La communication: au curling, comme en famille

Le hockey est généralement considéré comme LE sport canadien où nos équipes nationales gagnent souvent les plus grands tounois, tant chez les hommes que chez les femmes. Mais il y a un autre sport d’hiver où nos équipes canadiennes gagnent la médaille d’or encore plus souvent que nos hockeyeurs.

Grâce au titre de ce blogue, vous avez sans doute deviné que je parle du curling. Ce sport m’intrigue depuis une quarantaine d’années et, puisque toute ma famille y est présentement très impliquée, je continue à le suivre de près.

Mes deux enfants jouent sur le circuit provincial juvénile, et ma femme est entraîneur de l’équipe de ma fille, donc au cours de chaque hiver, j’assiste à plusieurs bonspiels (tournois). Et quand il y a du curling à la télé, vous pouvez être certain qu’au moins une de nos télés est allumée sur TSN pour regarder les matchs.

Vous commencez peut-être à vous questionner sur ce que le curling pourrait avoir avec la communication, et encore plus sur la communication familiale. Restez avec moi SVP, j’y arrive.

Si vous êtes déjà amateur de curling, vous savez que la communication entre les quatre membres d’une équipe est très importante. Chaque joueur lance deux pierres par bout, pendant que deux de ses co-équipiers balayent (ou non) devant la pierre, et le capitaine (“skip” en anglais) attend dans la maison et crie ses instructions.

Voilà ce qu’on peux voir en regardant n’importe quel match de curling, d’une équipe récréative dans un club le mardi soir, en passant par les juvéniles sur le circuit, et même au championnat du monde.

Dans n’importe quelle entreprise familiale, il y a aussi de la communication de base, mais au lieu du skip qui crie ses instructions, c’est probablement le père qui dit à tous quoi faire. Cela se passe dans presque toutes les familles, de ceux qui ont un simple petit restaurant, en passant par ceux qui ont des centaines d’employés et qui sont à la deuxième ou troisième génération, et même dans les familles dynastiques.

Mais là nous allons commencer à regarder un peu les nuances. L’équipe qui joue dans une ligue hebdomadaire, pour le simple plaisir, ne communique pas beaucoup plus qu’il le faut, et c’est souvent le skip qui a le plus d’expérience, et c’est lui qui envoie la grande partie des instructions aux autres.

Une petite entreprise familiale agira probablement de façon semblable. Pas plus de discussion qu’il ne faut, et c’est le boss qui dirige.

Mais c’est quand on regarde les championnats de curling à la télévision qu’on voit que le curling est vraiment un sport d’équipe. Oui, ce qu’on entend le plus c’est le skip qui crie fort quand il veut que les balayeurs travaillent plus fort, mais sinon le lancer serait raté.

Mais le curling est devenu le meilleur sport télévisé quand ils ont mis des micros sur les joueurs, ce qui donne aux amateurs la chance d’écouter toutes les discussions entre les membres des équipes.

Imaginez si on pourrait voir et écouter les Rockefellers, les Desmarais, les Irvings, et les Molsons quand ils se communiquent concernant les décisions qui entourent leurs familles et leurs compagnies. Ça serait fort intéressant.

En ce qui concerne le curling, je peux vous dire sans équivoque que les meilleures équipes des plus hauts niveaux ont du succès en grande partie grâce à la façon don’t ils prennent leurs décisions et comment ils communiquent entre eux durant les parties.

Ces équipes ont compris qu’ils gagneront ou perdront en équipe, et que ce n’est pas une seule personne qui a le monopole sur les décisions et surtout sur l’information qui doit être échangée entre les co-équipiers pendant que la pierre est en mouvement.

Je regarde mes enfants jouer et je suis fier de dire qu’ils font de gros efforts pour toujours mieux communiquer sur la glace, et ils s’améliorent avec chaque partie.

Est-ce que votre famille entrepreneuriale pourrait apprendre quelque chose sur l’importance de la communication en écoutant le curling?

Peut-être que oui.

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Martin Luther King – Family Business Sage?

This past week it was Martin Luther King Day in the US. This prompted a number of comments and mentions on social media, some of which were very educational and enlightening.

I am always on the lookout for blog inspirations, but this one caught me by surprise. I know that Martin Luther King made lots of inspiring speeches and was instrumental in moving race relations forward in the US, even if a lot of work remains to be done.

What I had never expected was to read one of his quotes and instantly have an “A-Ha” moment relating to family business, or, more importantly, business families.

