,

Hard versus Soft? Or Hard versus Harder?

It honestly makes me laugh sometimes when I hear people speak about the hard issues, like dollars and cents, as if they are so much more important than the soft issues, like relationships, emotions, and just getting along.

There is a huge disconnect in the family wealth industry over the relative importance of these issues.

Maybe it is because there are a lot more people working on the “hard” side of things, the things in found in the “business circle”, than on the “soft” side, which deals mostly with stuff in the “family circle”.

Maybe it is because the people working on the investment side, the securities, asset allocation, and Wall Street stuff seem to be paid much more than the folks who worry about the family harmony and communications.

Maybe it’s because it is often the Dad who works really hard and makes a pile of wealth for the family, while Mom worries about the kids, and tries to make sure that all the kids are treated fairly so they will always get along together.

In any case, hard business stuff seems so much sexier than the mundane soft family stuff.

I don’t know if it is because hard and soft are antonyms, and because another antonym of hard is easy. Something tells me that is part of it, but of course is all speculation.

The people who specialize in the soft side of things will all assure you that soft and easy are NOT synonyms.

Of course now that I brought up the word “easy”, I have to share with you one of my favourite sayings around the word easy.

Some people love to throw around the word “simple”. Losing weight is simple. Eat less, exercise more, and you will lose weight, it literally is that simple. Simple and easy are NOT the same.

To me, simple is about easily explained concepts, while easy is more about things that just about anyone can do, regardless of intelligence, experience, or effort.

This week I met with a man who works with his son, and the son has been slowly trying to force Dad out of all decision-making functions, and treating him like an over-the-hill impediment.

I have yet to meet the son, and there are always two sides to every story, but the person I spoke to did not seem like he was ready to be put out to pasture.

When I made a couple of suggestions to him about what he could do, the response was, “But it is so hard, because it is emotional”. I resisted the temptation to correct him and tell him that we were talking about something considered soft.

I think that there is some good news on the horizon for those of us who like to specialize in the family circle issues. The amount of research that shows that family wealth is more often destroyed due to family issues than money issues continues to multiply.

When you couple what is finally being acknowledged and understood with the demographics of baby boomers and the transitions that have already begun, I cannot help but believe that we are on the front edge of a wave here.

It may still take years before views like mine become mainstream, but that’s okay. The movement has begun, and it will continue to grow.

Those who want to continue to serve families of wealth by only dealing with the hard issues and continuing to ignore the soft issues (or, as you may have already concluded, the ones I consider the harder issues) do so at their peril.

Families don’t have a shortage of places to invest their wealth, or people who will help them do so.

What is missing is providers of holistic solutions that take into account the hard and the harder. Enlightened families are demanding help to make sure their wealth survives generational transfers.

If you want to help them get that right, you can’t just hope it happens by itself. There are emotional issues around family wealth in every family. Those who help their family clients navigate them will be the winners.

/by

The Tradesman and the Toolbox

20160409_143117_001_resized

 

This week my Dad would have turned 80, so he is part of the inspiration for this post. He had apprenticed in Austria as a teenager, and when he arrived in Canada he got a job, bought tools, and went to work, all within a few days.

He knew a trade, and then bought the tools he needed to do the job. But it isn’t always that straightforward.

I learned a lot from my Dad, but very little of what he taught me had anything to do with tools.

True, before my first summer working in his steel fabrication plant, we made the obligatory trip to the hardware store (remember Pascal’s?) after which I was “equipped” to work, even though I had barely a clue what I would be doing or what each tool was for.

I still have that red toolbox, with the blue label on it, “91 S. Legler 91.” (My punch card number was 91). Those tools have been doing a lot of dust gathering lately.

The types of tools that I am coming across regularly these days are not the kind you find in any store, hardware or other.

And interestingly enough, I have not been looking for these tools. Instead, the people who are developing these tools have found me. So what kind of tools am I talking about?

It isn’t that easy to even categorize them, but let’s just call them technology platforms for families. Say what?

We all know and understand that the ways that people communicate in 2016 are far different than they were even a decade ago. The ability to connect with people has grown exponentially, which has many positive consequences.

Family communications can be improved in so many ways with these kinds of tools. And the lack of communication within families is one of the biggest contributors to the demise of family wealth.

So naturally, any tool or toolbox that helps families communicate should be a welcome addition, right.

Well, generally, yes, more communication is almost always better than less, so there is that. Where it gets a bit trickier is thinking that the mere existence of the tool will make the family communicate.

