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Where’s the Puck: Family Wealth Hockey Analogies

A New Season Is Upon Us, So…

As another season of Canada’s favourite sport begins, it feels like a good time to share some analogies from the world of hockey, that happen to fit nicely with some of my views on the subject of family wealth, and how best to prepare to transition it to future generations.

As a lifelong Montrealer, who was spoiled to be alive for 10 Stanley Cup wins by our beloved Canadiens before I finished High School, hockey holds a special place in my life, and my heart.

Although “Les Glorieux” are approaching three decades of drought, hope springs eternal, although probably not for another couple of seasons, as a roster rebuild is now on.

Our new coach recently said something during a press conference which got me thinking about some hockey analogies to write about here.

Offence Versus Defence

There’s a very simple one we can kick around a bit, about the importance of both offence and defence for a winning team.

If you have lots of scorers and lousy goaltending, you can try to win every game 8-7, but that’s not sustainable.

If you have the best goalie but can’t score, you need to try for a 0-0 tie and hope for the best in overtime.

My wealth analogy includes the risks involved in trying to make lots of money (score goals) versus making sure you don’t lose too much money (defence and goaltending).

Most families that achieve lots of wealth did so by playing exceptional offence for some time, and then need to focus on defence, since that game is played over decades and generations, not three 20-minute periods.

The asset allocation angle version might be the saying, “nobody ever got rich investing in bonds, but lots of people stay rich that way”.

Wayne Gretzky’s Famous Quote

We should also look at the most famous quote from one of the greatest players to ever lace up a pair of skates, Wayne Gretzky:

     “Skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been.”

Indeed, we need to always be looking forward, not backwards, as we think about the wealth the family now owns, and how we plan to transition that wealth into the future.

The thing about intergenerational wealth, though, is that it is INTER generational.

That implies that the people in the current leading generation, who likely control that wealth, won’t be around forever, and so it behooves those folks to look to where not only the puck is going to be, but where the other players on the team will be.

The Guys Without the Puck

The Canadiens had their worst season in decades last year, and fired their coach midstream. Then, they turned heads by hiring someone who’d only ever coached his teenaged kids’ teams.

The team showed new life as he brought a fresh philosophy to the group, and he was then signed to a new long-term contract.

As the team prepared for the new season, during one of his many press conferences, he noted:

 

                         “I don’t coach the guy with the puck.

                          I coach the four guys without the puck. 

                           The guy with the puck is the present. 

                           The other four guys are the future.”

– Martin St. Louis

They Are All On the Team NOW

The team has lots of young players, who are playing alongside more experienced pros, but they’re all on the team now, sharing the ice together.

Yes, there’s a farm team too, preparing some future players who aren’t yet ready, but the “four guys without the puck” are all being coached to play well together now.

Too many families spend too much time concentrating on the guy with the puck, hoping he’ll continue to maintain his scoring prowess forever.

It’s a Team Sport

Working to transition your family’s wealth from one generation to the next is the ultimate team sport.

Coaching the ones who don’t yet have the puck is key, as is having the one with the puck understand that winning the game will involve passing the puck to others.

Learning to play well together is also a big part of success too.

Often the wealth creator had early success in an individual sport more like golf or tennis, where success as a “solo artist” is the major success factor.

Once you bring the family in, get inspired by team examples instead.

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Should I Join My Family Business?

A Big Question, Well Worth Considering

Given the number of family businesses out there, you’d think that the question in the title of this post is pretty common.

Unfortunately, it is not asked nearly as often as it should be, at least not out loud.

This is not to point fingers at those who never took the time to properly consider the question, because if I were doing that, the first person I’d need to point at is me!

I write about all sorts of topics relating to family enterprise here, and yet this one, which seems to involve a very important “go / no go” decision, isn’t one I’ve written a lot about.

 

Forced into the Family Business

I did write Forced into the Family Business back in 2018, and if this post interests you, you’ll likely want to read that one as well.

When I re-read it just now, this line jumped out at me:

      “This assumes that both sides are getting what they need out of it.”

That’s worth thinking about in this context, because if it isn’t going to turn into a win-win situation over the short-, medium-, and long-term, then the answer should probably be a firm NO.

