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Pre-Mediated Planning? Sounds Good to Me

Sometimes when you hear a new term it takes a bit of time to let its true meaning sink in. It happened to me this week, but the more that I think about the term, the better I like it.

About six months ago, I joined a group called the Purposeful Planning Institute, in large part because the term “Purposeful” really resonnated with me. If we are going to make plans (usually a good idea) why shouldn’t we do so with a true and well-thought-out purpose?

The PPI holds an annual Rendez-Vous in Colorado every summer, and I have already made plans to attend, because I really love the idea of exchanging stories and ideas with like-minded people. There will surely be at least one blog post as a result of that trip.

But one of the coolest features of the PPI is the weekly conference call every Tuesday at noon. The quality of the speakers is exceptional, and this week we got to hear from Dean Fowler, who has been working with business families for about 30 years. Most of his clients are third- and fourth-generation, because he has consciously chosen to work with successful families.

Fowler’s early career had him working with dysfunctional families, usually in cases where a will and estate plan were contested after the wealthy parents passed away. As he explained in the preamble to his talk, those estate plans did not fail because they were created by bad lawyers, bad accountants, and bad life insurance people. There was something else going on (or NOT going on) among the family members.

Having worked with both dysfunctional and successful families, he was able to see what worked and what did not. I realize that I will not be doing his entire talk justice here, but there were two key take-aways that I got from it.

The first is Pre-Mediated Planning and the second is a Proactive Next Generation. Proactive is a word that took some time to grow on me, and I will surely pick up the subject of the next generation taking on a more active role in a future blog, but the Pre-Mediated Planning was what stood out for me, and what I really want to zero in on today.

By definition, Fowler’s work as a mediator was required because there was a disagreement AFTER the fact. Plans were put into place, the person responsible for the plans passed away, and the successors disagreed with the plans, so a mediator is needed.

Pre-mediated planning, on the other hand, makes sure that the plans are understood BEFORE the person passes away, which allows the plans to be re-worked. Taking the time to explain, assess the reaction, accept some feedback, revise the plans, explain them again, discuss them with the family, etc. will always be time well spent in advance, which will avoid the need for costly, gut-wrenching, family-destroying fights afterwards.

So why don’t more families do this kind of planning? My guess is that the major reason is that so many of the senior generation believe that they know best, and they still view their children as just that, children. Fowler also mentioned that he refers to adult offspring as “former children”, to force the parents to accept that they are now adults, capable of their own independent thoughts without being told what to do by Mommy and Daddy.

Of course the greatest challenge here comes down to communication, as it usually does. You really “gotta wanna” do this, to do it right. It is much easier to do nothing and fight it out after. But that is so much uglier, so sad and so unnecessary too.

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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How to Kill a 20-Year Business Relationship (2 of 2)

Part 2: The Patent, but not the Trade Mark

Last week we looked at how someone else killed a 20-year business relationship in which I was involved. This week, we are going to look at another 20-year deal that is now history, but this time the person to blame is someone I see in my mirror every day.

In the early 1990’s, my father concluded an agreement with a competitor, in which they acquired all of our company’s operating assets. Our family business went from 250 people down to 4, and two of them went by the name Steve Legler.

We were left with real estate and intellectual property (IP). The IP was essentially a few patents and trademarks on some specialized products that we had been producing for some time before the sale of the operations. A large part of the attraction of the agreement for both sides was a licensing agreement in which the acquiring company also became our exclusive licensee.

When two companies enter into a licensing arrangement, they always start off hoping for the best, but one never knows how things will turn out over the long term. Companies get sold, executives move around, and priorities change, so you never really know if that deal is going to work out the way you hoped.

But if deals that don’t go as planned are the rule, then this deal was truly the exception. Our licensee remitted every royalty payment in full and on schedule. We had access to the company’s top people, and they upheld every aspect of the agreement to the letter.

So what went wrong? Well for one thing, they never really grew the market for the product, and we always felt like there was some unexploited potential that they could have tapped, to grow the market in other territories.

They did bring in a distributor who worked the marketing end of things and grew the market somewhat. When their distributor was acquired by another manufacturer, who had more global reach, it seemed like they would be a better fit for my dream of greater market growth for the product line.

So when our original deal came to a crossroads with the expiry of a patent, I made the hasty decision to make a deal with the company that I had hoped would finally see this product reach its true potential, and I offered them a Trade Mark licence.