Here is what someone tweeted last Monday, along with a photo of MLK:

“We must learn to live together as brothers or we will perish together as fools”.

I talk a lot about the importance of creating harmony within families, and it seems to me that his words “learning to live together as brothers” was intended to conjur up images of the prototypical “one big happy family”, even if such families are not really as common as one would hope.

The assumption is that within a family, strong bonds, based on brotherly love, should help everyone want to work together to remain a strong family. When one family member is sick or weak, the others pitch in, because they are family, and eventually they may need help and will expect the same.

Many business families take advantage of this “familiness” and use it to benefit not only their family, but also their business. Telling the world that your company is a “Family Company” seems to be “in” lately, and of course I applaud this concept.

But what about the second part of Dr. King’s quote? What is he getting at with “perish together as fools”? My guess is that with respect to the American people and the variety of different races represented within, if this great country were to be torn apart because they could not learn to get along, very few others would pity them.

When you live in what many believe is one of the greatest countries in the world, if you fall off your perch, few will feel sorry for you. In fact, they will likely look at you with derision, and assume that you must have been fools to “blow it”.

And what about business families, and their cousins, families of wealth (for lack of a better term)?

Are there any well known families that you know of where you are, who have been around for at least a couple of generations? When do you hear or read about them? Sometimes, it is when they do something good, like giving to a philanthropic cause. These types of news stories have a very short news cycle.

But what about family feuds, lawsuits, siblings suing each other, family vs. family court cases? They are often fascinating, like a car accident that you just cannot look away from. And they can go on for months and years.

What do we think about when we think about the members of those families? Fools? Why couldn’t they just “live together as brothers”?

When you “perish together as fools” there will be plenty of finger-pointing, happy lawyers on both sides, and enough fractured relationships to last a few generations in your family.

Not many people will feel sorry for you, because you were lucky enough to get to that high perch first.

Please try to put a bit more effort into the “living together as brothers” part of the quote. It will be well worth it.

When things start to go badly between family members, they rarely get better on their own. It takes work, and usually a neutral outsider, to help get things going in the right direction, to help create the harmony you need, to support the legacy you want.

Or you can choose to perish together as fools. It’s your choice.

 

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A small gallery

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University Case Competition: Family Business Style

Last week the place to be was Burlington, Vermont.  I happened to be right in the thick of it for the first couple of days, and my experience was nothing but positive. So what was going on there that was so special?

For the third year in a row, the University of Vermont hosted the Global Family Enterprise Case Competition (#FECC15) at the Burlington Hilton and on their beautiful campus. It is the only competiton of its kind on the planet.

When they say “global”, they are not kidding either. While about half of the teams came from North America (including 4 from Canada and 2 from Mexico) there were competitors on hand from Europe, South America, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and the UK, and I may have missed some.  Sixteen schools sent Undergraduate teams, and eight schools were represented in the Graduate league.

I have seen many business cases over the years, dozens during my undergrad and hundreds while doing my MBA, but I never read any cases like the ones used in this competition.  I was lucky enough to be a judge on the first two days, and I can say that the cases that the students had to present solutions for were like no business cases I had ever even imagined reading.

The competitors had a full seven days to prepare the first case, so they all had plenty of time to figure out what they were going to propose, how the were going to structure their presentations, and which teammates would be responsible for which sections.

The second and third cases, as well as the final on Saturday, were set up so that each team of three students would only have 4 hours from the time they received the case to the time they were required to present their viewpoints to a panel of “esteemed” judges.

But let me get back to the cases, because it can’t really be a family enterprise case competition if the cases are not situations that only a real family business would face.  I was only privy to the first two cases, but they were both fantastic examples of what successful family businesses face as they go from one generation of managers and owners to the next.

The first case was about a third-generation (G3) family who had been trying to write their family constitution for a few years already, without success, despite hiring a few consultants to help guide them. The four teams in the division that I was judging all came at their solutions in a different way.  Not only that, but each team brought up at least one issue that none of the other three had mentioned.

On day two, the teams were now faced with the time crunch of only having 4 hours to prepare, from the time they received the case until they had to begin their presentation.  But despite the fact that they had very little time, the solutions that I got to see and hear were quite remarkable.

This case involved a group of G4 siblings who were worried that their children (G5) were not showing enough interest in getting involved in the business. During the judges preparation meeting, I pointed out that the average age of the judges was likely close to the ages of the G4’s in the case, while the ages of the G5’s in the case was close to that of the competitors whose solutions we would be hearing.