Think of the horse you lead to the water, if he isn’t thirsty (and some family horses are more like camels) he may not start drinking for a long time.

The nice thing about creating this type of tool is that you build it once, and then it gets used over and over again. If you build one thing, copy it virtually cost-free for others and sell it to them, well, the profit opportunity can be large.

Now let’s look at the tradesman. This person needs to learn the skills and the tricks of the trade in order to be able to go out and have some valuable help to sell.   It isn’t nearly as easy to replicate, as each person is unique and unfortunately not “clonable”.

But that doesn’t mean that the tools are not useful. What it does mean, from my perspective, is that the opportunity to come up with the “killer app” in the family wealth/family harmony space, may not be as profitable as some might expect.

First off, I am getting the feeling that the field is getting crowded.

Secondly, very few families realize that they could benefit from these tools. (Yes, there is a need for them, but that is not the same as saying there is a demand for them).

Maybe I am biased by the fact that I am a tradesman in this space, and I like to think that there is some magic in my words and the way I communicate with people in families, without much in the way of a toolbox.

Ideally, many families will benefit from qualified helpers and some of the great tools that are being developed.

My tendency would be to defer to a skilled person with a mediocre tool over someone with a great tool but without the proper training or skills.

As this field continues to evolve, I will continue to work on my craft, while incorporating the best tools I come across.

/by
,

Y-a de la place en masse dans ________ ?

Mon Jacuzzi? Peut-être que oui, mais ce n’est pas notre sujet cette semaine. Mais où devrait-il toujours y avoir de la place?

Les sujets dont je parle ici sont souvent reliés aux familles en affaires ou, comme on dirait en anglais, les “business families”.

Il y a une distinction importante entre ces deux groupes, c’est-à-dire la “famille” et la “business”. Y-a-t-il toujours de la place dans la famille, dans la business ou les deux?

Pour moi la réponse est assez évidente, mais je reconnais que pour plusieurs, ce n’est pas toujours facile de démêler ces deux groupes. Pour certaines familles, quand on fait partie de la famille, c’est un acquis qu’on va travailler dans la compagnie .

Pour d’autres, c’est moins certain. Souvent, il n’y a pas assez de place pour tous dans la business, ce qui peut amener à de la jalousie, mais dans d’autres circonstances, il peut y avoir des sentiments d’obligation envers la famille.

Il n’y a rien de nouveau ici, mais je veux stimuler la reflection aux lecteurs qui font face à ces situations dans leurs familles et dans leurs entreprises.

J’ai eu l’opportunité récemment de parler avec la mère d’une famille qui gère une compagnie avec des centaines d’employés.

Pour ce genre de famille, la question de trouver une place pour ses quatre enfants dans la business est certainement moins difficile que ce sera pour une famille qui détient un simple dépanneur.

Une des premières étapes est de savoir si chaque membre de la famille veut travailler au sein de l’entreprise familiale. Notons aussi que la réponse pourrait différer selon l’âge de la personne, en plus de ses circonstances personnelles.

Il faudra aussi se questionner si l’entreprise a de la place pour accueillir cet employé. Comme c’est souvent le cas, les ambiguïtés peuvent se présenter ici. Dans quel rôle? À quel salaire? Est-ce qu’on lui “crée une job”?

Y-a-t’il une liste de pré-requis avant de même être considéré pour un emploi dans l’entreprise familiale? Ou est-ce que des pré-requis s’appliquent uniquement pour ceux qui espèrent occuper un rôle de gestion? Ou pour devenir actionnaire?

C’est assez facile de faire comprendre aux gens que les places dans une entreprises peuvent être limitées, et c’est donc fort possible que certains membres de la famille ne pourront pas devenir employés dans la compagnie familiale.

Mais si c’est possible qu’il n’y ait pas de la place en masse dans la compagnie, où est-ce qu’il a toujours de la place?

Y-a de la place en masse dans la famille.

Ceci semble de toute évidence pour la majorité des gens. Par contre, ce qui arrive trop souvent, c’est que le choix des priorités entre la compagnie et la famille est complètement à l’envers.

L’emphase est trop souvent sur le “quoi” et le “combien” de grandir la business. C’est bien beau de bâtir quelque chose qui nous donne une fierté, une richesse et un style de vie confortable.

D’après ce que j’ai déjà vu, trop fréquemment, la partie qui se fait oublier est celle de la famille.

