making sure that everyone understands where they are trying to go together, so all of their efforts can be aimed in the same direction.
Okay, so let’s say the family does that today and they all agree, are they then set for life? I assume you recognize a rhetorical question when I ask it.
Of course that common vision of where the family is looking to go needs to be revisited often, as each person’s view will also differ a bit over time as the family advances.
By Generation, By Individual
One way to try to tease out the variety of viewpoints is to look separately at members of the same generation, who at least are progressing through their life stages on a similar timeframe.
When the rising generation in a family enterprise is in their 30’s and 40’s, most of them will have at least some common views that will differ from their parents’, who are likely in their 50’s and 60’s.
However, fast forward a couple of decades, and those rising gen members will now likely view certain things in a way similar to how their parents saw things not that long ago.
And of course, each of the individuals in each generation will have their own unique things that they are looking forward to as well.
Re-Calibrating the Vision – It’s a Process
As any family sets out towards a future together, the simple passage of time, along with daily, weekly, and monthly events and happenings all combine to change where they are now.
Hopefully they will be closer to where they were planning to go, but things don’t always move forward as planned, nor do they always move in a straight line.
Figuring out if you are all still looking forward to the same thing requires frequent re-calibrating of that vision.
Looking Forward Together Regularly – Family Forums
Some regular readers may already see where I’m headed, and that’s to make sure that you don’t just have occasional, ad-hoc meetings as a family.
You need to develop a habit of having regularly scheduled meetings as a family, as noted in Live from the Forum – Successful Transitions.
Families who get together regularly (often quarterly or annually) can easily take stock of where they are, how they got there, and where they’re trying to go next.
Refocusing together also re-energizes everyone.
There’s always something to look forward to, and figuring it out together, over and over again, will help you all get there.
A Key Question you NEED to Ask
Many of the professionals with whom I interact in my work with enterprising families are specialists in a particular domain, with decades of experience providing solutions for these families.
In many ways I admire these people because the work that they do is relatively easy to describe and ends up with a clear “deliverable” for the families for whom they toil.
When the result of that work actually ends up being useful to the family in question, it must be very validating for them.
Unfortunately, in many instances the output of those efforts never gets implemented into the family’s plans.
Ideas Are a Dime a Dozen
The question of “great ideas” recently hit me and had me searching for the quote that brought home the wisdom around how ideas are insufficient in themselves.
Google was quick to respond with the nugget I was searching for, courtesy of Mary Kay Ash, an ultra-successful U.S. entrepreneur in the last century.
“Ideas are a Dime a Dozen
People who Implement them
Are Priceless”
Families who’ve accumulated a certain amount of wealth eventually face the challenge of transitioning that wealth to the rising generation of their family.
There are hundreds of ideas that can be useful to these families, and thousands of professionals who are expert in wielding them.
And yet the question of whether or not the family will actually implement them rarely gets asked in advance of the work being done.
MBA School Flashback
I’m now flashing back to my days in MBA school, a little over 30 years ago.
It was one of the top business schools in the country, and they were quite sensitive to ensuring that the freshly-minted MBA’s they were shoving out into the workforce were actually delivering what their new employers were hoping for.
Lo and behold, they had discovered that in some ways, they were missing the mark.
The school had been great at producing experts who could analyze any business situation, produce alternative solutions, and recommend the best course of action. There was no doubt about that aspect.
Where this school (and all others) was falling short, was in producing people who could actually implement the proposed solution.
You know, the priceless ones.
Bricks, Mortar, and a Mason
Regular readers recognize that metaphors and analogies are some of my favourite ways of communicating complex ideas.
I’ve borrowed the one about the difference between the bricks and the mortar from others, because it nicely illustrates the distinction between the two main physical components of a brick wall.
I also like to add in the part about the mason, or bricklayer, in whose absence no wall will be built.
The one who builds the wall actually “implements” the bricks and the mortar together to create the desired wall.
Stop with the “You Should Do This”
A few weeks ago, in Some Woulda Coulda Shoulda’s for Family Enterprises we looked at part of this question, and I suggested that instead of telling families what we think they should be doing, we might instead help them think about what they could accomplish together, and what the other family members would be up for trying to do together.