Here we are only two years later, and I am left with nothing for my troubles. Things did not work out as planned, as the new licensee did not get off to a good start, trying to do things “their way”, with little or no input from me. Eventually some other internal issues had our product line fall way down the list of priorities for their firm, and I am now on the outside looking in.

I had a bird in the hand for over 20 years. I thought that there were more birds in the bush, and I wanted them.

Now I feel like the guy who got bored with his wife and left her for a prettier, sexier version, just because he thought that that would make him happier. Now the new one dumped me, and I would love to go back to my wife.

I am pretty sure that if I did this to my wife, she would not take me back. I only hope that my former business relationship has a higher likelihood of being salvaged.

I know that it won’t be easy, because I know that if the shoe was on the other foot, I would have to think long and hard about a reconciliation.

But I have to try, and writing this blog has helped me get started.

Moral: Sometimes “you don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone”.

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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How to Kill a 20-Year Business Relationship (1 of 2)

Part 1: The Snowman, but not the Iceman

Look at the business relationships that you have, and I bet that that those you have been in for 20 years can be counted on one hand.

I have had a couple of such relationships come to an end recently, and I think there are some good teaching points that we can all learn from my stories.

We will start with the easier one, easier because the person who killed the realtionship was the other guy, not me. Next week, I will fess up to a huge mea culpa, and explain that I now understand the proverb about the bird in the hand, because I screwed up by imagining more birds in the bush.

Let’s start with the snowman.

Snow is just part of the reality of every winter where I live. In my suburban neighbourhood, every house has a double garage and a driveway that is simply too long to shovel. Most of my neighbours pay a few hundred bucks every winter, to one of a half dozen or so contractors, who each have several tractors with huge snowblowers, just to be able to get their cars in and out of their garage and onto the city streets.

We have lived in our current house since 2001, and before that, we lived in the next town over. As such, we had used the same snow removal contractor for about 20 years. Notice the past tense, we “had used”. Up until a few months ago, I would have said that we “have used” the same contractor, but something happened to change that.

Just before Christmas, we headed to our cottage for a week, and for the first time we left our house without a housesitter. Given the weather that occured over the seven days we were away, not having anyone in the house turned out to be a problem.

The precipitation included a mix of snow, wind, freezing rain, more snow, more wind, and more rain. The result, upon our return, was a nice frozen ramp of ice in front of my garage door. A snowdrift became an ice drift, and this ice drift was clearly a problem, because it was a couple of feet high right in front of the door.

I recognized the problem, and concluded that although I was clearly the one who had to live with it, a large part of the blame for the problem lay clearly in the lap of my snow removal contractor, who had not properly cleared the snow before it turned to ice.

When I tried to explain this over the phone, my explanation fell on deaf ears. They blamed me for not having cleared the snow from the first few feet in front of the door, which normally we would have done if we were around.

“Sorry, we remove snow, not ice. It is ice now, and it is your fault, so you have to solve it” was essentially the woman’s refrain when I called. I asked to speak to the owner, she said she would call him, and I said “please ask him to call me.”

When the same lady called me back, I knew that it was over. I checked with some neighbours and now use the same contractor as most of the others on my street.

Why did the owner not call me himself? In twenty years I always paid my bill early and in full, and I have called once or twice to ask when they were going to clear my driveway. Did I not warrant a phone call, so that he could hear my side of the story, about the accummulated snow that they had not removed?

Oh well, I think that the snowman blew it, but he still has plenty of other clients, and likely won’t miss my business.

Next week, look for Part 2: The Patent, but not the Trade Mark.

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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Put Me In, Coach (2 of 2)

Last week I took you through the progression I have undergone recently, from how I used to think about coaching, to where I am today, as I move through the Coaches Training Institute (CTI) program.

But I only really started to get to the great stuff that I have learned about coaching as it relates to family businesses, and the ways that it can help me interact with all of the different people who are part of any business family.

So for a little recap, CTI’s program involves a series of five courses, each one is three days of intense exercises, led by two course leaders. There are typically around 20 students in each class, and after 3 days together, you feel like you have known most of your classmates for a LOT longer than three days.

One analogy that I have come up with for what happens over the 3 days is this: It is like taking your brain out of your head, putting it on the table, and mashing it up, kneading it, and flattening it out with a rolling pin. At the end of the Friday class, you fold it back up, stick it back in your head, and go home. You repeat the process on Saturday, and then again on Sunday.

