, , ,

Don’t “Transfer” Family Wealth; “Transition” It

For years now we’ve been hearing about the huge multi-trillion dollar “wealth transfer” that’s occurring thanks to the demographics of the Western world.

As baby boomers age, there’s no escaping the new realities that this huge demographic shift is causing.  But hopefully, we can escape some of the negatives that might accompany it.

I believe that when we think about how a family’s wealth should move from one generation to the next, we shouldn’t be thinking about a transfer, we should be thinking about a transition instead.

 

 

Is It Just Semantics?

I’ll leave it to interested readers to Google these words in an attempt to parse all of their differences, and will instead concentrate on some simple and observable comparisons and contrasts.

The most fundamental aspect to consider is the time that something takes, from start to finish.

When I was a kid, one of my friends moved away because his Dad was transferred.  One day he was working in Montreal, then suddenly, he was transferred to Toronto.

He finished work on Friday in one place and started up his new job 500 kilometres away on Monday.

 

Wire The Funds

If you’ve ever wired funds somewhere you know that one day the money is in your account, and then the next it is not.

Somewhere during the day (usually at around 2 PM for some reason) the funds instantaneously go from one account to another.

They have been transferred. Boom.  Here one minute, gone the next. A single event has happened and is now complete.

When a family’s wealth, including the financial wealth and everything that comes with it, is transferred as a one-shot event, it can be a real shock to the system.

The word “shock” is rarely used as a positive in the area of family business or family wealth.

 

Arrow on wall

 

Slower, Smoother Transition

So what do I mean when I say “everything that comes with it”?

I actually wrote about a few of these details back in 2015, in Transition Planning: No Day at the Beach.

In that blog, I wrote about the transitions of management, leadership, and ownership.

Strictly speaking, a transfer typically deals with the ownership of the wealth.  When someone suddenly owns something, they are then usually expected to also manage it as well.

 

Ownership Is the Big One

One of the problems that can arise with intergenerational wealth is that the ownership sometimes goes from one individual to a group, who are often siblings.

This is where the questions surrounding management and leadership come in.

When more than one person now owns the wealth, how they will manage it, and who will take the lead are also questions that get put on the table.

If the word “governance” is suddenly coming to mind, congratulations, because that’s certainly where my mind is heading too.

 

Respect My Authority

Another related concept that doesn’t necessarily get discussed enough is that of authority.

With ownership of any asset comes certain authority, but it can depend on so many details.

And when you talk about authority, there is of course explicit authority and implicit authority, which do not always go hand in hand.  (Note to self: there’s a whole blog right there!)

Numbers and pie charts

Interdependent Wealth

The distinction between transfer and transition came up for me recently as I continue to make progress on my next book.

My working title is “Interdependent Wealth”, with a secondary title as follows:

How Family Systems Theory Illuminates Successful Intergenerational Wealth Transitions

That’s nine words in a secondary title, which feels like a lot, but I can assure you that a great deal of thought went into each and every choice that I made, right down to the final one, Transitions.

 

A Gradual Handover

It was during the choices I was making about these words that the whole transfer thing really hit me.

On a macro level, society is certainly witnessing a huge transfer of wealth.

But what’s more important to any family is what occurs on a micro level, and families should be concentrating on their wealth transition.

 

Event Versus Process

Bottom line, a transfer is more of an event, or one of many components or things that need to happen.  It is a tactic.

A transition is a process, it is the overall strategy required to make the right things happen, in the right way.

Focus on the whole transition, not just the transfer.

/by
, ,

Counterintuitive Thoughts

I can’t recall when it happened exactly, but sometime last century I first heard the word “counterintuitive” and I was instantly smitten.

What a great word.

It’s a word you don’t hear every day, that sometimes elicits a quizzical look from people.  A “fifty cent” word.

So today I wanted to blog about some of my favourite counterintuitive ideas.

 

Traffic Problems

Let’s begin with something that people who live in cities can all relate to, traffic.

When you expect that there will be lots of traffic, your first inclination might be to leave early to get where you’re going.

It may seem counterintuitive to leave late, but once the traffic has let up, you’ll have a less stressful drive and arrive in a better mental state.

 

Reliable Internet Service

I don’t know if it’s just me, or my choice of Internet service providers, but sometimes my hard-wired cable is pretty unreliable and inconsistent.