Dans la famille, on parle moins de “quoi et combien”, mais plutôt de “pourquoi”, “comment”, et “pour qui”.

Mon livre, Changer votre vision de l’entreprise familiale, a comme titre secondaire “Cessez de travailler dans votre entreprise familiale et travaillez plutôt sur votre famille entrepreneuriale.”

À un certain point, le “leadership” de l’entrerprise et de la famille doit reconnaître que la compagnie est un ACTIF qui appartient à la famille, mais que leur vrai héritage passera par les membres de leur famille, peu importe ce qui se passe avec l’entreprise au fil du temps.

J’aimerais souligner un point important ici. Je ne parle pas de situations noires ou blanches. Je ne recommande pas d’abandonner l’un pour se lancer dans l’autre.

Mais étant donné que c’est souvent la famille qui écope, et que travailler dans la business est plus “motivant, fun, et facile” et que c’est plus naturel et ça fait partie de nos réflexes, on doit parfois se forcer à regarder l’importance de la famille et la prioriser.

Il doit avoir de la place en masse dans la famille, pour tous et chacun, peu importe leur contribution à l’entrerprise.

 

/by
,

Driven to Commit Patricide (Part 2 of 2)

When we left off last week, I was in the courthouse bathroom, having texted my wife about my surreal elevator ride up with the accused murdered. As I went to wash up, I sensed someone entering behind me. Yes, you guessed it, it was my “new friend”.

I thought about our similarities; same generation, only son of a relatively wealthy, successful man, a father with whom we did not always see eye-to-eye, having spent decades trying to live up to our parents’ expectations. Each of us had lost our fathers within the past decade, albeit under very different circumstances (cancer vs bludgeoning).

I tried to put myself in his shoes here today, and wondered about how I would feel, on trial for having killed my father, and having pleaded not guilty.

Had I been unfairly accused of killing my father, faced with serious jail time, I am reasonably certain that I would not have looked so calm, serene and, I daresay, happy.

Something didn’t compute in my head, there was a disconnect between what I was seeing and the vibe that I was getting, with what I had expected to see. In just a few minutes, my mind was made up, and in my head I had already found this man guilty.

In my heart, however, I was less certain. The stories that came up during the testimony of many witnesses over months of the trial painted a picture of the murder victim that made it very hard to accept that the “good guy”, the son, could go to jail for a long time for getting rid of the “bad guy”, the father.

The rest of the day was relatively uneventful, and the trial continued for another few weeks before the case was given to the jury. They came back with their guilty verdict after 4 days, the announcement met with shock and disbelief.

The case may be coming back on appeal in the fall, meanwhile my “friend” is behind bars, having already once been denied bail pending that appeal. There may be more courtroom drama coming, but we have plenty to chew on already, and hopefully some lessons we can learn.

No, this will not be about how to get away with murder, but more about the ways that wealthy families can go about their business and family lives without the murder instinct ever being triggered.

Parents usually control the family wealth, doing so as their children grow up and mature. There is often a tendency to want to continue to control not just the wealth, but also the children, for far longer than what would normally be considered a healthy and useful time period.

“It’s for their own good”, we tell ourselves as parents, “I know what is best for them, and I have their best interests at heart”. Besides, I worked so hard/waited so long myself (choose one, or both).

It takes a heck of a lot of courage to let go of that control, and to trust that the job we did as parents will be sufficient to allow our children to assume increasing amounts of decision making over the family’s wealth.

We have strayed from the case at hand to some generalities here, but that was always my intention.

“How could this family tragedy have been avoided” may be the specific question, but “how can families learn from the mistakes of others” is what I am really after here.

The natural order of things is for the older generation to die before their children, and thankfully this is usually the case. Having the children wish for their parents’ early demise is one thing, patricide quite another.

Transitioning family wealth, and the decision-making and control around that wealth seem far less intuitive, and not necessarily part of any “natural order”.

From my view, this was not a case of killing someone to get at their money. A son who finally snapped after having been controlled and belittled for his whole life, by a bitter man who clearly had issues in his own family of origin?

That would be my sad conclusion.

/by

Driven to Commit Patricide (Part 1 of 2)

There was a court case in New Brunswick (Canada) last year that really attracted my attention. It was a murder trial, the result of the bludgeoning death of a high profile, wealthy man, just one province away from my home, and not too far from our family cottage.