This gets right to the heart of what the family is actually interested and able to work on, as they think about the wall they want to build together, and hopefully has them working together to co-create something they will actually implement.
They will certainly need some special bricks supplied by experts along the way, and many of those will include important elements that they should be incorporating.
But the bricks are only a small part of the wall, and the experience gained by the family in building it together will have been priceless, as Mary Kay Ash suggested.
Another Flashback to a Different Analogy
Writing these missives every week is so useful to me because quite often I don’t know where they are going to take me before I begin writing each post.
For instance, I had no idea that I’d flash back to a blog from almost 4 years ago as I wrote this.
But Building a Bridge Versus Buying One instantly came back to me just now, and it’s the perfect place for this piece to land.
Going back to the title of this post, “Can the Family….”, I recognize that another verb, “Will the Family…” poses an equally valid question that should also be asked!
Please ask both!
Searching for the “Goldilocks Zone”
These weekly missives have been inspired by a variety of sparks over the years, and this one is sort of a “mish-mash” because it comes from a number of places.
I’ve long wanted to incorporate a great quote from a colleague into a blog, and I’ll finally do it in this post.
I love it when some social media interaction on one of my posts creates a new spark, and that’s also the case here.
And, when I speak with potential clients about situations that concern them, that also makes me want to share my ideas here too.
So let’s dive into the deep end and look at some liquidity issues for families (see what I did there?).
An Old LinkedIn Post Gets a “Yeah-But!”
My social media folks schedule regular posts from my accounts on LinkedIn and Twitter, which weave in both my new weekly posts along with plenty of “recycled” content from days gone by.
I continuously create regular content, which I enjoy, but if you only post and repost the same piece several times over and over each week, it may not be as well received as when you share more variety.
Recently, a post about liquidity from a few years ago sparked a comment that seemed to take an opposite view to one of the points I made. See Liquidity Events in a FamBiz – Pros & Cons.
They took issue with the fact that I suggested that it can make sense to not share too much liquidity right after a business is sold, for a variety of reasons.
The alternate viewpoint is also quite valid, of course, as there are cases where a family has plenty of wealth and yet most family members will wait years or even decades before they will see any direct benefit from it.
“It’s Great That We’re Wealthy, But…”
This made me recall that great quote from my friend and colleague Travis Harms, another guy who regularly creates great content for this field.
He shared with me the way one family member put it to him:
“Yes, thanks, it’s great that we’re wealthy.
But, can we also have some money?”
Bang! Drop the mic! What a great way to summarize the way so many rising generation family members feel.
Imagine living in a town where everyone knows that you are part of the family that owns an extra-large enterprise.
Everyone knows that you’re wealthy, and yet they look down on you because you appear “cheap” more often than not.
Little do they know, you may own a portion of a large asset base, but you’re still working your butt off each week just to pay the mortgage on your modest house.
An Apple a Day – And Then the Orchard!
That brings me to a family I recently heard about, where the parents were quite wealthy yet were successful in keeping secret the extent of their wealth from their sons.
One son was being modestly supported to a certain extent due to some personal difficulties, yet he would eventually stand to inherit way more than he could reasonably spend in his remaining lifetime.
As I thought about a metaphor for this, I landed on getting an apple a day from your parents, because they didn’t want to spoil you.
You ate that apple every day, kept the doctor away, and then after the parent’s funeral, you discovered that you now own an orchard!
All along, you knew they had a few apple trees in the backyard, and assumed that was the extent of it.
Lots of Planning, Lots of Sharing, Lots of Transparency
The “answers”, if there are any, to these situations are never simple.
However, when there is a lot of planning, a lot of sharing, and a lot of transparency around what the leading generation is hoping to accomplish with the decisions they make, things generally go better than when the opposite track is taken.
When there’s no planning, no sharing, and no transparency, it’s a recipe for disappointment, mistrust, confusion, and conflict.
Taking Advice Versus Co-Creation
Too often, such parents blindly rely on the advice of certain professionals whose viewpoint is conflicted by their desire to remain part of the picture in managing the wealth of the senior generation.