We couldn’t get cable at the cottage, so we had to “settle” for satellite instead.  I worried about reliability because I need to be able to work from there too.

I do plenty of meetings over Skype and Zoom and was worried that there would be glitches.

Counterintuitively, I cannot recall a single glitch in any call I’ve had with anyone from there, while my cable calls from both my home and office are often sub-optimal (another favourite word!).

 

 

Strong Steel, Weak Glass

Many years ago there were some home break-ins in our neighbourhood that concerned me.

I called in a security expert to see what we could do to fortify our home. I was told that one of our patio doors was a risk.  It’s a steel door containing a large window.

I assumed that the glass was the weak point.

Nope. It was the steel.

The steel is so thin that anyone with a sledgehammer could smash it, but the window is apparently virtually indestructible.

 

 

Family Wealth Transition Examples

Of course I now need to share a few examples from my professional world too.

There are many times when I suggest that people Zig when everyone else is suggesting that they Zag.

And one of my new favourite expressions is “Don’t just do something, stand there!”

 

 

A Bigger Pie Won’t Solve Everything

There is a propensity for people to think that more money is always better than less, and that therefore, making the proverbial pie bigger should always be the goal.

But for a family, there are other forms of wealth besides financial.

Families who concentrate solely on making more money, under the assumption that everything else will work itself out, are fooling themselves.

It may seem counterintuitive, but it’s true.

There comes a time in every family’s life cycle when the focus should switch from how to make the pie bigger, to how the pie will be shared and maintained in the future.

 

A Looser Grip is Safer

On a related note, many of those who create a lot of monetary wealth also like to control everything (and everyone) they can.

When it comes to family members, I will always maintain that holding on with a very tight grip is not a recipe for success.

You probably know people who are guilty of this, even if you have not thought about it in the same terms as my metaphor.

When anyone tries to exert complete control over others, it will eventually backfire.

It always does.

Kudos to those who recognize this and choose a looser grip.

 

Slow Down, Go Far

As I wrote in Going Far? Go Together, I believe that family business and family wealth are much more about “going together” than they are about “going fast”.

If you are concerned with doing things quickly, then going alone, or doing things by yourself, can make perfect sense.

But family wealth eventually reaches a stage where it becomes more about how those who will be on the receiving end of the transition are able to function together as a group.

This ability to work together is rarely something that they’re all born with, and as such, it takes time for it all to come together.

 

 

No Rush, Except…

You really shouldn’t rush the process.

In fact, there is only one thing you should rush here.

Hurry up and get started, so that you can then slow down and take your time getting it right.

 

 

/by
, ,

Improving Together in a FamBiz

Writing these blogs each week for six years, my weekly habits continue to evolve.

I still get questions from colleagues about the source of ideas to write about, and my answer remains consistent: I write one blog a week, but I usually get at least two new ideas.

Sometimes the ideas come from somewhere unexpected, and sometimes they morph from one thing to another along the way.

Such is the case this week.

Better Investors

I’m guilty of spending more time than most people on social media.

I like to know what’s going on in the world and Twitter and LinkedIn allow me to follow the people and sources that I like and trust, on a variety of subjects that interest me.

A few weeks ago I saw a post on Twitter from Carl Richards (@BehaviorGap)

“It turns out our job is
not to find
great investments,
but to help
create great investors”

A Blog Idea Is Conceived

My first “A-Ha” came right then and there.

An “Investment” is a product or a piece of content, and it is the thing that many professionals in the investing space specialize in selling.

But as Richards points out, that focus is misplaced.

An “Investor” is a person, and such persons are better served by those who will help them with the entire process of the whole scope of being investors.

 

Teach Them How to Fish

It comes down to the old Bible story about not simply giving a person a fish, but instead teaching them how to fish for themselves.

Do you want to feed them for a day, or for a lifetime?

That’s supposed to be a rhetorical question, but unfortunately many of the business models still followed by many professionals, seem to prefer feeding on a day-to-day business, and being paid for it over and over as well.

Process Over Content

So the thing that grabbed me, as far as this idea being good fodder for a blog post, was the whole Process Over Content question.

It’s certainly not a new idea for me to discuss, but it was from a different angle.