You don’t want to end up in a situation where you somehow get stuck in a place that you cannot get out of, and believe me, it happens, probably more often than you realize.

Some people in these positions even have difficulty admitting it to themselves when it occurs.

(If this resonates, check out the book, Trapped in the Family Business, by my friend Michael A. Klein, PsyD).

 

Things to Clarify Before You Enter

Because you don’t want to end up stuck, you need to make sure that you clarify a lot of matters up front, before you commit.

I’m going to assume here that we’re talking about someone who is at least in their mid-20’s and who has already begun their work career with a job elsewhere.

Otherwise, please go and re-read Forced into the Family Business, which clearly lays out my thoughts on going to work in your family business as your first job, right out of school.

None of this is rocket science of course, and if you think about this choice just like you would consider and ask questions about any other job you might want to pursue, with any other company or organization, you’re already off to a good start.

The biggest problems arise when people “leap before they look”.

 

Employees and Ownership

A key consideration that cannot be overlooked is whether the family company has already decided on whether being an owner of the business, now or in the future, is contingent upon working in the business full time. 

Some companies are very firm on this and are well run because of it, and others sometimes end up in a situation where they wish they had imposed this rule. But it certainly isn’t pervasive, and is usually worth considering at some point for many families.

 

Responsibilities and Reporting

Among the key matters to clarify before joining the family business are what you will be responsible for (the “what”) as well as to whom you will be reporting (the “who”).

Make sure you discuss this in advance, and don’t just talk about your first job there, because presumably you will be there for a long time and handling different roles over time is almost surely part of the plan.

It’s also usually better for you to report to someone who is not related to you, inasmuch as that’s possible.

 

Is There Enough Room for Everyone?

Another question to consider is how many other family members are (or will be) also working there.

A situation that can arise is one where there are just too many family members involved and they start stepping on each others’ toes a lot.

Maybe it’s not a good idea to have “everyone” working together, even if you all get along well. Working together may change that, and not in a good way.

 

The Frog in the Boiling Water

Most people have heard the story about the frog who entered the pot when the water was cool and then couldn’t jump out when the water started boiling.

Most such frogs would probably look back and wish they’d asked a few more questions about the water temperature that they could expect going forward.

The time for asking questions and having deep discussions is before agreeing to work in your family business.

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Varying Time Factors in Each of the Three Circles

Business, Family, and Ownership Each Have Their Own “Clock”.

I’ve been a huge fan of the Three Circle Model since I first saw it almost a decade ago, and wrote about it almost instantly. See Three Circles + Seven Sectors = One A-Ha Moment.

It remains the simplest way to quickly get at so many of the issues that enterprising families face, in a way that just about everyone involved can quickly grasp.

That model from Tagiuri and Davis has been around for over 40 years now, and many people have commented on it, tried to modify it, added circles, changed the sizes of the circles, turned the circles into spheres, etc.

Rarely, however, have I seen much comment around the time elements that affect each of the three areas.

That will change today.

An Old-Fashioned Analog Clock Analogy.

Many of the posts I write here are inspired in one way or another by group discussions that I’ve been part of over Zoom, and this is yet another of those.

This one involved a number of local family business folks who have begun kicking around an idea to host an event next year to celebrate the community in some way.

The call included people from a local university, some practitioners who work with enterprising families (like me), and a few who run some pretty cool family enterprises, who I was happy to meet.

The discussion went all over the place and was all positive, and although I didn’t attend in order to find a blog topic….

When the academic on the call mentioned the Three Circle Model, my ears perked up, because I wasn’t expecting it to come up in this context.

And then he added the part about a clock, and the second hand, the minute hand, and the hour hand.

Bingo!

Flashback and Confusion, But No Time to Argue.

He shared that someone had pointed out to him that you could look at an old-fashioned clock and think of each of the circles as being represented by one of the sweeping hands.

I’m pretty sure I stopped listening at that point because my imagination had taken over. 

I’m not even sure which hand he had assigned to which circle, but that’s probably moot here. I’ve got my own thoughts on that and I’m not sure they agreed with his, but in this context there was no time to argue either.

It also caused a flashback to a post I wrote about ownership and how that’s the circle that changes the least often, so for me it would have to be the one that gets the “hour hand”.  See Clunky Ownership Syndrome in Family Business

What About the Seconds and Minutes?