Once the offspring are mature enough to understand what will eventually be coming their way, I recommend they also become involved in co-creating their future as stewards of the family wealth.
Overdue 4-D Connections at FEC Symposium
So Refreshing after Years of 2-D
Far be it for me to declare an end to the Covid pandemic, but it sure feels like we’ve entered back into the land of face-to-face connections with colleagues and clients, both new and old.
I’ve just spent a few great days in Vancouver at the Family Enterprise Canada (FEC) Symposium, and I’m more energized than I’ve been in a long time.
The reasons for my positivity are varied, but mostly stem from so much pent up demand within me and others to actually spend time with other like-minded people, in each others’ physical company.
I can’t tell you how many times I shared face-to-face conversations with familiar people who I had only ever seen on Zoom, in two dimensions (2-D).
I even got so tired of my own joke about this, “So nice to see you in 3-D” that I decided I needed to go a dimension further, but you’ll need to stick around to the end for that punchline.
Let Me Count the Ways
FEC brings together two major constituencies, members of enterprising families, and advisors to such families who’ve completed FEC’s family enterprise advisor (FEA) designation. There are now over 400 FEA designates, and our numbers at this sold-out Symposium were well into triple digits.
I got reacquainted with several colleagues whose hands I’d already shaken in years past, and also to finally size up some people I’ve known for a while but whose height I’d been unable to assess thus far.
Not that that’s crucial, but more than one person told me that I’m taller than they expected from our online encounters, where Zoom is the great height equalizer.
I even had a chance to meet a former client in attendance, who brought me up to speed on their family’s progress since I last saw them a few years back.
I also slipped out of the hotel briefly to meet with a current BC-based coaching client who happened to be in Vancouver at the same time.
Thanks to CC who alerted me to his presence and for inviting me to their work meeting; it was so cool to see a group of advisors in the same room together working to develop solutions for a complex family situation.
Fun Being Back Up Onstage
By far the key element of my time there that created the most lasting memories was the fact that I had been recruited to co-MC the event over the two main days.
Getting mic’ed up and going up onto the stage to introduce all the wonderful session facilitators was an honour and a pleasure.
Getting to know my co-host, Keita Demming, and developing the rapport required to pull that off relatively seamlessly is a testament to his flexibility in dealing with my “Costello” to his “Abbott”.
The kind feedback I received from so many people, friends and strangers alike, will keep me pumped for months to come.
Something about being in a room full of family business types makes me feel like I’m in my element and that I’ve found “my people”.
True and Authentic Sharing of Experiences
The format of Symposium included a few breakout sessions where the family members and advisors went to separate sessions, but the majority of the time was spent together in plenary sessions.
There was lots of magic in those, because of they way they’d been ingeniously set up, which was quite well received.
The main room sessions were mostly panels moderated by seasoned family business advisors, where the panelists came from family enterprises.
The result was so much valuable sharing of true, lived family business experiences, which benefits both family attendees and the many FEA’s in the room.
So, What About that “4th” Dimension?
Alright, so what did I mean earlier when I teased about the fourth dimension? Well, so many of the people I’ve met working in this field during the past decade are more than just colleagues, they have become true friends.
And like many friends, when I see them for the first time in a while, hugs are exchanged.
It’s tough to replicate a hug in an online meeting.
Thanks to Covid, we now need to make sure a hug is welcome, and most were.
I’m looking forward to more 4-D encounters later this year, at the PPI Rendez-Vous in Denver in July, and FFI in Boston in October.
We All Know What Happens When We Assume
For me it was Mr. McGee, a High School teacher, who first shared the dangers of making assumptions. I cannot recall the context of this lesson from circa 1980, but I distinctly remember him writing the word “ASSUME” on the chalkboard.
He then said, “You know what happens when you assume?”
The class waited for the punchline. He then drew two short vertical lines, before and after the “U”, leaving three distinct words:
A S S [ U ] M E
“You make an ASS out of U and ME”
That was over 40 years ago and it’s still with me, so let’s just say the message stuck.
And We Are ALL Guilty of It
I’m pretty sure most readers will have heard some version of this tale somewhere along the way, and if not, feel free to borrow the one from Mr. McGee.