The content pieces that I often deal with are things like legal or accounting structures or trust vehicles, or contracts such as shareholder or partnership agreements.

Strategy of Tactics?

The process part of putting all of these tactical pieces together into a strategy will often be given short shrift.

Too often the concept of making sure that all these pieces will fit together properly is either completely ignored or simply assumed to be sufficient.

In reality, though, this is where many plans fall apart.

 

Blogging Brings Clarity

So here is where this post took a bit of a turn.

I was set to write about the “process” part, but then realized that there was a “people” component that I simply couldn’t ignore.

My blog title was still a big question mark too, and then it came time to search for an image to accompany the post, with a surprise of its own.

A-Ha # 2 – Improving Together

I’ve been using Shutterstock for a while and am usually quite satisfied with the results I get when I search for the right image to go with each post.

This time my search actually kicked things up a notch, as it created another A-Ha moment for me.

I was looking for something using “process” and “people” and there it was…Improving Together.

Holy crap, that’s even better than anything I had come up with so far.

Families Learning Together

When Richards was talking about investors, I imagine that he was referring to singular people, or perhaps to a couple.

My work is always about families, whether I’m actually working with all family members directly, or working with one person, helping them organize and coordinate their family.

The key to finding success for most families, is for them to find reasons, ways, and opportunities to work together and learn together, so that they can eventually get really good at deciding things together.

Co-Creating the Family Strategy

The families who are most successful at transitioning their wealth to the next generation are those who have mastered the practice of involving as many family members as possible in the process.

The co-creation of the strategy is what ensures the buy in, so that the plans actually work.

The time and effort required are always worth it.

/by
, , ,

Celebrating the Global FamBiz Community

I’m writing this post from a park bench in London, the morning after the conclusion of the annual FFI Conference, (my fifth).

The Family Firm Institute has been around for a little over 30 years, and I feel privileged to be a part of its truly global community.

The word “community” created the most resonance while reflecting on an angle for this post-conference blog post.

 

Global in Scale

Here I was, a Canadian in London, checking in to the conference on Wednesday, where I meet Richard, from Australia. As we chat, Xavier from Spain arrives, so I introduce them.

How would I ever have made such a variety of connections if not for these annual trips during which I have built and nurtured this group of friendly colleagues?

From Washington in 2014, to London 2015, Miami 2016 and Chicago last year, I was back in London again.

Regular readers know that I also make an annual pilgrimage to Denver each summer for the PPI Rendez Vous, and also attend the FEX symposia closer to home.

But the global reach of FFI is unique.

 

Let Me Count the Countries

Over a dozen Canadians were there, most of whom I already knew. And because FFI was founded in the US and remains headquartered there, the American presence is quite significant. But its scope goes far beyond North America.

Just last night I was out throwing darts with a Venezuelan who now lives in Brazil, another Australian living in the UK, a couple of Norwegians and five American colleagues.

Others I met along the way hailed from South Africa, Denmark and Switzerland, plus too many European countries to count.
Word has it that 40 countries were represented in all.

Special mention goes out to Edvard, who told me that he and his colleagues have been using my Family Continuity BluePrint all over the Netherlands, after he saw me present it last year in Chicago.

 

 

So Much to Share

Along the way over the three days, so much great information was shared, and so many ideas were presented in the many breakout sessions.

It was a pleasure to join great friends and colleagues Natalie, Elle, and Mairi as we got to lead one session from the front of the room, as we celebrated the Practitioner’s Spectrum.

Our discussion was about the variety of styles we use as practitioners when working with clients, from Counselling and Coaching, to Facilitation and Mediation, to Mentoring and Consulting.

 

The Big Deal about Community

As I stated at the outset, I was thinking a lot about the aspect of community this week.

A few months ago, upon returning from Denver’s PPI conference in fact, I also wrote about that subject, in part, in Wanted: Purpose, Passion and Community.

And as I wrote there, a big part of community is that the people need to want to spend time together.

Towards the end of any of these meetings, discussion invariably moves to “so, how was this conference for you?”

My reply usually includes a favourable rating, adds a few minor complaints, and concludes with the fact that I wouldn’t want to miss it.

 

Building Something TogetherGroup of people walking with yellow background

Between FFI, PPI, and FEX, it feels like we’re on the front edge of a wave of progress and change.