So what about the second hand and the minute hand, to be assigned to the family and the business?

Well, more often than not, I’d be inclined to say that the business turns at a faster rate, especially when there’s an operating company with lots of employees working there, possibly for many hours every day, possibly even around the clock.

I’d say that the family circle would be best ascribed to the minute hand, because things change there more frequently than in the ownership, but there aren’t necessarily any noticeable changes happening on a frequent basis.

If you have a family genogram with everyone’s age on it, you could update it once a year and never be too far off.

Attention, Focus, and Intention.

You may be wondering what any of this has to do with anything, and if you are still left wanting, (and still reading this!) I’ll share my thoughts on the relevance of this.

Quite often, family members who also work in the business can become overly focused on the business, at the expense of the attention they pay to their family.

They follow that second hand around because it’s moving quickly, and in the time that the business went around the circle five times, the minute hand barely moved, so it’s easy to ignore.

Now extend this analogy to the ownership, and you can barely even notice that anything there needs to even be thought about.

But eventually….

Don’t Get Caught Watching the Clock.

It can be very seductive to pay attention to the fast-moving business circle and forget that the minutes and hours also continue to move along at their own, slower pace.

The other circles, most notably the family circle, also require attention, focus, and intention.

Don’t get seduced by the second hand.

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Thinking Straight When Feelings Are So Strong

A Country Song Sparks a Blog – Again!

Whenever I get an idea for a blog post that allows me to link back to things I’ve written about here in the past, it gives me an extra incentive to try to pull all the pieces together somehow.

Of course, a decade of writing weekly gives me lots to look back on, and sometimes posts I thought were recent turn out to be much older than I recalled.

So a few weeks ago, when I heard a country song on the radio that sparked this week’s missive, I was amazed to discover that it’s been over 6 years since I’ve been inspired that way.

Back in 2016, it was Humble and Kind, which I had heard while driving to a family business function in Atlantic Canada. When that song came on again during my drive back, that sealed it, since so many of the FamBiz folks I’d met were both humble and kind.

Inspirational Simplicity.

I wouldn’t necessarily call myself a big fan of country music, but I have to admit that most of the lyrics are quite simple, and I find that inspirational for a number of reasons.

As someone who regularly tackles subjects that are quite complex, I am constantly trying to write about my ideas in ways that are easy to understand.

When you can already sing along to a song the very first time you hear it, you know that the writer has done something well.

When I wrote Blame it on Cinderella back in 2013, the lyrics of that country song had painted such a vivid picture in my head that I needed to write about the feelings it evoked.

Another Long Drive, Lots of Switching Radio Stations.

So here I was in July 2022, killing time between a conference in Denver and running a family meeting in Denver, with a handful of days in between.

I decided to rent a car and managed to cross another 4 states of my list to visit (48 now, only missing North Dakota and Alaska).

Over those few days, I tuned into lots of different radio stations, and I was not surprised that many of them played country music.

I lost count of how many times I heard Dierks Bentley ask the rhetorical “What Was I Thinking?”, from that 2003 tune.

I’m pretty sure that I’m one of the few listeners who immediately thought about Bowen Family Systems Theory every time I heard it.

Being Driven by One’s Feelings.

The song is about a fellow who ends up in some interesting situations, that make him ask himself the question, “What was I thinking?” each time.

The understanding is that he was clearly NOT thinking, because a thinking person presumably would never have allowed himself to get into all those situations.

In fact, in the line just before that question, he says “I know what I was feeling”.

Murray Bowen came up with his Family Systems Theory (BFST) starting in the late 1950’s and continued to work on it until his death in 1990.

When I began working with business families about a decade ago, I kept hearing about BFST and how it was a great tool to try to master if you are planning to work with families.

One of the most basic concepts in BFST is “Differentiation of Self”, where the idea is to become better at following your thinking rather than your feelings.

Family Situations Evoke Strong Feelings.

When looking for family leadership among members of any generation, you will often discover varying levels of differentiation, where some members are guided by thinking and others are more driven by feelings.

Dr. Bowen would encourage any family to put more faith in those who use their thinking brain more.