By the time you get back to work on Monday morning, you do NOT feel like you had a relaxing weekend, to the contrary. But then you start to notice how you look at everything differently.

What goes on during those three days is very intense, but also a lot of fun. There is a lot of self-analysis, as you are repeatedly put into real coaching situations with the other participants, based on real things that are going on in your (real) life.

One of the greatest feelings that you get in the course is that you are actually helping other people, and that positive feeling is hard to describe. You are learning new coaching techniques, and you get to apply them immediately, and even though you are just trying things out (and making plenty of mistakes), you start to see immediate results.

It is hard to put into words the feeling you get from helping people make important breakthroughs in areas that were troubling them, usually in a very short time (15 minutes or less) and with only a bit of training, and very little practice. The idea is that we practice on each other, but the cool thing is that we already get to see that the techniques actually work.

In the third course, called balance, one of our leaders mentioned something that stayed with me. He said that 80% of coaching is simply “being with” the person that you are coaching. It reminded me of the old Woody Allen quote “90% of life is showing up”. But think about it, being with someone as they work through an issue, the coach is there, as a resource, as support, as someone who is not judging, but simply helping, asking questions, and offering a different perspective.

It sounds simple, but as I always say, simple does NOT mean easy. One of the reasons that we see progress so quickly is that by the third course, the only people who are still registering and showing up for these classes are people who get off on helping others work through issues in a helpful way.

I still have two more weekends ahead of me where I will be throwing my brain on the table and giving it another few daylong workouts with the rolling pin, but I am excited by the thought of getting even better at this.

When I can combine all the things that I am learning from CTI with my experience with business families, the possibilties for me to help them through their tough issues will continue to improve.

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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Put Me In, Coach (1 of 2)

It was almost a year ago that I first started to look seriously at coaching as a possible career move. The field is still very much in its infancy in Canada, especially as compared to where things are in the US. As such, it is one of the most misunderstood fields in which I have ever been involved.

Today I want to take you through the evolution of my thinking on the subject, because it could be eye-opening for many of you.

Let’s start about 10 years ago, when someone I know was looking at making a career move into coaching, and they asked my father for his opinion. I was not there at the time, but later my Dad told me that he could not understand why anyone would want to make a career out of “helping losers”.

As usual, Dad looked at everything through his one-and-only lens; if he did something or liked something, it was good, if he did not do it or like it, it was stupid and useless. Thankfully, people evolve from one generation to the next, and I am able to see things from different perspectives, and I can state unequivocally that losers don’t hire coaches.

Dad and I never had the conversation that I could now have with him about what coaches do, and what kind of people hire them, and that is too bad for him. If you keep reading, hopefully you will emerge more enlightened than him.

That “helping losers” mentality stuck in my head until January 2013, when I began the Family Enterprise Advisor program. At lunch on the first day, when I mentioned to a classmate that I was contemplating additional training in other related fields, like conflict resolution, she replied “Yes, and coaching”.

I was skeptical at first, and she saw the quizzical look on my face, so she then explained a bit about what kind of skills good coaches have and how they can be so helpful in family business situations. The fact that she ran her own coaching business made me take note. But I filed it away for the next few days.

Getting back to my office the following week, I decided to Google “coach training”, and I quickly realized a few things. First of all, it is a huge and growing field, and second, well, how the heck can you tell who is really good and credible and who is really not great and a waste of time?

So I got back to my classmate, Julie Morton, of Conscious Legacy Coaching, and asked her for her advice, in order to zero in on the right kind of coach training for me. She came back with only one real recommendation, CTI, the Coaches Training Institute.

So I signed up for their first course, Fundamentals, and a couple of months later I returned to Toronto to see what this coach training thing was all about. Three full days later I emerged, and I could only shake my head in disbelief at how powerful the experience was for me.

To wrap up this week’s blog I will fast forward and tell you that after that first session in Toronto in April, I continued to take the second course, Fullfilment, in Montreal in December, and then gathered some momentum and took course 3, Balance, in January, with most of the same group.

In February I will be back for Process, and then finish up with Synergy in March. In the meantime, next week I will try to explain how the program has changed my view on so many things, and tell you why I am excited about what I have been learning.

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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World’s Only Family Business Case Competition

I recently had the pleasure of being a judge at the second annual FECC, the Family Enterprise Case Competition held in Burlington, Vermont, hosted by the University of Vermont’s (UVM) School of Business Administration. I was invited by Dann van der Vliet, one of the co-founders of the event, who also runs the University’s Family Business Initiative.