The worlds of family business and family wealth are facing important challenges, as families do the work of transitioning their assets to succeeding generations.

I love coming together with others who work in these areas, to share ways that we can all do a better job. We all want to be reliable resources for these families who are trying to do things better.

It truly does feel like we are building something together, not just for our lifetimes, but for those who will succeed us.

 

 

Many Parallels

There are many parallels between us, and the business families we serve.

We come together regularly because we enjoy doing so, and we have a common cause we are working for, which will likely outlive us all.

Many of our family clients feel as if they are the only ones experiencing their family issues, which of course is false.

As practitioners, we can also feel a bit lonely at times.

Getting together with like-minded colleagues to share ideas and re-energize only makes sense for us as well.

Why not join us?

See you in Miami, October 23-25, 2019.

/by
,

Ready to Lead > Ready to Leave

Certain topics come up over and over again in the world of family business.

Today we’ll be looking at two of them, although when you get right down to it, maybe it’s really just one, because they’re often wound pretty tightly together.

As you may’ve already gathered from the title, I’m talking about a changing of the guard at the top.

Some Batons Are Sticky

As I wrote in my Quick Start Guide on this subject, Sticky Baton Syndrome(Ask Prince Charles) there are plenty of cases where the person at the top of a family business is just not ready to leave.

There are all sorts of excuses that are typically mentioned as to why they must remain in place.

Some of them are even true, and some of them are actually good reasons. Many, however, are just excuses, given by people who are simply scared to face certain realities.

bird leading other birds

The Father of the Three Circle Model

In September I was in Niagara-on-the-Lake for the annual Family Enterprise eXchange (FEX) symposium, featuring John A. Davis as one of the keynote speakers.

If you don’t know who Davis is, he’s one of the co-creators of the Three Circle Model, of which I am a big fan.

See: Three Circles + Seven Sectors = One A-Ha Moment

He regaled the crowd with a presentation about the “Future of Leadership” and then led a discussion with Philippe DeSerres that was also very well received.

But my take-home message from his talk was something he only mentioned briefly in passing, right near the end, which was the inspiration for this post.

The Money Quote

He was talking about getting the timing right when it comes to transitioning the leadership of a family business.

He noted that more and more these days, and from his decades of experience as a leader in consulting to this field, there is one factor that trumps the other.

According to Davis, it makes more sense to make the leadership transition of a family business when the rising generation is

Ready To Lead,

than to wait until the current generation is

Ready To Leave.

Notably, he took the time to spell it out, i.e. “lead, l-e-a-d” and “leave, l-e-a-v-e”, just to be sure we all understood him.

I understood. I hope you do too. But just in case, I will continue…

A man leading other people

Too Soon or Too Late

At the outset of this blog, I noted that these two topics are often connected.

The biggest way this happens is that the current leaders will sometimes subconsciously hold back on giving the rising generation the opportunities to show what they can do.

And one of the major reasons that they do this is because of their own desire to remain important.

What Else Is There?

So many business leaders attach so much of their identity to their role as the leader of their business.

I like to think that this might just be too narrow a viewpoint.
Let me explain. The key to this lies in the Three Circle Model.

Note that the Business circle is only one of the three systems that intersect, and that the “big picture” also includes Family, and Ownership.

Step Back to See the Whole Picture

If the leader of the “business” steps back and looks at the whole picture, including the Family and Ownership systems as well as the Business system with which they are already intimately familiar, they will see many other, greater, opportunities.

If the business is a huge success, yet the family falls apart and the owners end up in a dispute that has various family members “lawyering up” against each other, then just how important will the business success have been in retrospect?

Three Circle = Three Systems = Three Leaders?

If you’re trying to create a true multi-generational family business, you cannot neglect any of the circles.

Each circle ultimately needs its own governance structure, and likely its own leader, or leaders. Someone needs to foresee all of this and line up and prepare those future leaders.

There comes a point in the life cycle of any business leader when their focus should shift from running a successful business to overseeing a complete enterprising family (i.e. all 3 circles)

So you built a great business, congratulations.

If you want it to continue to survive as a family enterprise for generations, you’ve still got more important work to do.

Stop working IN your family business,
Start working ON your business family.