He also supports the idea of consciously trying to work on oneself to try to act less based on our feelings, and more on our thinking.

He talks a lot about the subject of anxiety, and the ability to function well even in anxious situations, where it’s clear that being able to remain calm and keep a clear head are hallmarks of the emotional maturity required to be successful.

Families with lots of drama can be extra tricky. 

Great family leadership is essential.

Interdependent Wealth.

If you’re interested in BFST and how I use it when working with families, please pick up a copy of Interdependent Wealth on Amazon.

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You Can’t Start Too Early – Or Can You

It’s Never Too Early nor Too Late – But….

This week we’re going to take a look at a common question that people in my line of work get, and dig a bit deeper into my standard answer, to try to test its limits.

It so happens that a couple of the client families with whom I’m presently working are showing signs of concern with the pace of our work together, which has brought this to the front burner for me.

I want to write something here that I can share with them, and at the same time make some broader points about how my engagements with a family can play out.

But first a flashback to a skit from an old Saturday Night Live episode that came to mind when I wrote the title above, which I immediately realized could be misconstrued.

 

“You Can’t Put Too Much Water in a Nuclear Reactor”.

That 1984 skit featured guest host Ed Asner (begins at 53:42) as a retiring boss at a nuclear plant, who gave the workers he left behind some advice that ended up causing confusion, from which much humour then ensued.

“Just remember, you can’t put too much water in a nuclear reactor” had some workers believing that you shouldn’t ever put too much water in, while others opted for the opposite interpretation, i.e. that it’s impossible to put in too much.

My “You can’t start too early” suffers from the same shortcoming, but my sub-head, “It’s never too early” clarifies my views.

Starting WHAT, Exactly?

It may help if I define what I’m referring to when I say “start”.

My work typically involves families who are trying to ensure that the wealth or business that they’ve created can be successfully transitioned to the next generation of their family.

Those efforts involve a number of legal and structural steps and procedures, of course, but those are always handled by other experts in those subjects, not by me.

My work is in the family circle, working the family dynamics and relationships aspect, which usually includes getting the family started with regular family meetings.

The work around these efforts, bringing the family members into these key discussions, is what I mean by “getting started”.

 

Try Not to Make a M.E.S.S.

I wrote about this back on 2017, in a post called Start Cleaning Up Your M.E.S.S. where “M.E.S.S.” was an acronym I had created to help readers remember four important aspects relating to getting started.

The “M” is for “Start Moving”, emphasizing that this is much more than just thinking about it or talking about it with one person, it’s about action.

The “E” is for “Start Early”, which is what we’re looking at today.

The two “S’s” are where it can get tricky for some, especially those who feel like they need to be in a hurry to get somewhere.

Some people just don’t do well with “Start Small” and “Start Slowly”, but they’re key for a number of reasons.

 

Why You Need to Start SMALL.

It’s important to start small because you don’t want to lose anyone along the way, and onboarding family members into such a process needs to be done carefully, because you really want to make sure that you will maximize their engagement.

Taking big steps would allow you to feel like you’re making big progress, of course, but if it means that some of the more skeptical family members aren’t ready to buy in, then big steps work against you.

 

Why You Need to Start SLOWLY.

Back in 2018, I wrote There Is No Destination, where I talked about the fact that life is more about the journey than the destination, and that’s an attitude I encourage parents to adopt.

Going slowly, and taking small steps, is important for the engagement question too, because again, you don’t want to lose anyone along the way.

You can really only go as fast as the group is willing to go, so erring on the slow side is what I always encourage.

 

There Is No Finish Line.

There’s actually no need for big steps or going fast when you consider that there is no finish line to this work.

We’re not trying to get to the last page of the book or tick off all the boxes on a checklist, we’re trying to make sure that family knows where they want to go and how they will work together.

That work never ends.

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Family Unity: Uniformity Is NOT Required

They Both Begin with “Uni”, but Are Very Different

Over the past decade since I’ve been sharing my thinking here, a number of subjects have obviously been repeated several times.

Having defined my “turf” loosely as discussing the challenges that families face when trying to transition their wealth to subsequent generations, there are only so many general categories one can write about, especially if you’ve committed to churning out something new 52 times each year.