Case competitions have become a pretty big deal over the past decade, so it may be surprising to learn that UVM’s event is the only one on the planet to focus exclusively on Family Enterprise. When I was doing my MBA at Ivey (UWO) we did hundreds of cases, but I can’t remember any that were about family businesses.

When I got to the Burlington Hilton I could feel the nervous energy of dozens of young people, as they prepared to make their presentations to the panels of judges that afternoon. For the first case, they had had a week to prepare, so this was actually going to be the easiest one they had to crack. The rest of the competition was going to be a game of “beat the clock”, with only 3 hours of preparation time for each case.

There were multiple teams of Undergraduates from schools in the US, Canada, and Mexico, as well as entries from Chile, Malaysia, the Netherlands. The Graduate category (MBA students) added even more international flavour, with two US schools up against teams from Sweden, Colombia, and Italy. There were 19 teams in 5 divisions, with only the top teams in each division moving on to the finals after 3 days of intense pressure.

I was only judging the first day’s case presentations, the Mother Myricks’s Confectionary case, which had many of the judges wondering aloud about why it was chosen for a family business case competition, since it was a company with only the husband and wife, and no kids in the business.

The undergrad division that I was judging featured schools from Canada (2), Mexico, and the Netherlands. I can tell you that I was quite impressed by all of the students. If my kids can present like that when they get to University, I will certainly be proud.

Each team had only 30 minutes to explain their recommendations, and that included 10 minutes of Q & A at the end. They walked in and introduced themselves to the judges, we introduced ourselves to them, and off they went with their Powerpoint slides and their well-prepared pitches. They seamlessly handed things off to one another and made sure everyone got about the same amount of airtime.

The Q & A was the best part, since it gave us a chance to probe things from a different angle than the one that they had prepared. We had been asked to go easy on them the first day (something about not wanting to make anyone cry), but the last team we saw did such a great job that I could not resist asking a tough question, because it was clear that they would be getting first place on that day regardless.

During the feedback to that team, I mentioned that I felt comfortable asking them a tough question, to which the student who answered it replied “Which question was the tough one?” I was not surprised to learn that that team made it to the finals, but finished out of the medals.

The undergrad winners were from the John Molson School of Business at Concordia in Montreal, while the graduate winners were from Jonkoping University in Sweden.

I hope to be part of it again next year.

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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C’est pas juste l’argent

Les gens parlent de l’argent et y pensent souvent. C’est normal puisque c’est perçu comme la source de bien des problèmes, et surtout de leurs solutions. Mais souvent ça serait préférable de regarder plus loin, et on verra que ce n’est pas juste l’argent qui est en cause.

Quelques exemples pour illustrer: Les premières fois que je faisais du bénévolat dans une banque alimentaire, je voulais souvent plonger ma main dans ma poche pour sortir un $1 ou un $2 pour dépanner quelqu’un, mais il a fallu que je me retienne. Les clients sont obligés de débourser $1 par adulte pour avoir droit à leur boîte de nourriture. Les règles sont là pour de bonnes raisons et en intervenant comme tel, j’aurais pu nuire à celles-ci. La première fois que la directrice m’a vu sortir mon portefeuille, le regard qu’elle m’a donné me l’a tout de suite expliqué.

J’ai une soeur qui travaille dans le système de la santé et ma conjointe travaille avec des OSBL. Elles sont tous les deux témoins de manques de budgets, et ce sur une base quotidienne. Mais les deux sont aussi d’accord que ce n’est pas l’argent qui manque le plus. C’est toujours facile de dire qu’avec plus d’argent, tout irait mieux, mais ce n’est pas toujours la vérité. De meilleures structures, de la gouvernance, de l’organisation, un coup de pouce dans la bonne direction, ce sont tous des façons pour améliorer les choses sans ajouter plus d’argent.

Prenons maintenant l’un de mes sujets préférés, l’héritage que nous voulons laisser à nos enfants et petit-enfants. Est-ce que c’est simplement de l’argent qu’on voudrait leur laisser? Est-ce que c’est juste de l’argent qu’ils veulent recevoir? J’espère que ça ne sera pas le cas pour moi et mes enfants.