It was a fantastic experience for me, as well as the judges that I worked with; I can only imagine how great the week was for those who came to compete.

The undergrad finalists included 3 Canadian schools and one from Chile, with Carleton U’s Sprott School of Business taking top spot in the final round over Dalhousie.  The winners of the Graduate section were from Jonkoping Unviversity of Sweden

I hope to take part again next year, at the 4th Annual FECC, in January, 2016.

 

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A Good Will Should Leave No Ill-Will

Sometimes when I come up with a blog topic, I end up spending a lot of time trying to get just the right title to make it sound intriguing. I have to say that the title above feels like it works.

Unfortuntely, though, sometimes the “right” title ends up being far from the original thought that inspired the blog in the first place. No problem there, as explaining the link between the spark and the title can be used productively as part of the story telling. Here goes.

I have written on the subject of wills in the past, and I invariably reference the work of Toms Deans each time I do, since his book “Willing Wisdom” is the best work that I have read on the subject, and not just because his thinking is well aligned with mine. Deans talks about a “collaborative will”, as in a document that is worked on together with the entire family.

In his speeches about the subject, he openly admits that his point of view is not shared by the majority of his audience, at least when they first hear it. He regales his listeners with stories of outright derision that he feels in his Q & A sessions, where people actually tell him that they think his ideas are crazy.

Let’s get back to the idea that originally sparked this blog post. I was actually watching my favourite reality TV show, Survivor, when it came to me. The show has been on since 2000, and they normally run two seasons per year, and they will be debuting the 30th season in the coming weeks. It has definitely stood the test of time.

What makes the show compelling is the element of human interaction and the way that people are forced to work together at first, but then eventually vote each other off the show in order to win the million dollar prize. The formula is superb, and results in fascinating TV for the whole family. We have been watching it as a family for many years.

For me the most fascinating part is the psychological component, as we get to see groups of people conspire together, planning to get rid of various opponents each week. As the numbers get smaller, people who previously worked together end up working against each other, but often on the surface they seem to still be working together.

These situations invariably end up with someone being voted out in what is always deemed a “blind-side”. In every version of Survivor, especially in the final 6 to 8 weeks of the season, several people are voted out in situations that they never saw coming.

The participants head off to the ritual of “Tribal Council” where they answer a few questions from host Jeff Probst, and then they each go and secretly write down the name of the person they want to vote out. This is normally preceded by a whole bunch of deception, double-talk, lying, acting out, arguing, crying, whatever.

In the early episodes of each season, the people voted out are not that surprised that they were selected, and they generally leave with their feelings intact. But as they get closer to the end, the ones voted out are often surprised, because they feel deceived by people they thought they could trust.

OK, so what does this have to do with a will again? Thanks for asking.

After you die, your family will go through the ritual of reading your will. Do you want your loved ones to be blind-sided? They probably think that they can trust you too. If they are surprised, they may feel hurt.

There are reasons why you have decided to leave things the way that you did, and they are (hopefully) good reasons. But, if you are no longer around to explain your reasons, and they are somehow misunderstood, you may leave someone feeling blind-sided. A good will should leave no ill-will.

 

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Put On your Own Mask First

Anyone who has ever been on a commercial airline flight will have heard the safety procedures over and over, to the point where some feel like they could repeat the demonstation themselves from memory.

Thankfully for me, I do not fly as often as I once did, and I have almost trained my brain to be able to tune the instructions out, especially since most of my flights originate in Montreal, so I get to hear the message repeated in English and French.

There is a nugget of wisdom in the standard message though, which applies to life in general, and not simply to what you should do in the event of a loss of cabin pressure.

Although I have yet to experience an incident in which those famous oxygen masks instantly drop from overhead, I am 100% certain that I would obey the directive that I first put on my own mask, before attempting to help others to put theirs on.

Quite simply, if you have not made sure that you are taken care of, you may soon be unable to help anyone else. Let’s look at some other areas in life where this is also the case.

One of my all-time favourite speakers was Zig Ziglar (1926-2012), motivator extraordinaire. I used to love to listen to his tapes, with his southern accent, going on about how motivation is important, but is not a one-time thing, like getting a vaccination. It was more like hygiene, something you need to do a little bit of, every day.