What also raised my interest was that even though the murder dated back to 2011, the arrest was only made in 2013, and the trial was finally set to begin in September 2015.

Since I work with business families and families of wealth, the fact that the man being tried was the victim’s only son also piqued my curiosity. A person driven to commit patricide, wow, you don’t see that every day, certainly not in small town New Brunswick.

Instead of recounting the background details of this case, here is a link to a National Post story from Christie Blatchford, who has covered her share of newsworthy trials.

Trial of Dennis Oland, accused of murdering millionaire father, reveals dysfunctional family

This news account came after the first day of the long awaited trial, so it sets the stage nicely without giving away the ending.

I began following the trial on Twitter when it began in September. There were a handful of local journalists who attended every day, and they gave their followeres a blow-by-blow account of every courtroom interaction, day in day out, week after week.

Then one day in November, I was at my cottage, and I decided to take a two-hour drive to check things out for myself. I had no idea what a surreal experience I was in for.

I told myself that I needed to take this trip, as sort of a research project, because how many more chances would I get to have a front seat at a murder trial making headlines.

The trial that day was set to begin at 1:30 PM, so I left the cottage to make the drive to St.John around 11 AM. I parked my car around 1:15, having underestimated the time the drive would take.

I hurried to the courthouse and suddenly realized that I had no idea where I was going or even whether I would be allowed in. I noticed a small group of reporters outside, waiting, with cameras, for the arrival of the man on trial.

I approached the front door and noticed the security system, not unlike what you would see at any airport. I acted like I knew what I was doing, removed my watch and belt, and made my way through the metal detector. Once on the other side, I gathered my things, and while putting my belt back on, I saw a familiar face, a few years younger than me.

“Hey, who is that guy, he looks familiar?” I thought to myself. “Oh, that’s right, it’s the guy who’s on trial, that’s where I know that face from”. (WTF!?) The smiling man came through security right behind me, with his lawyer, and he politely said hello to the courthouse staff and headed for the elevator.

I suddenly realized that I still didn’t know where I was going, and I didn’t want to ask, trying to look like I belonged there, not like some interloper. So without thinking about it too much, I raced for the elevator to join the party of two, knowing that the floor I wanted was also the one that they were going to.

A few hours ago I was at my cottage, and now I was riding in an elevator with an accused killer and his lawyer. The things I wouldn’t do to learn more about business families and the dysfunctions they breed.

The elevator stopped and I allowed them to exit ahead of me. I noticed a buzzing courtroom in front of us, and decided to try and find a bathroom.

During my visit to the facilities, I texted my wife about my surreal elevator ride, and she quickly responded, asking whether my “new friend” had been shackled and handcuffed. “No, but no worries either, he doesn’t have any reason to want to kill me”.

To be continued next week.

/by

Family Business Flashback

Last week I was called upon to do the “good son” thing, and I obliged and brought my mother 6 hours down highway 401 for the funeral of her eldest brother. Meeting up with many cousins that I have lost touch with stirred up long forgotten memories.

The reflections that events bring about are only useful if we take the time to process them, and so thank you for accompanying me on this journey. I will try my best to make this entertaining and educational for you as well, as usual.

The flashback begins in the late 1970’s, when, as a teenager, I began my first summer job, working in the plant of the steel fabrication business that my father founded before I was born. The funeral that I attended last week was for the plant manager, uncle Stu.

My immdediate supervisor that summer was my cousin Mark, from my Dad’s side, and his boss, the plant manager, was my mother’s brother Uncle Stu.

Uncle Stu had initially been a partner with my Dad in the business, but somewhere along the way, during the early days and the struggle to attain profitability, Dad ended up buying out both of his partners.

I was still a kid while this was unfolding, so the details of how things went down are not clear to me, but I can tell you that, decades later, the relationship between these brothers-in-law was never the same.

My mother is a saint to me, and to learn that she was not 100% sold on making the trip to her brother’s funeral says a lot about how their relationship was strained. Going into business with family members can have its drawbacks, especially in the family harmony department.

So during this first week as a teenager in the plant, I soon realized that everyone knew who I was, because my Dad was the big boss. Uncle Stu would walk through the shop at least twice each day, and clearly everyone knew who he was too. His slow, determined gait, coupled with his menacing gaze, were hard to ignore.

Not that Dad’s trips through the plant were easy to miss, but the contrast, in retrospect, was huge. Dad’s pace and style was more “bull in a China shop”, but he was also more likely to stop and talk to someone after catching them doing something right. Of course you never knew if you were getting a compliment or catching hell until he was done.