So as I embarked on this week’s post, I looked back to see how often I’ve written about the idea of “family unity”.

Well, let’s just say that I was surprised at how infrequently I’ve written about this subject.

Clues from the “Family HUG” Post?

I distinctly remembered one post from 2021 where “unity” was a key word, as it played the key role in the acronym I’d coined, providing the vowel in “HUG”.

See The “Family HUG” We’re All Looking For

That piece stemmed from a comment by a colleague during a webinar I was leading for the FFI course I teach on family governance (GEN 502, for the curious).

Lisa had mentioned that all families want the same three things: “Harmony, Unity, and Growth”, and as I noted them I was struck by the word “HUG” that they formed, and made that the genesis of the post.

But why haven’t I written about unity more often?

Could it be that it is so much of a “given”, because every family wants it, so it’s not worth discussing? 

I’m pretty sure that’s a part of it.

Is Uniformity Part of the Equation?

There are lots of “sub-plots” in any story of family unity, and one of the big ones, whether or not it’s actually recognized and spoken about, is the concept of uniformity.

Simply put, to what extent do we all need to be the same, in order for us to remain together.

This idea comes from the work of a friend and colleague, Nike Anani, and is mentioned in her book Lifetime to Legacy, which I recommend, as it had me nodding my head all the way through as I recently read it.

She suggests that differing views on how much uniformity is desired by different members of any family are worth exploring and discussing.

These are my own views on her writing about this, but they’re what resonated with me, my take-aways, and continue to evolve as I think about this subject.

Finding the Right Balance Between “Me and “We”

A common scenario sees the leading generation wanting more uniformity, with members of the rising generation preferring less.

When facilitating family conversations around this idea, words like “unity” and “uniformity” are never mentioned, but they’re always in everyone’s subconscious.

Sometimes when everyone is thinking about something but not speaking about it, that becomes an opportunity for a skilled outsider to broach the subject.

A sub-text here often includes a certain desire and expectation that the rising generation follow their elders and adopt the ways of their parents, because, well, they’ve been successful so far!

Meanwhile, their offspring have often grown up in a very different world, see things very differently, and have their own views, ambitions, and priorities.

These differing views are always at the root of challenges to be overcome, and the sweet spot typically lies somewhere in the middle of those views.

The ideal situation is one where the family finds the right balance between the “We” and all of the “Me’s”.

Diversity Is the Key to Maximizing Human Capital

A subject that I do write about a lot is human capital, and the idea that every family would do well to consider each of their family members as useful contributors to the family wealth and mission.

If all of those people are the same, i.e. too uniform, you will not be able to get as far together, because you will have a lot of redundancies.

Diversity is an asset and should be sought, promoted, and celebrated, as it allows the family more options and avenues that they can pursue together over coming generations.

Unity gets tougher as a family grows in numbers, it’s basic math when you get right down to it.

Families need to find ways for everyone to play a part in achieving the right level of unity, and uniformity is never part of the solution.

In fact, trying to force too much of it is often part of the problem!

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Fantastic Parts, an Even Greater Whole Community

Coming Down from a Rocky Mountain High

Over the years since I’ve been sharing my thoughts in this space on a weekly basis, there is one particular source of inspiration upon which I have drawn far more ideas than any other.

Regular readers can likely guess that I’m referring to the Purposeful Planning Institute, whose members long ago became my “tribe”.

I first attended PPI’s annual RendezVous in Denver in 2014, where it became evident for me that this community was unlike any other group of professionals I’d ever encountered. (I’ve yet to come across anything else even close to it since either.)

Having just completed our first in-person RendezVous since 2019, I’m coming down from my Rocky Mountain high and will share my experience.

Highest Membership Numbers Yet

I should explain my role with this group a bit further before I expound upon the “humble brag” that I’ve already set up here.

I’ve been serving on the Wisdom Expedition for RendezVous for 5 years now, including the past two years as its leader. 

Wisdom, along with its sister expedition, Experience, both sit below the Vision Expedition, which is responsible for each annual RendezVous gathering. 

The result is that the organisation benefits from a leadership group numbering a couple dozen committed believers, and that breadth has always been a hallmark of PPI’s success.