In one of the first lectures of his that I heard, he spoke about his need to lose weight, because he was about to become a motivational speaker, and he realized that his credibility would be very low if he got up on stage and everyone’s first impression was “what is this ol’ fat boy gonna teach me?”

I was also a big fan of the Sopranos TV series, where Tony Soprano often visited his psychiatrist, Dr. Jennifer Melfi. I remember being intrigued the first time that they showed her visiting with her shrink. Hmm, the shrink has her own shrink, interesting.

Of course I also now understand that good coaches have their own coaches, and these relationships are sometimes symbiotic, and create a win-win situation.

There is an area that I am currently working on personally too, which is integral to my work with families, and it comes from Bowen theory. Dr. Murray Bowen (1913-1990) was an American psychiatrist who carried out some ground-breaking work in the 50s, 60s and 70s.

He began by working with schizophrenia patients, but soon found that his theories also applied to almost all families. His Bowen family systems theory is based on the premise that the person in the family who is deemed to be “sick” is best treated as part of the entire family system.

The “problem” does not reside “within” this person, but is more likely caused by the interactions of this person with the other members of the family system.

The term “systems theory” is used in many fields, notably in medecine, and is all about how changes in one area undeniably cause changes in other areas as well, since the entire “system” has many inter-related components.

I am currently half way through a course on Bowen theory, and I find it fascinating. I had an A-Ha moment during our December class on the family projection process, and I am still coming to terms with some of the things that I am learning about myself, and the way that I am, thanks to the relationships that I had and have with my family of origin.

I am working on better understanding myself, and it is a process, like everything. But that’s alright, as I am very much a “journey” kind of guy, as opposed to a “destination” guy.

I have put my mask on, and I am breathing normally, so that I can now help anyone else put on their mask too.

 

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Gray Is My Favourite Colour

I had lunch with a friend a couple of weeks ago, and it turned out that we had a mutual acquaintance. “Bryan” told me that he and “Larry” had recently had a long discussion about things that are actually truly “black and white”. I wish I had been there, because to me, “everything is gray” as I told him.

There is a folder in my email account in which I keep blog ideas, and I have had the idea for this blog about “grayness” in there for the longest time, so I figured it was now time to give it a go.

The title of today’s installment is a line from the 1998 Counting Crows song, “Mr. Jones”, which has long been one of my favourites. The song mentions “all of the beautiful colours are very very meaningful” and the singer continues, “Gray is my favourite colour”.

I have always loved gray, and not just because you can spell it gray or grey, it goes with everything too!

But let’s get back to gray versus black and white. I believe that between black and white there are over 49 different shades of gray. I have not read the famous book, nor have I spotted it on my wife’s nightstand.

But seriously, very few things are 100% in life, either black or white. As part of my former life when I personally managed the portfolios of our family office, I had printed out a copy of some newsletter writer’s “Twenty Rules for Traders”.

The list, which included one rule that said something like “You must always follow the rules”, later concluded that you needed “To know when you should ignore the rules and break them.” OK then.

Many people really like things to be black or white, because it actualy makes things a lot simpler when  making decisions is clear and rules-based. But there are inevitably exceptions that come up, and that is when you need to exercise judgement. As you may have noticed, not everyone has sound judgement, which can be problematic.

In the family business realm, some advisors learn to rely on certain practices that have worked well with a few clients and then assume that these should be applied as hard and fast rules for all their clients. Yikes, I always worry when advisors are so sure of the solutions before they understand the client.

I don’t have too many non-negotiables, because there are almost always some exceptions that will come up in some situation with some client.

If I did have one such “rule” it would be that before hiring their children to work full time in the family business, parents should insist that the children work for someone else for a few years.

But even though I highly recommend this practice, I am positive that it is not always necessary, and I could point to many cases where it was not done and there were no detrimental effects.

I still remember when I was just about to graduate from McGill and my Dad told me that he had heard from some people at a CAFÉ meeting (Canadian Association for Family Enterprise) about this idea of getting the kids to “go find a real job first”, I was quite excited by it, until he completed his sentence and said “But we’re not gonna do that”.

If you pushed me to find something that is not gray, I guess I would have go to the subject of integrity, because that is where there is no room for any gray.

And I just googled the word “integrity” to find an awesome ending to this post, and look what I found, an entry with two definitions of the word:

  1. The quality of being honest and having strong moral principles.
  2. The state of being whole and undivided.

I can buy that. But gray is still my favourite colour!