/by
, ,

Marshmallows and Filet Mignon

This week we’re looking into one of my favourite subjects, and we’re going to do it from a couple of different angles.

We’ll start with some psychological research done at Stanford University about five decades ago, and we’ll end with a real life example from my own experience.

The subject is delayed gratification, and I have long maintained that it is the secret to success for most people.

 

I Want It Now

The average attention span of people has been shrinking for decades, and this has only added to many people’s expectation that everything be there for them the second they want it.

I will not get into any debates about young people these days being worse than we were at their age.

I believe that every generation has people from across the spectrum and I have no desire to kick any of these proverbial hornets’ nests.

 

Who Wants a Marshmallow?3 marshmallows on a pink table

Walter Mischel was a psychologist at Stanford who came up with the “Marshmallow Test” back in the 1960’s.

Mischel passed away a few weeks ago, which has resulted in renewed interest in his work, so if you Google his name and the word “marshmallow”, you will surely come across lots of interesting things to pursue (once you’ve finished this blog, of course).

His subjects were children around 5 years old.  The “test” was constructed this way:

Children were brought into a room and given one marshmallow and told that they could eat it now.

Or, if they could wait 15 minutes while the experimenter left the room, and NOT eat it, then they would receive a second marshmallow as a reward.

 

Not As Easy As It Sounds

Apparently only about 200 of the 600 subjects managed to hold off on consuming the treat for the 15 minutes (which surely seemed like an eternity for those who succeeded).

There are lots of interesting videos you can find showing how the kids struggled with the temptation while alone in the room, mostly from more recent versions of the experiment, conducted to replicate the initial results.

 

The Take-Home Message

If you’ve understood that delayed gratification is not easy, that’s great, but you’d still be missing out on the larger message of the research.

You see, they followed up on the kids over the years and tracked their success in life, and they discovered something that I hope you’ll really get out of this story.

The kids who were able to restrain themselved for those agonizing 15 minutes also happened to live much more successful lives, on just about every dimension they measured.

If you can delay your need for immediate gratification, that will help you for your whole life.

 

Good Things Come to Those Who Wait

So where do you think that those young subjects got that ability to be patient and resist temptation?

I won’t get into the specifics because I’m not a social scientist and so much of this ground has been covered by those much more capable than I am in this area, but I have a very short answer of my own.

 

Their Parents.

Now I can’t say if it’s in their DNA or if they learned from observing the behaviours that their parents modeled for them,  (or both) but they got it from their parents, one way or another.

 

The Steak Versus the SizzleFilet mignon - Steak

Here’s my real world example.

Years ago, my Dad had retired to a small farm where he raised breeding cattle.  He hired some of the locals to do much of the work.

He paid his employees nicely and also got into the habit of giving them an annual bonus, paid in meat.

Every year, a couple of animals would “fall into the freezer” as he liked to put it.

 

Did You Try the Meat Yet?

My Dad and I were very much on the same page with many things, but our viewpoints were also quite different.

But when he was making a point, I could usually see him coming a mile away.

One day he relayed this story, about an exchange with one of his workers, the day after they had picked up their side of beef from the butcher.

 

The Look of Dismay

Dad asked if they had a chance to try the meat.

“Oh, yeah, it was great.  We had the filet mignon”.

I can still see the look of dismay, and Dad shaking his head in disbelief.

/by
, , ,

Family Office: “WHAT” vs. “HOW”

Family Office: “WHAT” vs. “HOW”

A few weeks ago, in From Family Business to Family Office, I mentioned that I’d start writing more about the family office world. Being a man of my word, here we are again.

I had a bit of an issue choosing my blog title, though.

I began by thinking about the idea of “Strategy” versus “Tactics” in the family office space.

But my bias is to try to stay away from “jargon” terms and use the simplest possible words, at least most of the time.

 

A Thousand Words

Of course when it came time to select a photo to go with this post, terms like “strategy” and “tactics” garnered more interesting search results from Shutterstock than “what” and “how”.

At the end of the proverbial day, though, whether we use the simple questions or the business jargon terms, we’re talking about the same issues.

Ten Years Flew By

The most important idea here is this:

You need to recognize the difference
between the strategy (the “what”)
and the tactics used to accomplish
that strategy’s goals (the “how”).