Quand je dis que ce n’est pas juste de l’argent, vous pourrez croire que j’oublie d’autres actifs tangibles qui ont une valeur monétaire, comme des bijoux, de l’art, l’immobilier, mais ce n’est même pas ça mon point. Je parle ici, par contre, d’intangibles.

J’espère ne pas avoir perdu trop de monde. J’espère que vous n’allez pas tous penser que je parle de l’amour. Mais oui, l’amour en fait partie; peut-être une très grande partie. J’aime mes enfants, vous aimez vos enfants, nous le savons tous. Mais comme parents, comment est-ce que cet amour se manifeste chez nos enfants?

Une lacune que je vois trop souvent chez les parents, c’est qu’ils ne prennent pas le temps d’éduquer leurs enfants sur ce qui est important dans la vie. Je parle des valeurs de la famille, d’où ils viennent, où ils sont, et où ils s’en vont. Nous sommes très loin de parler d’argent, n’est-ce pas?

Mais dans les familles dynastiques que nous connaissons tous, avez-vous déjà pensé ce qu’ils ont tous en commun? Ils ont tous eu la chance de partir du bon pied, souvent grâce à un entrepreneur dans leur arbre généologique, mais quels sont les atouts qui leur ont ménés où ils sont, plusieurs générations plus tard?

Ils se sont tous organisés pour comprendre ce qui est important dans leur famille avec les responsabilités, les structures, la vision familiale à long terme, et l’esprit de rester en famille, en sachant d’où ils viennent et où il sent vont, en famille.

Je crois que comme parents, nous devons ces leçons à nos enfants, pour qu’ils puissent ensuite les transmettre à leurs enfants. Parce que si c’est “juste l’argent” qu’on leur laisse, bien, ça risque de durer moins longtemps, et on risque d’avoir raté un peu notre coup.

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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Independent and Dependable Advisors

The adjectives “dependable” and “independent” have more in common than those 6 letters in a row. They also happen to be two of the most important requirements people should insist upon when looking for people to advise them on important issues.

Let’s start with dependable, since it seems more obvious that you would naturally look for that quality in anyone you deal with, especially someone that will be sending you an invoice.

Of course everyone will claim to be dependable, but you will only really know after enough interactions with them. If you have dependable people that you can rely on, hopefully you recognize this quality in them, and appreciate it too, because it seems like it is becoming less common these days.

If you are an advisor, hopefully you recognize how important your dependability is to your clients, because it can take a long time to build up, but with one slip, a whole lot of goodwill can be wiped away very quickly.

Personally, I find it very disappointing when someone upon whom I have relied for many years all of a sudden lets me down. I will usually give anyone a second chance, but eventually you often have to move on. Sometimes I think I might be a little too demanding, but I generally just use the golden rule, I expect others to treat me the way that I would treat them if the roles were reversed.

Let’s move over to the independence question. Why is it important, and what am I getting at? Well I mentioned something about an invoice earlier, and it was not an accident, because it is a big part of what makes an advisor independent.

There are many different business models at play in the world of professional services, and it is easy to become confused or to be misled. I usually prefer to get a bill directly and know what I am paying for, than to eventually learn that the person who gave me the advice got a huge reward that I was not aware of in advance.

Accountants, lawyers, and coaches all work in a relatively straightforward way, we pay them for their time. We might think the bill is too high, but it is usually pretty clear. When financial products are involved, things can get very murky. But we seldom ask the questions that would clarify things for us, because we don’t want to look stupid, or to come across as an a-hole, or make people feel like we don’t trust them.

A good friend of mine who makes his living selling insurance products once told me that he has an advantage over lawyers and accountants in getting to know his clients, because he doesn’t bill them for his time, so they open up more. I had not thought of that, but it makes sense to me.

But I hate to think about those clients and the type of advice they are getting from those advisors who invoice them, if their main criterion is to minimize the size of the bill.

I am not saying that if there is no invoice, they cannot be independent. I am saying that it is important to understand how people are compensated, and to ask questions until you do understand.

Better yet, find a dependable and independent person who understands your situation, and get them to ask the questions for you. They can then help you make sure that you are doing the right things, in the right way, for all the right reasons.

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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Enough Money? Yes. Enough Time? No

We all know about the trade-offs between time and money. It’s usually about people spending much of their time trying to make enough money, so that they will be able to have whatever they want, and be able to do whatever they like.

But there are other combinations of time and money in sufficient or insufficient quantity that can also cause problems. We mentioned not enough time due to the feeling of not having enough money, but there is also too much money AND too much time, which creates its own set of problems, and those are not the kind that will have anyone feeling sorry for you.