So here I am, 15 years old, running this huge drill machine, with a whole 5 minutes of training. Everyone knows who I am, I know my cousin Mark and nobody else, except everyone’s bosses, my Uncle Stu and my Dad, who come through every once in a while.

Some seemingly random guy with a beard, a few years older than me (I had just started shaving) stops by to chat with me. I realize a few days later that the guy was my cousin, Uncle Stu’s son, Fred, who I had never seen with a beard until then.

So all these thoughts are going through my head during the funeral, while Fred is eulogizing his Dad, and I am sitting next to Uncle Stu’s youngest sister, my Mom, who is surely reflecting on their shared and complex past.

But the biggest flashback was still to come, after the ceremony, when guests were invited to share a bite to eat and continue sharing memories. Mom had another brother and a sister, both of whom have passed on, who owned neighbouring cottages on a lake, where we often visited them during the summers of my childhood.

Jim, a decade or so older than me, who had married one of my cousins, reminded me that as a youngster, I had confided in him at the cottage by the lake, that “I don’t wanna do what my Dad does”.

I do not remember sharing that thought with him, or anyone else for that matter. But I do remember thinking it, many, many times.

Family business. Plenty of drama for the whole family.

Rest in peace Uncle Stu.

/by

 Does Father REALLY Know Best?

The expression “Father knows best” probably came before the TV show of the same name. But I could be wrong. I always thought that Yogi Berra was a nickname based on the cartoon character, but now I am pretty sure it was the other way around.

The subject of fatherly advice came to me this week as I listened to a presentation by a guest speaker, a well-known wine maker, at a Toronto client dinner hosted by JC Clark Investments.

I was invited to the dinner by the good folks at JC Clark as their guest despite not yet being a client of theirs. Not only that, I was lucky enough to be seated next to the speaker during dinner, and learned a good deal about the art and science of vinification.

Our speaker talked at length about the way he got where he is today, which was by no means a straight line, and how many times he relied on the same pieces of advice that he had received from his father.

His Dad had counselled him to always learn from the best, and to never be afraid to ask for help. He related a handful of occasions when these principles helped him make key advances in his career.

This also had me flash back to a time about a decade ago, when I was watching the stock market on a daily basis, and therefore also reading publications directed at investors like myself.

My favourite read was Richard Russell’s Dow Theory Letters. He was already well into his 80’s when I discovered him, and I can’t tell you how often he related the story about how he got started in finance.

His father, he repeated often, told him to go work for the banks. When he asked “why?” his Dad replied, “Because that’s where the money is”. This man then spent over 6 decades of his career based on some early key fatherly advice.

These days I have been putting some of my father’s advice into practice, and interestingly enough, there are some similarities with his words of wisdom and those of the speaker’s dad.

I recall when we went from being a steel fabricator that sent almost all of its finished products out to others to be hot-dip glavanized, to Dad’s ambitious move to design and build our own in-house galvanizing facility.

Steel fabrication is something he knew well, having apprenticed in that in Austria as a teenager. But setting up a plant around a huge tank to melt zinc (to over 800 degrees) to then dip the finished pieces of steel into a bath of liquid zinc was quite another endeavour.

One of his first moves was to join the American Hot Dip Galvanizers Association, an organization that connected him to many experts who knew the field much better than him, and he in turn learned from some of the best.

This idea of collaborating, getting help from others and in turn sharing knowledge with a larger group was something that came naturally to him.

I have followed that path myself over recent years. Just because I had worked in my own family’s business, did that automatically make me qualified to consult to other families in business? Some people do just that, but for me it was not nearly enough.

I have joined the Family Firm Institute, the Purposeful Planning Institute, the Canadian Association of Family Enterprise, and of course the Institute of Family Enterprise Advisors. In addition, I have taken courses in conflict resolution, coaching, and Bowen family systems theory.

Dad’s advice has been serving me well recently.

You may not have noticed that the men in the stories above were all following their fathers’ advice in situations where Dad had nothing personal to gain from their sons’ actions.

Unfortunately, in business families, there are still too many occasions where Dads (and Moms) give their children advice, but in many ways that advice is self-serving.

“Go find something you love to do” and “come and work for me, you will love it” may sound similar to the person speaking, but to the listener there is a huge difference.

Yes, huge.