 

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Apprendre en lisant; réapprendre en relisant

C’est assez rare que je relis un livre, mais quand je le fais, j’apprends de nouvelles choses à chaque fois. Je devrais donc le faire plus souvent, n’est-ce pas?

Si je ne le fais pas autant que je le devrais, c’est sans doute grâce à un manque de temps. Et aussi, à cause d’un surplus de livres déjà sur mon bureau.

Mais dernièrement, j’ai eu la chance de faire quelque chose que je n’avais jamais fait auparavant. J’ai relu un livre en français que j’avais déjà lu en anglais. C’était vraiment cool, parce que tandis que le contenu était presque complètement pareil, c’était exprimé d’une nouvelle façon.

Ça veut probablement dire que la traduction était très bien faite, et j’ose dire que le livre était sûrement à mon goût si j’ai pris la peine de le relire.

Depuis que j’oeuvre dans le domaine des entreprises familiales, j’ai lu quelques livres sur le sujet, mais celui-ci était le premier que j’ai relu, et en le relisant, je me suis rappellé comment je l’avais aimé la première fois.

Mais quel est ce livre remarquable, vous vous demandez? En anglais, il s’appelle SHIFT your Family Business, c’est sorti en juillet 2014, et son auteur est quelqu’un que je vois souvent, surtout quand je regarde dans le miroir.

J’ai décidé de le faire traduire en français dernièrement, et je venais de recevoir la version française il y a deux semaines environ. Je ne sais pas si je l’aurais relu autrement, surtout pas si vite après l’avoir lu la première fois.

C’était toute une expérience de voir mes textes dans une autre forme que laquelle je les avais écrits, mais c’était très agréable de lire un livre qui avait un contenu avec lequel j’étais tellement d’accord!

Puisque les mots n’étaient pas les miens, j’oubliais parfois que l’idée était de vérifier si la traductrice avait bien saisi mes pensées et qu’elle avait bien réussi à les exprimer de nouveau en français.

Mais en même temps, j’ai eu une nouvelle appréciation pour ce que j’avais accompli du premier coup en l’écrivant en anglais. J’espère que l’effort que j’ai investi dans cette traduction aura valu la peine, mais je n’avais pas vraiment le choix, étant donné que je vis au Québec et ce n’est pas tout le monde qui est capable de lire mon livre en anglais.

Ça ne finira pas là non plus, puisque jusqu’ici mon site web est seulement en anglais, sans oublier mes cartes d’affaires!

Ça s’en vient, tranquillement pas vite. En même temps, je consacre mes efforts pour trouver toutes les façons et opportunités pour faire circuler mon message, et je crois que les gens commencent à m’entendre, et ils continueront à m’entendre en 2015.

Je trouve qu’il existe encore trop de familles en affaires qui se concentrent trop sur leur entreprise plutôt que sur leur famille.

Ceux qui offrent leurs services à des PME familiales sont aussi trop concentrés sur l’aspect “compagnie” et pas assez sur l’aspect “famille”.

Ça commence à changer, mais pas assez vite à mon goût.

La version française de mon livre s’intitule “Changer votre vision de l’entreprise familiale. Cessez de travailler dans votre entreprise familiale et travaillez plutôt sur votre famille entrepreneuriale.”

J’espère que la version française sera disponible au mois de février 2015. SHIFT your Family Business est disponible sur Amazon.com et Amazon.ca depuis juillet 2014.

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Would You Like to See the Menu, or the Recipe Book?

Advising family businesses is a growing field, as more people are recognizing what an important part they play in the economy, with all sorts of statistics being bandied about, from the percentage of GDP to the percentage of jobs that they are responsible for.

Still, the vast majority of those who advise these businesses continue to serve mostly the business circle, and not that many actually specialize in the issues that affect the family circle. I have spent about 95% of my life in the business circle, since I was raised to believe that it was the only one that mattered.

As a recent convert to the family circle, I can tell you that it is a very drastic change in perception, and not one that most people comprehend easily. I have committed myself to continue to “preach the gospel” about the importance of taking care of the family dynamics issues before they cause problems.

I had my A-Ha moment almost 2 years ago during the Family Enterpise Advisor course (www.ifea.ca). I first blogged about this in June 2013: https://stevelegler.com/three-circles-seven-sectors-one-a-ha-moment/

Today I want to talk about some of the difficulties I have had when trying to explain just how facilitators, coaches, and mediators like myself fit into the picture, especially when speaking to the advisors who already serve family businesses. In fact, one simple way is to say to them that while they serve the family business, we serve the business family.