And, not surprisingly, all of us are also certainly guilty of making assumptions, because, well, you can’t not make them sometimes!
But what if there were an antidote that we could dream up that could help us minimize those occasions where we risk making an ass out of each other, especially with important people in our lives, like our family members?
Well I’ve got good news, there is one. And we all have some of it in us, and we can improve with practice.
My title has already given it away, but for those of you who already got lost in my prose (and I don’t want to assume that you recall the title of this blog) it’s curiosity.
A Coaching Webinar as Source
The idea for this post came a while back when I was watching a webinar about coaching, and presenter said, “The greatest resistance to curiosity is assumptions”.
I jotted that down because I felt like there was some juice to be squeezed from it.
But as I thought about it from many family business contexts with which I am familiar, I decided to turn it around and focus on the assumptions that too many people make about family members.
Rather than looking at “resistance to curiosity”, I want to concentrate on using curiosity to overcome the many problems that come from not having enough curious conversations.
It Comes Down to Attitude
My guess is that senior generation family members are typically guilty of this a bit more often, but I’m sure it happens in every generation.
It typically stems from an attitude of believing you know things you just never bothered to verify.
“Of course the kids will want to work in the family business” comes to mind for me, personally. In my case it also came along with a healthy dose of not leaving me any choice.
My Dad knew what was best for me, or so he surely believed. Of course his plans for me also happened to be what he thought was best for him.
He could have been much more curious about what I wanted, but he never allowed himself to go there, just in case he’d learn something he didn’t really want to know.
Someone from Outside the Family as a Spark
So how might one go about sparking the kind of curiosity that I’m talking about here?
When the group of people is always exactly the same, it’s easy to get into a rut, and there isn’t much room for curiosity.
But what happens when an outsider shows up with the group, and that person is curious and begins to ask questions to satisfy their curiosity?
This could be just the right way for some new subjects and ideas to land on the table for consideration.
There are many things I should have pushed back on with my Dad, but I did not, for all kinds of reasons, many of which are more clear to me now than they were decades ago.
Could a well-placed and well-meaning outsider have helped spark certain discussions that could have been started, so that I could shine a spotlight on some of the many assumptions he had made about me?
Recognizing That Something’s Amiss
Sometimes you know that something is amiss and if you take the time to ask what you’re assuming, you’ll likely be onto something.
If you can then get curious and actually ask questions so that you can learn, you’ll be going in the right direction.
Entering Uncharted Territory
This week we’re entering some new territory, in a number of ways. First off, I took up this topic based on a suggestion from a reader I’ve never met.
I received a LinkedIn message a while back asking me to talk about addiction and the role it plays, and was intrigued.
I also realized that this potentially huge topic can be a pretty big deal for some families who are trying to create and pass down a legacy, and yet I’ve yet to discuss it here, despite having written over 400 posts.
That all changes now, as I want to share my thoughts on what is also “uncharted territory” for many families, who are often unprepared for how they should respond when a family member has an addiction.
I decided to revisit a version of the “5 Things” blogs I’ve done over the years, much to the dismay of my wife, who wonders aloud why it’s always five things, and never four or six…
1. You Cannot Change Someone Else
As much as we’d all like this to be different, you cannot change someone else. You can try, and many do, but true change really only occurs when the “changee” does the work.
This can be the most difficult realisation of your life, especially as a parent.
When they have young children, parents can and do manage to create many of the changes they hope to with their offspring.
Unfortunately, at some point, this ends. Then, the more a parent wants something, the less likely their children are to acquiesce.
If your instinct is to simply insist more forcefully, you’re barking up the wrong tree.
2. Look to Provide Help, Not to Punish
An initial reaction to a family member’s addiction might be to use some form of punishment to try to curb the unwanted behaviour.
Punishment, whether simply threatened or actually enacted, will often backfire and make matters more difficult to fix.
Nobody sets out to become addicted to anything.
Yes, there’s often some behaviour involved that’s less than desirable, but by the time they reach the stage of addiction, it’s no longer an easily-solvable problem.
Offering help, in the form of support and understanding, will go much further, and hopefully get the addicted person to cooperate, as opposed to rebel, which is what punishment will often engender.