 

 

/by
,

Tell it to the Judge (Part 2 of 2)

Last week my intention was to write a single blog about this subject, but then things didn’t go as planned, because there was just too much “stuff” I needed to cover to do the topic justice.

So I cut things off at a point where I was hitting my self-imposed word limit (around 700) and figured that sleeping on the subject for another 6 days would truly inspire me to wrap things up in a fantastic crescendo finish. We shall see.

At the end of part 1, Tell it to the Judge (Part 1 of 2) we had begun to look at how parents are judged.

My argument was that the only people who are truly in a position to judge the parenting abilities of anyone, are their “subjects”, i.e. the children that they raised.

In the same way that my sisters and I are the best possible judges of the parenting abilities of our mother and father, my parenting abilities can only really be properly judge by my children

Assuming you buy into my argument (thanks!), let’s look at some of the issues this also brings up. The first one is the timing. When are they actually in a position to judge?

An infant will judge Mommy and Daddy by how quickly they change a soiled diaper or give them a bottle when they are hungry. Many years later in life, they may judge their parents by what has been left to them in the parents’ last will and testament.

That potentially leaves a LOT of time in between, and there are many points where their opinions of their parents can and will change.

Many people agree that the teenage years are the most challenging for parents, and so asking teens to judge and evaluate their parents could lead to some interesting responses.

A lot of adults will look back at the time when they were teens as a period when they did not appreciate their parents enough. It takes a certain amount of maturity to fully get the fact that discipline imposed by parents pays off in the long run.

By the time you hit the point where you realize that you need to worry more about your parents than they do about you, you are certainly mature enough to judge the job that they did raising you.

So what is this fascination that I have with judgement of parents all about? Allow me to try to sum it up. I believe that the “job” of parents is to take parenting seriously, and to make rasing their children a top priority in their lives.

As an advisor to business families, I get to meet with many people who have made running and growing their business a higher priority than parenting. I also believe that many of the people who have put business above family will eventually regret it.

The book I wrote in 2014, SHIFT your Family Business, had this as its secondary title: “Stop working IN your family business, Start working ON your business family. It is kind of my “go to” message.

The good news is that it is never too late to make that shift. But it does require courage. Running a business also takes courage, but sometimes it is easier to be courageous in the cutthroat world of business than amongst your family.

I don’t know why that is, but I just feel like I see it too often for it not to be true.

It also takes courage to ask your children to give you feedback on your parenting. I know that most parents will never ask their kids this type of question, and I suppose some people would call me crazy for even suggesting it.

I like to think that I am doing a good job as a parent, but if I never ask my kids what they think, how will I know?

Why should I care? Because I take my job as a parent seriously. And their feedback can help me do it better. But do I have the courage to ask them? Stay tuned to this space for the answer.

 

/by
,

Tell it to the Judge (Part 1 of 2)

Lately the subject of “judging” has been recurring in my life and thoughts, and therefore also in my blogs. Since there are so many ways to look at judges and judgement, my view is that discussion of this subject will always be worthwhile.

Three weeks ago, we looked at being “judicious” versus being “judgemental” in the blog Judgement, Not Judgement. A couple of weeks prior, I related the wonderful experience of serving as a judge in the Family Enterprise Case Competition, in Vermont, a Global Hub? What the FECC?

There will also be an upcoming blog about a court case, featuring a real judge. I actually went and sat in the courtroom at a murder trial for a day, a few months ago. It was a case of patricide that made national headlines, and I am looking forward to sharing that experience with readers.

This week’s post is about who gets to judge, and in what context. Pope Francis, before getting involved in the US Presidential campaign, was becoming known for saying the phrase “Who am I to judge?” when asked about various people in various circumstances.

Some people were not happy with this seeming abdication of the “responsibility” to pass judgement on what is right and what is wrong, but I think that he may be on to something.

So if even someone as high up the totem pole as the Pope is able to withhold judgement, who does get to judge?

As is so often the case, it is all about the context. One of my favourite mantras is “Give me context”. This is where our friends the economists would substitute, “It depends”.

So let’s leave behind the warm and fuzzy “listen without judgement”, “who am I to judge”, and “stop being so judgemental” and move to what is ultimately THE context that I take closest to heart, that of a business family.

In Parenting and Family Business Leadership, we looked at how people play the dual roles of business leader and parent. Today I want to extend that concept to how these separate roles are judged as being fulfilled successfully or not.

The easier place to begin is with the business. It seems pretty simple to judge the performance of a business, because there are a multitude of quantitative factors that everyone and anyone can easily see.