If you get nothing else out of reading this, my Dad would’ve been pleased. What does he have to do with this, you ask?

It has now been 10 years since he lost his final battle with cancer, and I cannot count the number of times his wise words have been summoned to the front burner of my brain.

“Let’s figure out what we’re trying to do first, and then we can figure out the best way to do it.”

 

Family business office

 

The Family Office (The “Who”)

A family office is typically composed of people, from one to a handful, or sometimes even dozens. (Key variables include the size of the family, the amount of wealth they control, and the level of complexity involved)

The employees of the family office should be working for the benefit of the family, and so they should be concentrating on the tactics, the “how”, and be less involved in the strategy.

Ideally, the strategy will have been worked out by the family, before the family office people get too far down the road of implementing the best tactics.

 

It’s Complicated

I used the term “ideally” because I know that this is often not the way it works in the real world.

But that typically isn’t the fault of those who work for the family office.

Much like the ideas I wrote about in FamBiz: Management vs. Governance, different groups of people have different roles that they should be playing.

When the people who are supposed to play those roles don’t play them, then others will invariably step in and assume those roles.

 

Benefits Come with Responsibilities

Families that have a family office (FO), or who are clients of a multi-family office (MFO), have set up this relationship so that the FO or MFO can serve the needs of the family.

The decision to go this route may have occurred last year or last century, and it may have been decided by this generation of family leaders or by their parents or grandparents.

The fact remains that it was done for the benefit of the family members.

And as we all know, with benefits come responsibilities.

Family business Work

Where Are We Going?

I’m going to take a guess and say that most readers are fine with what I’m saying here, but that they may be wondering what my point is.

So here’s where I’m going.

I think that relationships between families and their family offices tend to be out of balance, or off-kilter.

My anecdotal evidence suggests that family office employees often control not just the tactics, but much of the strategy too.

This can be mitigated when the FO includes family employees, but that can also make things worse.

 

Family Alignment: The Missing Link

As I stated above, this is not typically the “fault” of the family office, but usually that of the family.

They need to intentionally work at getting the entire family aligned together, in order to make the decisions that the family office should then be executing.

 

The WHAT, the HOW, and the WHO!

Getting a family aligned so that they can effectively drive the strategy of their family office does not just “happen”, all of a sudden, or all by itself.

It begins with the recognition that it is necessary for the long term good of the family and its legacy.

Recognize anyone?

See also: The Exponential Magic of Family Collaboration

 

/by
, ,

From Suggesting to Managing in the FamBiz

Being fluent in more than one language has many benefits, most of which are quite obvious.

Having lived in Montreal my whole life, I experience this daily. Not a day goes by where I don’t use both French and English.

Facilitation = Making Things Easier

Every language has words that come from other languages, and when you’re fluent in both, some things can seem obvious to you that others might miss.

Years ago in the Family Enterprise Advisor program that I was taking in Toronto, we were in the module on “facilitation”, and some of my unilingual colleagues were a bit unclear on the meaning of the word.

I shared my take, which is that the word “facile” in French typically translates to “easy”, so facilitation is simply “making things easier”.

Some Are Less Obvious

Examples like that one are pretty easy to spot, but others are less striking, such as the one that inspired this post.

The genesis was a documentary I watched this past summer, in French, about Felipe Alou, who hails from the Dominican Republic.

Alou had a great career in baseball, first as a player and eventually as the manager of the Montreal Expos.

Promotion to Manager

Alou started the 1992 as the “bench coach” for the Expos, essentially the “assistant” to the rookie manager, Tom Runnells.

Runnells was the boss, and Alou was there to support him.

But this manager was in over his head, and often sought input from Alou, who was older and had much more experience.

When Runnells was fired less than two months into his first season, Alou was given the top job as many fans had hoped.

Giving Suggestions

Here is where the language thing comes in. The documentary was in French, but most of the interviews were in English, so there were French subtitles.

Alou was explaining, in English, how things were at the start of the season, when he was second in command.

He mentioned that he was suggesting things to Runnells, but then suddenly he was managing the team himself.

The French verb “to suggest” is “suggérer”.

And the French verb “to manage” is “gérer”.

Wait, what?