3. Set Realistic Expectations
There’s no magic wand that will make an addiction disappear overnight.
These situations all vary, of course, based on what the addiction is, how long it’s been going on and how deeply affected the person is, and whether this is the first time or not.
Giving the whole situation the time required to be satisfactorily resolved is what I suggest, and it’s better to err on the side of planning for things to take more time (months/years) than less (days/weeks).
4. Work on Organizing the Rest of the Family
While the addicted family member seems to take up a lot of time and focus, you shouldn’t neglect the rest of the family.
In fact, I think it makes sense for most families to organize themselves to survive for the long term as if the addicted person will never get over whatever their particular affliction may be.
This is a variation on “plan for the worst” but also hope for the best.
If the addicted family member is putting the enterprise at risk, finding ways to minimize and eliminate those risks should quickly become the focus, and that means having different people assume certain key roles.
Making a plan that you can all work on together to get through this makes sense and should be a priority.
5. Bring in Outside Help to Manage It
Few families are well equipped to deal with such issues on their own.
Bringing in outside expertise makes sense for dealing with the addicted person, of course, but may also make lots of sense for the rest of the family as they deal with things in a new way.
I hold himself out as such a resource for families, so this suggestion shouldn’t come as a huge surprise to anyone reading this, of course.
But an addicted family member creates emotional reactions that need to be managed.
You need to reduce the “reactions” and instead focus on a constructive “response”.
Ignoring the issue and hoping it will disappear rarely works out well.
It’s Usually a Slow Journey to the Top
As the world returns to more in-person events, I’ve been playing catch up with occasions to be with like-minded colleagues. I’ve just returned from New York where I took part once again in the Institute for Family Governance’s annual conference.
I also got in some family time with my sister, my nephew, and my son, so that was a nice bonus.
Since family governance is about improving relationships among family stakeholders, this opportunity of combining the conference with personal family catch-ups was a big plus.
When thinking about a subject like family governance, I normally like to look at it from each individual family’s perspective, since no two families should approach it the same way.
However, meeting with colleagues who all work somewhere in this space allows me to also take the pulse of the professional community to see how the subject is understood and received in general, and I’m left with mixed feelings on that score.
Caring Enough to Understand
Some of those who showed up didn’t seem to care enough to try to understand the family relationship aspects that actually create most families’ governance challenges.
Perhaps I was jaded by some interactions at my lunch roundtable, but the subject of the families and their challenges in establishing some sort of governance seemed far from the radar of many colleagues.
Having self-selected to come to this conference and sign up for a table to discuss “Family Considerations when Designing your Family Office”, I had assumed that they’d care enough about it to try to understand better.
Or maybe they didn’t understand enough to care; maybe some of each (?).
Enough about the negative, because as usual, the presentations contained many positive nuggets worth remembering and sharing.
Some Random Nuggets to Share:
Josh Baron kicked off the morning discussing Owner Strategy for Family Enterprises, and he reminded us all how important the owners of any business are and the roles that they can and should play as owners.
The group of owners is much more than whatever it happens to say in their shareholder’s agreement, and he was encouraging them to work together with intentionality.
What Does the IRS Have to Do with This?
A panel after that shared a couple of nice take-aways, notably that it’s important not to let the IRS decide things for you.
This underscores the need to make plans in advance of anyone’s death, although I suspect that for many, those plans are actually precisely about making decisions that are very much driven by the desire to deprive the IRS of any of the family’s dollars!
They also noted that there’s a serious lack of role models for generational stewardship for families to learn from.
I think this is largely true, and hopefully changing for the better.
On Family Business Boards:
Brendan Wall then shared his lived experience in his eponymous family enterprise, discussing How to Design and Implement an Effective Family Business Board.
Keeping the Board fresh by rotating directors on and off was noted, as was the need to put the right people on the Board in the first place.
He also mentioned that the qualities of who should be on a Board differ widely when looking at outside independent directors versus family members who sit on the same Board.
A G5 Keynote to Remember
Matthew Fleming’s keynote on the Importance of Family Values was fantastic, as he shared stories from the heart about his family, who are now in G5 (the fifth generation of his family), and how their multi-family office maintains their family’s values at the center of the work they do with all the families they serve.