Is the business profitable, is it growing, are its customers satisfied? How many people does it employ, how many locations does it have, how many countries do they do business in. The list is literally endless.

So it is relatively easy to judge a business, but does that mean it is just as easy to judge the business leader? I think not. Now it can get trickier, because when you want to look at the personal leadership qualities of the person leading the business, the things that people consider become much more qualitative in nature.

Let’s jump over to the family side before we run out of racetrack. The dual roles of business leader and parent are difficult to balance, most people will agree with that.

But how do we judge the role of the parent? As a parent, when I observe other parents dealing with their children, it is sometimes hard NOT to judge them, at least internally, and compare how they handle a situation with how we would have done so.

Ultimately, the best judges of anyone’s parenting abilities are their children.

That is the biggest, deepest thought that has struck me recently, and I haven’t seen it, read it, or heard it anywhere.

If, and it is a big “if”, parenting is something that you wish to do well, the only true judges that matter in your evaluation are your own children. Their judgement is the only one that can ever matter.

Of course this now gets us into so many other questions, especially around the timing and methods of getting their evaluation and judgement of us, their parents.

We will pick this up again next week. Meanwhile, hug your kids and try to stay on their good side.

 

/by

Brainstorming your Family Legacy

The word “legacy” can conjure up a variety of thoughts and opinions, because everyone has their own take on what it is, as well as what it should be.  When you add “family” to it, and raise the subject of “family legacy”, there is even more disparity in the responses evoked.

I recently took part in a training program at the Canadian Institute for Conflict Resolution, during which we took turns leading a group brainstorming exercise. Given free reign to use the subject of our choice, I decided to pose the question “what is family legacy?” to see what I might learn from my small group.

As someone who thinks about (and talks about) this subject on a regular basis, I thought it would be interesting to hear what a group of strangers, most of whom did not come from a business family, might have to offer on the topic.

They were all between 25 and 55, most worked for the government (this was in Ottawa), and I am reasonably certain that none of them came from what one might term a “legacy family”.

The exercise was a success, insofar as I filled up five sheets of flipcharts and stuck them to the wall, with around 40 different words that came up from the group.

When brainstorming, one of the main rules is that there is no debating what is a good or bad suggestion, it’s just an open “brain dump” where what one person blurts out will hopefully tweak something in the brain of another, and spur even more ideas.

Some of the expected and positive words that came out were:

–         Traditions; Reputation; Loyalty

–         Money; Memories; Trust

–         Supportive; Caring; Community

Of course there were also some negative ideas that surfaced, such as:

–         Dysfunction; Limiting; Stressful

–         Gossip; Meddling; Conflicts

–         Secrets; Façades; Bullshit

A brainstorming exercise is normally just the first step in a longer facilitated process, designed to get people working together, overcome inertia, and put a bunch of the pieces of the puzzle on the table to get going.

The real work comes next, when you take the ideas gathered and start organizing them, debating their merits, and figuring out what you are going to do with that information.

Working with a real family, the follow up question, “what is OUR family legacy?” would have been an obvious next step.

There is a big difference between personal legacy and family legacy, but when the founder of a business family is still around, a large portion of the family legacy naturally comes directly from that person.

In order to create a true family legacy, the key is to start when the founder can still contribute, and in fact OWN the process.

The family needs to capture the major values, traits, and principles of that person and then figure out how to make sure that they are preserved and transferred down to the following generations. If this is done correctly at this point, the succeeding generations will then have the task of maintaining the legacy that has been established.

Of course none of this just happens all by itself.  Someone needs to care enough to first stop and think about it, talk about it, figure out what needs to be done, decide who needs to be involved, and get things moving forward.

In the long run, the family must also figure out how they are going to make decisions together, how they are going to communicate, and how they are going to solve problems together. All of this generally falls under the heading of “family governance”.

If you are the founder, what you do before you go is really all you can do. Once you are gone, it will all be in the hands of others. If you want to leave a family legacy, building the financial assets is just the first part, and some say the easier part.

Keeping the family together after you are gone, wow, that’s the tough part.  It can be done, but like I said above, it won’t happen all by itself.

Essentially, you need to stop working in your family business, and start working on your business family.  Intrigued?  Check out: www.ShiftYourFamilyBusiness.com. It is my #1 book recommendation.  I also like the website.

Need help getting started?  sl@stevelegler.com

/by