There are also plenty of cases of people who have lots of time available, but not enough money. The simple solution, and please recall that “simple” and “easy” are two very different things, is for these people to get a job, thereby filling up some of their time with productive work, AND increasing the money they have available for necessities and discretionary purchases.

If only it were that easy. It is easy to sit in judgment of others, but it is not helpful. For every apparent lazy person on welfare, there are several others who have suffered through life with so many things working against them that the privileged few would never understand.

Speaking as a member of those privileged few, I can tell you that my outlook changed quickly when I began volunteering at a food bank a few years ago. I wouldn’t want to trade places with them, and I certainly no longer look down upon them, since I have not walked the proverbial mile in their shoes.

But the title of this blog is “enough money, but not enough time”, so let’s go there now. These situations usually come under the heading of “how much is enough?” There are lots of people who appear to have plenty of money (to us, but obviously not to themselves) but who are always so busy, they never seem to have any time to do anything besides work.

Some of them realize it and make changes in time, others only do so once the stress has taken a huge toll, and their health or family relationships have suffered great harm.

In the same way that these people might look at the person picking up a food basket and wonder why the person doesn’t just get a job, that person on welfare might look at the person working an 80-hour week and wonder why they don’t slow down before it kills them.

Not everyone’s ideal work-life balance is the same, of course, but most people would do well to stop and think about it more often.  When looking at business families there are all kinds of scenarios that come up in the areas of time and money, from the founder/father who won’t let go, to two siblings earning the same pay but with hugely different workloads and responsibilities, to the kid who feels compelled to take over a business in which they have no real interest, but sees it as an obligation or the path of least resistance.

This time of year is often used for reflection, as one year ends and another one begins. Thinking about important core issues like your work-life balance, and talking about them with the important people in your life, are probably the best gift you can give yourself.

And then if you are lucky enough to have a sufficient amount of money, and still have some time on your hands, there are plenty of volunteering opportunities available, and some of them will help change your perspectives on life too.

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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Season’s Bloggings

At this time of year, we get to see a whole bunch of retrospectives of all the events that happened over the past 12 months. These reports are great filler pieces for news organisations at a time of year that is usually slow anyway, so they are the perfect fit.

Personally, I usually find these things pretty lame, and certainly not something to look forward to. The one exception would be “Top 10” highlight reels on sports channels, or maybe some bloopers.

But just because this season isn’t great for TV, doesn’t mean it isn’t a great time for some personal retrospection. (Yes, that IS a word, I just checked).

When I was younger, the Christmas season didn’t really do much for me, and I even went through a kind of “grinch” phase, during which I didn’t buy gifts for anybody. But alas, parenthood changed that.

When my kids were younger and still in the Santa phase, Christmas was lots of fun, and I can still picture the huge mess in our living room after the gifts were opened, since the gifts came not just from Mr. Claus, but from grandparents, aunts, and uncles too.

With teenagers now, (OK, strictly speaking one is still a 12 and a half-year-old) things have shifted once again. Now I enjoy looking back over the year and noting the progress they have made in so many areas of their lives.

The old saying “they grow up so fast” is so true, it’s almost scary. One year is a long time to you when you are a kid, but when you are pushing 50, it goes by in a flash. I still have trouble figuring out how so much can happen AND time can go by so fast. If so much is happening, shouldn’t it be taking longer?

Alright, maybe I am getting too existential here, but ‘tis the season, isn’t it? We look back on the year that just was and marvel at how things have changed, and you almost have to shake your head when you try to look ahead a year and think of where you will be next Christmas.

But as scary as it might be, I believe that everyone really should do it, even if it you only do it once a year. If you wanna do something even more fun, project out 5 years and look at how old everyone in your family will be at the end of 2018. Yikes!

If you work in a family business, it is even more important to undertake this kind of exercise, because there are so many moving parts to begin with, that when you throw in the time element, things can really start to get interesting.

If you don’t have an operating business but are lucky enough to be in the HNW (high net worth) category, look ahead and think about how you want things to go in your future, and what your kids’ roles will be as they age, and as YOU age.

This is the time of year that we usually see family members, some of whom we may not see as often as we would like to. It is a great time to work on improving communication with everyone, and even to talk about the future together.

How many of you are up to it? Good luck to those who do, I believe that you will be glad you did.

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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