So, is “giving suggestions” tantamount to “sub-managing”???

male and female business people talking

Sub-Titles as a Visual

If it were not for the sub-titles I was reading (for no real reason, actually, since I understood spoken English!) it would not have hit me.

But there it was for all to read, about the big step Alou had to take to go from “suggérer” to “gérer”, from suggesting to managing.

Stepping Up, One Step at a Time

Now is the time for me to bring this blog into the family business realm. I trust that some readers are already with me here.

Let me relate my recollection of some of my own story as I worked with my Dad, decades ago.

Initially, my suggestions on some subjects were welcomed. As my ideas proved to be good, they were agreed to without much debate.

From Talking to Doing

At a certain point, some of the implementations were also left to me, as I demonstrated that I could be trusted.

Sure, at the early stages, I would clear things with him first before acting, and then eventually I would act and relay the information afterwards.

Eventually, I would do what needed to be done, and sometimes not remember to even inform him.

In many ways, I took the “suggesting” to “managing” steps as Felipe Alou did, but over a longer period of time.

I was afforded this longer timeframe because my Dad and I had planned for a longer overlap.

male and female business people talking
Radical Changes: In Case of Emergency Only

The firing of a baseball team manager is not at all like a family business succession, at least in terms of the way it should be done.

Except in cases of sudden death or accident, a family business will hopefully have the timeframe required to go the slow route.

“They Aren’t Ready”

We hear a lot about the leading generation being unwilling to let go of the reins (see Sticky Baton Syndrome –ask Prince Charles)

Sometimes those who have been running things just don’t know how to get started?

Handing things off to the younger ones needn’t be done in one step.

Accepting suggestions, and even asking for them, could be a great first step. It’s never too early to begin, either!

The longer the overlap, the easier it is to make it a smooth transition.

/0 Comments/by

Planting your Family Legacy

I’ve written at least a handful of blog posts over the past couple of years with the word “legacy” in their title.

In the coming years, I will likely write a few more, because it’s a subject near and dear to my heart, and I’m guessing that I’m not alone.

Today’s post will cover some of the important elements that go into a legacy, using nature as an inspiration.

Planting your Family Legacy

One Definition of Legacy

When we talk about legacy related to family wealth, we often assume that everyone has the same ideas in mind when they hear that word, “legacy”.

But for the heck of it, I just Googled the word to locate a “neutral” definition, and this came up:

“Something that happens or exists as a result
of things that happened at an earlier time”

Given both the title of this post and the photo I chose to accompany it, I think this definition is spot on.

If you want to sit in the shade, the fact that Grandpa planted a tree can certainly help!

 

Is Planting Sufficient?

 We can all agree that planting the tree is a pretty big part of the equation, and that without that effort, there would be no tree.

But maybe a tree isn’t the best example here.  When you think about it, the sapling in the photo is actually being transplanted to grow in that particular chosen place.

If they didn’t plant it there, it would have likely grown in its original location.  Aren’t the woods full of trees that just grew there on their own?

Likewise, there is a lot of wealth in the world too, and fortunes are made and lost all the time.

Legacies come and legacies go.

Planting your Family Legacy

How Does your Garden Grow?

Perhaps a better metaphor is a garden or a farmer’s field.

There are more analogies we can use here because there are a lot more steps involved.

You need to till the soil, you need to plant the crops, there’s fertilizer that can help a lot, and you need to water regularly too.

Removing weeds, making sure that the crops are not infested my bugs or disease, and then let us not forget the harvesting.

And then do we eat the whole crop, or do we save some for next year’s seeding?

 

So Many Metaphors, So Little Time

I feel like the metaphors here are endless, and I hope that you’ve found at least one that is new and useful to you.

But I want to get to a couple of other keys points here.

What can we learn from the plant world that we can apply to the area of family legacy?

 

Intention and Attention

Well, going back to the definition I found, the “things that happened at an earlier time” will usually include some serious intention.

Unless the wealth was won in a lottery, there was likely a lot of intentional hard work and risk-taking involved.

The original spark was also surely followed by some diligent and intentional efforts to maintain, preserve, and grow the family’s wealth over a sustained period of time.

In addition to the intention, there is also a constant need to pay attention to make sure that everything that was built up and accumulated is carefully tended to and watched over.