Over lunch recently with a colleague who makes his living from selling insurance policies that are used in large and complex trusts for ultra-high-net-worth individuals, he explained to me that it would help me greatly to develop and explain my “process”, so that people like accountants and tax specialists could realize and understand how I add value to their services.

But last week during a similar lunchtime discussion, this time with someone who also works the process side of things (a business transition coach, but who does not typically work with families) I had no trouble getting him to understand my complaint that there is no “recipe” or exact set of steps to this work that can be laid out as “my process”.

I made the analogy of a baker versus a chef. Baking, from my limited experience, is a science, where not following the steps of the recipe exactly will almost surely result in a sub-optimal end result. Family business advising is much more like cooking; think soup, stew, or chili. It is much more of an art, with a variety of ingredients and quantities depeneding on the chef and the season.

A couple of days later, it hit me. It is not a recipe that I need to show people, because even pretending that there is a proper recipe would be wrong. A better analogy would be to show people the menu.

When someone comes into a restaurant, they almost always look at the menu, and rarely ask to see the recipe book. And so it should be for family business advisors.

Then I took it a step or two further. Some restaurants have menus that are so extensive that they actually offer too many choices. What might be even better is a kind of “lunchtime special” menu, where you get a soup or a salad, a choice of 10 main courses, and a cup of coffee.

I know that there are others in this space that may be struggling with getting their message heard in a productive way, and I am a big believer in helping to make the pie bigger.

I want to continue to get the message out to people who work with business families that they not simply assume that the family issues will just take care of themselves, and that the only key client is the business.

The need is huge, even if it has not yet manifested itself as a huge demand. Nobody can “corner the market”, but we can help to grow the demand, by continuing to spread the message.

Would you care to see my lunch specials? Stay tuned.

 

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A Will Outlines the “What”, But Not the “How”

Most people will agree that it is very important for everyone to have a will, and some will go so far as to remind you of the importance of keeping that crucial document up to date.

That is all very well and good, but in my books it is not nearly sufficient. Of course if you still do not have a will, I encourage you to take care of this deficiency ASAP.

By the same token, if you DO have a will, but you have not looked at it or updated it in the last few years, please pull it out and see if it all still makes sense with the reality of your family today.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I have a penchant for analogies, and for this subject I believe I have come up with one that is very à propos.

While it does not lend itself to a good blog title or soundbite, it is nonetheless very important to understand.

Here goes: A will is like a law. Your will tells your heirs what happens to all your assets and possessions. Similarly, a law is a document that describes what is allowed and what is legal, and what is not allowed and illegal.

But laws are written in general terms, and then the laws get turned into regulations. There are people who work for the various governments and departments, whose job it is to turn the laws into rules and regulations, and it is these rules and regulations, not the laws, that are the key to how the laws impact the day-to-day lives of citizens.

So if a will is like a law, and a law depends on its regulations, what does the will depend on? I’m glad you asked!

The lawyer who prepared the will can help the family understand what the will means legally, insofar as who now owns what. A good lawyer, who took the time to get to know and understand his or her client’s wishes and intentions, may even be able to help the family understand WHY things were laid out a certain way.

But I don’t know too many lawyers who will be able to help the family figure out HOW they are going to get along and manage things in the future, now that the dearly departed has actually departed.

Imagine if there were a way that you could help your family work through the questions of HOW they are going to work together after you are gone. Wait, why are you just imagining it, why aren’t you actually doing it?

Now I am not suggesting that this is the kind of discussion that everyone loves to have, far from it. But it is too important to ignore it.

Best-selling author Tom Deans’ second book, Willing Wisdom, gives some very thought-provoking advice, sugesting that everyone review their will annually, and modify the document as needed after having a collaborative discussion with their entire family.

I love the idea, but I acknowledge that it is probably a little extreme for most people. But talking about sex never got anyone pregnant, so talking about death isn’t going to kill you either.

My main point is this: Having an up-to-date will is the bare minimum. The people who are going to have to deal with your assets, and who are going to have to deal with each other, would benefit enormously from understanding not only WHAT you have written in your will, but also WHY you have made the choices that you did.

And furthermore, if you can get them to also comprehend HOW you would like them to work with each other, they could all take advantage of your wisdom, even after you are gone.

The hardest part is getting the conversation started, but the sooner you do, the easier it gets.

/by