So when John A. Warnick, PPI’s founder and our fearless leader, shared that PPI’s membership is now over 450 people, there were many people in the room who beamed with pride, as this is the highest number since PPI’s initial RendezVous in 2011.

Pent Up Demand for Connection

Reconvening with one’s tribe is always great because although we’ve remained connected virtually in the interim, this is a group of “huggers” and many were long overdue.

And, at the same time, there were so many new faces this year too, and that bodes well for the future.

Our theme was well selected, “The Fundamentals of Human Connection” and I’m quite sure we won’t stray too far from that in the future either, as it is what sets the PPI community apart.

What we all have in common is a desire to better serve the families we work for, and doing so requires that we go deeper, and connect not just with our heads but also with our hearts and souls.

A Community and Its Members

Between sessions over the three days, there are lots of long breaks built in, during which relationships can be built and or rekindled.

By the final day, I kept returning to the same comments in my discussions: 

The whole of our community is greater than the sum of its parts, for sure, AND, so many of those parts are really fantastic to begin with.

As I often remark, the way we think about our professional community also happens to have many parallels to the work we all do with families.

Not all families realize how important it is for them to work on developing all of the human capital they have at their disposal in their family.

As we have the privilege to work with such families, part of what we often need to do is to nudge them in this direction, and encourage them to consider every family member and their individual development, and not simply be satisfied that the family remains wealthy or that their business continues to succeed.

A Few Highlights for Good Measure

Following RendezVous each year I typically blog about some of the highlights, but I didn’t leave myself much room this time.

From our opening keynote from Akasha to the closing salvo from David York, there were many other great moments in between.

The Dream Building session featuring Amanda, Cathy and Marlis was off the charts, the FRED Talks that I was honoured to introduce were all home runs, and the two Purposeful Connections speeches were wonderfully touching.

I was looking forward to finally meeting my friend Cindy Radu in person, but thanks to a late Covid diagnosis, she was forced to submit hers on video, and she blew everyone away nonetheless.

I always go to RendezVous to refill my proverbial “pitcher”, from which I pour for the other 51 weeks of the year.

As usual, the many firehoses that were present made it overflow and I left all wet, and very fulfilled.

See you again next year.

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Starting a Family Council: Some Assembly Required

Figuring Out Who Belongs Where

Working with families who are in the early stages of trying to establish some governance, there are always many areas of uncertainty involved, and some doubts about just how to proceed.

Often families expect that the steps and answers will be simple and easy to follow, but that’s rarely the case in my experience.

And that’s actually a good thing, because every family is different, and you can’t just look at a similar family who are a decade ahead of you and assume you can copy them and save ten years of work.

Of course there are likely plenty of experts who will try to tell you that it’s doable and charge you a hefty price for the shortcut, and some of you will buy into the mirage, unfortunately.

Regular Family Meetings Come in Many Forms

One good place for me to begin sharing my views on this subject is to look at a couple of the most basic kinds of meetings and structures that many families use to form key parts of their family governance: the family assembly, and the family council.

Regular readers will recognize my penchant for wordplay, and the title of this post definitely went there, as I found a way to (cleverly?) combine both of those into my headline, and ended up with more than I bargained for.

While a “family assembly” is a popular term for what many families create, the “some assembly required” does double duty in underscoring how much work is typically required when a family goes down the road to creating their governance structures and procedures, which must evolve slowly over time to actually have a high probability of success over the long haul.

From a Large Group to a Small One?

But not every family evolves in the same direction, as I will now discuss.

Sometimes a family will begin by having a large gathering, where everyone who’s related is invited to spend some time together, often like a reunion, and where the festivities might last longer than one day.

If those are the characteristics, then I would put that under the heading of a family assembly.

This is usually the largest and most inclusive group of people invited to get together, and includes many possible stakeholders, including in-laws, and many who will never work in or own any part of the family enterprise.

At some point down the road, such a family may decide to convene an smaller, more select group of family members who can then make some decisions for the family.

From a Small Group to a Large One?

Other times a small group is the starting point, where a select few, carefully chosen family members come together and begin to make some important decisions that affect the family and how its members interact with the family’s enterprise(s).

They may begin to make some major strategic decisions that start to form the building blocks of the family’s governance.

This approach is one I would label a family council.