Planting your Family Legacy

People Power

Family wealth is often “created” by the hard work, talent, genius, risk-taking, and luck of one individual.

That person can often take on a superhuman aura.

But even when the pile of financial wealth is enormous, they can’t keep it going forever all by themselves.

There will eventually need to be other people involved in perpetuating the wealth, turning it into their legacy.

 

People + Assets = Legacy

As I wrote last year in “Is your Continuity Planning “PAL” in Danger?” assets alone will not ensure anyone’s legacy.

Of course, if most of the wealth is held inside a business and great people are hired to manage it as a corporate entity, the business legacy can continue long past the founder’s departure.

My bias is towards a Family Legacy, ensuring that the family be the ones who maintain and grow it into the future.

 

Family Legacy Versus Business Legacy

This bias is pretty clear when you to watch this video blog I recorded: What is your True Family Legacy.

Who will lovingly tend your garden after you’re gone?

/0 Comments/by

The Evolution of Family Governance

Lately, I’m becoming enamoured with the term “Family Governance”, as some regular readers may have noticed.

In fact, I wrote a post just a few weeks ago relating to this subject, “Family Governance: From Filaments to LED’s”.

The subject has undergone an evolution of sorts in my mind.

I’m looking at it in new ways as I learn more, work with more families, and adapt my thinking to the ways other related subjects also continuously evolve.

 

The Family Governance “Field”

 

I’m not sure if we’re yet at the point where we can say that Family Governance has evolved into its own “field”, but I know we’re moving in that direction.

In fact, the field, as it stands, also feels like it is evolving in its own right.

If you’re interested in it, or even curious, please join me in New York City in January for the 3rd annual conference of the Institute for Family Governance.

I’ve attended the two previous editions, and my blog on the 2018 version can be found here: “Realistic Family Governance Goals.”

 

How to Make Family Governance “Stick”

So in terms of the evolution of family governance, we’ve already got the fact that the term has been growing on me and evolving in my mind, and the fact that the field is also evolving.

But the main point of this post that I’d like to make is how important it is for Family Governance to evolve within a family, if it is to have any chance of “sticking”.

Yet as more people discuss a certain topic and it seems like it’s growing legs and becoming “a thing”, there are always some who try to figure out how to sell the idea to others, with a view towards making money at it.

I supposed that’s to be expected, much as I mentioned last week when we discussed the family office space and the “business opportunity” problem there.

 

FOR the Family, BY the family

From my perspective and experience, when governance is thrust upon a family, either by one family leader from above, or by “experts” from outside, it is likely doomed to failure.

My go-to expression for this is “FOR the family, BY the family”.

Notice that I did not say for the family by one family member, or even for the family by experts chosen by the family.

You cannot buy governance off the shelf; it is not a product.  Of course, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t people who will try to sell it to you.

The Evolution of Family Governance

No Stone Tablets

Any family that’s interested in successfully transitioning their wealth from one generation of their family to the next will need to invest some time and effort into developing the governance structures and systems that will help them achieve that goal.

Unfortunately, there’s no set of “stone tablets” that Moses is going to arrive with, listing the Ten Commandments of family governance.

I hear you, “OK, Steve, so it needs to evolve. But from where, and how???”

 

Start with a Family Meeting

 

You really need to call a family meeting and throw the subject on the table.

Someone from the leading generation, (usually “Dad”) has to call everyone together and make it clear that they want to make sure that the family will be prepared to eventually take over the family wealth in all its forms.

They should explain that they’d like to ensure the smoothest transition possible and that this is the beginning of a series of regular meetings that will be used to establish the “who, what, when, where and how” all that will happen.

The first meeting needn’t be long, because family members will need time to adjust to this news.

But please don’t leave until the next meeting has been scheduled for a couple of months down the road.

 

Start Where You Are

Governance is all about three major questions:

  • How will we make decisions together?
  • How will we communicate?
  • How will we solve problems together?

Don’t expect the answers to just materialize without any work.

 

The Good News?

The good news here is that just figuring out where to begin and how to start the governance process, so that you can see how it all evolves, is the best way to ensure that it will actually work.

It’s a PROCESS, and how you get there is even more important than where you get to!

Get moving, keep going, and watch the evolution.

/0 Comments/by