He shared their model of the Four Pillars of Capital, and also left us with an existential question:
“Is your family office becoming a bigger problem than
the problem it was designed to solve?”
Hmmmm, as any family office heading towards a generational transition knows, this is an important thing to consider, as a need to evolve to serve the rising generation will emerge at some point.
More Nuggets:
After lunch we were treated to some wonderful examples of families who Use their Family Fortune to Serve their Community, as well as trip down memory lane for sailing fans, featuring a member of a three-generation family who repeatedly won the America’s Cup.
Next years IFG Conference in NYC is set for May 3, 2023, and I’m looking forward to being there once again.
I hope we’ll all be a few steps closer to the top of the family governance mountain then.
Aren’t the Three Rules “Communicate, communicate, communicate”?
This week I want to touch on one of the sacred cows of the family business space, and that’s the constant harping on the fact that improving communication is THE number one step that families need to work on.
Regular readers know that I fully acknowledge that most family enterprises are quite complex, and therefore the way that they communicate with each other can almost always be improved for the benefit of all.
This remains true, and almost surely will for as long as families choose to work together or share the ownership of assets as a group.
So I’m not planning on throwing communication “under the bus”, but I do want to shine a light on the way some people treat the subject, and simultaneously ignore a much less popular aspect of what it takes for relationships to be at their best.
So What Is It That’s Underrated?
Before I get to the underrated element, I need to give a shout out and a tip of the hat to the man who put this on my radar a couple of months back.
I discovered the Vermont Center for Family Studies almost a decade ago, when I was trying to figure out why people who work with business families should go through the trouble of learning about Bowen Family Systems Theory (BFST).
At the time, the head of VCFS, Erik Thompson, just happened to be launching a training program for people curious about BFST, so I jumped at the opportunity to dive into the Bowen pool.
I soon discovered that this pool doesn’t have a shallow end, which I suppose is a good thing, since I did dive in.
So perhaps you think that understanding family systems is underrated, vis-à-vis communication, and I guess you’d be partly correct, but that’s way deeper than where I’m going.
Making Relationships Work Better
Families who continue to work together from one generation to the next need to constantly work on their relationships, because those relationships are crucial to being able to continue to make decisions together for the benefit of the family group.
Good communication will of course contribute to such relationships, but there’s a lot more to it than simply more and clearer communication.
Thompson now holds regular free online events on Zoom where he shares ideas that come from his BFST training that he now uses with his leadership coaching clients.
It was during one of these recent calls that he said the magic words that inspired this post:
“Communication is Overrated. Self-Regulation is Underrated!”
Okay, so any regular reader will know that at this point I jotted those words down with a huge smile on my face, knowing that I had just landed myself a blog topic.
There Are Two Parties in Any Communication
Whenever there’s any communication, there are (at least) two parties, one who’s attempting to deliver the communication, and someone else, who’s the intended recipient.
On which end do you suppose the self-regulation comes into focus?
This is a bit of a trick question, I’ll admit.
Your first inclination might be to consider the receiver of the communication, and the importance of not overreacting to what was said (or written). And that makes plenty of sense.
But, and this is where Thompson was actually pointing, too often it is the people who are delivering the communication who could benefit from working on their self-regulation.
Communication as a Weapon
He then related a scenario that came from the “couple’s therapy” realm that some may be familiar with.
Two spouses are encouraged to work on the ways that they communicate. One dives in head first and begins reading up and studying and taking communication courses, so as to be better armed for the task.
However, lacking the requisite self-regulation, they now use this “one-up” position to lord this over their partner.
“I’m communicating properly, you’re not!”
Can you see how the communication “silver bullet” clearly missed the mark?
Can you imagine a similar scenario with family members who work together?
It’s Never as Simple as It Appears
This is yet another example where “how you are” (i.e. being) is more important that “what you do” (i.e. doing).
Self-regulation is the “being” part, while communication is the “doing” part.
Yes, continue to work on how you “do” communicate.
And, also focus on how you regulate yourself when you’re doing it.
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