At some point, this group might decide that a much larger meeting would be useful to share information and educate a larger group of family stakeholders, and they might decide to hold such a gathering, which may then become something that also reoccurs on a regular basis.

Neither Is Necessarily Better or Worse 

Last week in Looking Forward Together as an Enterprising Family, I ended by noting that the most important idea is to get into the habit of having regularly scheduled family meetings.

I did not get into whether those meetings might be an annual family assembly or a quarterly family council meeting, because either one might make the most sense for any particular family at any point in time.

All of this, no matter which direction it goes, requires some leadership and intentionality.

Writing about this has just sparked my memory of a favourite quote of mine, which I have yet to share in a blog post, so here goes.

From Arthur Ashe

Arthur Ashe was an American tennis player who faced plenty of adversity. Here are his wise words:

                        “Start where you are. 

                         Use what you have. 

                         Do what you can.”

I love the simplicity of those words, and they apply quite nicely to any family beginning their family governance journey.

They can also come in handy in a variety of other life situations, so make sure they’re never far away whenever you need them!

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Looking Forward Together as an Enterprising Family

Are We All Looking Forward to the Same Thing?

Recently while dealing with a family where some of the members kept wanting to rehash events from the past, it became nearly impossible for me to get them to concentrate on leaving old squabbles behind and instead try to focus on looking forward instead.

That got me thinking about how simple this can sound, yet still be hard to get people to buy into.

There are of course many reasons to look backwards on occasion, but if you drive your car while staring at the rear view mirror, you will run into trouble (or something else) relatively quickly.

So this week, I want to share some of my thoughts about the whole idea of looking forward as a family.

 

Setting the Past Aside – At Least for Now

I’m not suggesting that families never think about or talk about the past.

There are plenty of times and occasions and reasons to do that, but if you spend too much time there, when you really should instead be trying to work productively towards some common desired future, those looks backward too often end up usurping all of the positive energy you’ll need to make progress.

There are times when you need to agree to set the past aside, at least for now.

I wrote about this many years ago in There is No “Rewind” Button.

 

“As a Family” Changes Over Time

As we turn our focus to looking forward “as a family” I guess the first musing I have is that the idea of looking forward as a group of people can get a bit tricky, because each member of the group has their own pair of eyes with which they do their own looking.

So the group, the family in this case, needs to do some work to try to establish a common future towards which they are all looking.

This is important work that I think many families should undertake because the results will usually be useful in making sure that everyone understands where they are trying to go together, so all of their efforts can be aimed in the same direction.

Okay, so let’s say the family does that today and they all agree, are they then set for life? I assume you recognize a rhetorical question when I ask it.

Of course that common vision of where the family is looking to go needs to be revisited often, as each person’s view will also differ a bit over time as the family advances.

 

By Generation, By Individual

One way to try to tease out the variety of viewpoints is to look separately at members of the same generation, who at least are progressing through their life stages on a similar timeframe.

When the rising generation in a family enterprise is in their 30’s and 40’s, most of them will have at least some common views that will differ from their parents’, who are likely in their 50’s and 60’s.

However, fast forward a couple of decades, and those rising gen members will now likely view certain things in a way similar to how their parents saw things not that long ago.

And of course, each of the individuals in each generation will have their own unique things that they are looking forward to as well.

 

Re-Calibrating the Vision – It’s a Process

As any family sets out towards a future together, the simple passage of time, along with daily, weekly, and monthly events and happenings all combine to change where they are now.

Hopefully they will be closer to where they were planning to go, but things don’t always move forward as planned, nor do they always move in a straight line.

Figuring out if you are all still looking forward to the same thing requires frequent re-calibrating of that vision.

 

Looking Forward Together Regularly – Family Forums

Some regular readers may already see where I’m headed, and that’s to make sure that you don’t just have occasional, ad-hoc meetings as a family.

You need to develop a habit of having regularly scheduled meetings as a family, as noted in Live from the Forum – Successful Transitions.

Families who get together regularly (often quarterly or annually) can easily take stock of where they are, how they got there, and where they’re trying to go next.

Refocusing together also re-energizes everyone.

There’s always something to look forward to, and figuring it out together, over and over again, will help you all get there.

/by