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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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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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“Family Business” Versus “Family Wealth”

The area of family business advising is considered by some to be a niche market, since there are not that many of us who hold ourselves out as specialists in the field. Family wealth, by contrast, seems to be a much more crowded area, perhaps because so many huge institutional players are involved in the area of wealth management.

Today I want to look at some of the similarities and some of the differences, and even throw in a couple of other terms to discuss variations of the two.

At its most basic level, the key difference is usually about the existence or absence of an operating business. When a family owns and operates a business, with facilities, employees, and the sale of goods and services, we would usually call it a family business.

In the case where a family has a good deal of wealth, but that wealth is mostly in the form of financial assets, and typically of the more liquid variety, we tend to describe them as families of wealth. There are even terms like high net worth individuals (HNWI) and ultra high net worth individuals (UHNWI) depending on whether they have $10 MM or $500 MM, for example.

There are plenty of families who do not fit so neatly into one category or the other, of course, as some are successful in exiting one line of business and turning that portion to liquid wealth, while maintaining another active operating company. Or a family may take some of its liquid wealth and invest in starting or buying another business.

What these families all have in common, though, is that the decisions that they make do not only affect their company or their money, but also many members of their family. When it comes time to think about how the business or the wealth will go from the parents’ generation to their kids, and then the grandchildren, there are many areas that can get tricky.

The Family Firm Institute, a global organisation based in Boston, offers courses and certification for those who advise these kinds of families. I recently completed the initial level of the Certificate in Family Business Advising (CBFA) as well as the Certificate in Family Wealth Advising (CFWA).

I will be doing their course on Family Governance beginning in January, as it is a requirement for both of the advanced versions of those certificates (ACFBA and ACFWA). Many of the courses for these certificates in Family Business and Family Wealth advising apply to both.

In Canada, IFEA, the Institute of Family Enterprise Advisors, offers the designation “FEA”, where they use the word “Enterprise” as more of a catch all, encompassing both business and wealth, because of the many similarities and the difficulty in labelling these families.

Much of the research in this area is currenlty focused on the area of entrepreneurialism, and creating “enterprising families”, which is often required to keep the assets of the family growing as quickly as the number of family members increases geometrically with each generation.

Tom Davidow, a veteran of this field and head of his eponymous advsiory firm, makes special mention of Real Estate families on his website, as he notes that they have many of the traits from the wealth realm but also an operations component and some tricky tax issues due to the way these assets are often owned.

I met Davidow this week at a conference for Family Offices, which is yet another term that is not always well understood, but which often operates at the intersection of family business and family wealth.

A family office is typically set up to handle the needs of one family (single family office, or SFO) or the needs of several families (multi-family office, or MFO), and can have anywhere from one employee to dozens of staff.

There are many names and not always a lot of agreement about what they mean. But when a family owns a large quantity of assets, that are destined to be kept in the family over coming generations, it is important to remember that the “family stuff” doesn’t always just take care of itself.

 

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L’importance d’offrir un choix éclairé

Dernièrement, j’ai eu occasion de réfléchir sur l’importance des choix éclairés, ou avertis. En réalité, c’était en anglais, et l’expression “informed choice” était utilisée, et j’étais donc confronté avec le choix entre “éclairé” et “averti” comme meilleure traduction.

La semaine passée, je prenais part à un cours sur la résolution de conflits, où j’ai eu la chance d’agir comme médiateur entre des partis opposants, dans plusieurs scénarios.

La méthode préconisée était basée sur des principes de “interest-based mediation”, ou médiation fondée sur les intérêts. Un des enseignants avait mentionné qu’un des buts du médiateur était de toujours s’assurer que les partis puissent faire un choix éclairé.

Je n’avais jamais pensé à cela de cette façon, mais je l’ai pris en note, avec mon stylo, dans mon cartable. Je l’ai aussi encerclé, et ajouté le mot “BLOG!” à côté.

Je ne prends pas souvent des notes, puisque je crois que les leçons importantes vont rester dans mon cerveau, et si je les oublies, elles n’étaient peut-être pas si importantes après tout.

Mais l’idée que le rôle d’un médiateur était de s’assurer que les partis fassent le choix d’accepter ou non une offre, mais seulement après avoir compris tous les enjeux, c’était révélateur pour moi.

Ceux qui me connaissent bien savent que je crois que la communication est le sujet le plus important parmi les membres d’une famille en affaires. Trop souvent le manque de communication et la mauvaise communication sont des sources de problèmes majeurs parmi les membres de telles familles.

Le résultat de ces erreurs de communication est que les gens prennent des décisions qui sont basés sur une perception des faits qui est loin d’être éclairée ou avertie, mais plutôt érronée et basée sur des hypothèses farfelues.

Quand je travaille avec des familles qui ne sont pas au point d’avoir besoin des services d’un médiateur, je les encourage de partager leurs idées, leurs points de vue, et de communiquer régulièrement sur ces points.

C’est toujours axé sur l’idée que les meilleurs choix et décisions sont pris après réflection, dans une situation où chacun peut dire qu’il agit avec toute l’information, et que ce sont des choix éclairés et avertis.

Caché derrière ce sujet, il y a un autre point très important, et c’est que les partis dans une médiation typique sont souvent déconnectés les uns des autres, et donc il existe parfois un avantage pour un des partis concernant l’information, la compréhension de la situation, et les alternatives disponibles.

Quand il s’agit des membres d’une même famille, je crois que ça devient encore plus important de s’assurer que chaque individu ait la chance de prendre sa décision avec les mêmes faits.

Hier j’ai écouté une présentation sur le web donnée par un collègue de Toronto, Jeff Noble de BDO, qui parlait de convention d’actionnaires. Il avait mentionné une statistique étonnante, disant que d’après des avocats, 80% des conventions entre actionnaires que ces avocats ont rédigées ne sont jamais signées! Mais pourquoi?

Le but de sa présentation était de convaincre des familles en affaires de développer leurs conventions de façon coopérative, ensemble, en partageant leurs perspectives. Comme ça, elles pourraient en arriver à un document que chaque personne signerait.

Et c’est pour ceci que j’avais décidé de titrer ce blogue “L’importance d’offir un choix éclairé, et pas seulement “L’importance d’un choix éclairé”.

Ce qui est à la fois très important et très difficile, c’est d’assurer que chaque parti agit avec l’ouverture d’esprit et l’attitude de partage qui est nécessaire pour arriver à des décisions durables.

On pourrait croire que dans les situations avec des membres de la même famille, ça serait plus facile, mais malheureusement ce n’est pas toujours le cas.

Heureusement pour ces familles, il existe des gens formés dans la médiation, le coaching, et l’animation de rendez-vous de familles qui peuvent les aider.

 

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Off the Grid, Without a Paddle (Part 1 of 2)

When you make a mistake and it costs you, the worst thing that you can do, in my opinion, is to fail to learn from it. If you can learn from it, and even help others learn, the cost can become well worth it.

This week I made such a mistake, and it cost me a bit of money, and a LOT of time to clean up. And while the end result is not perfect, it has some added benefits that make up for its shortcomings.

This week I will try to give you a quick “Reader’s Digest” version of the events, and next week I will cover the lessons learned.

I have been working with a Hotmail account since before Microsoft bought them, literally in the last century.

Nowadays you can use their Outlook service with any email address using an “alias”, and I wanted to make my sl@stevelegler.com address the primary one, but I went one click too far, and accidentally deleted my old Hotmail address.

“Ooops! I better put it back”. But it was not possible to do so online. Aaaargh. After a few hours on Monday evening, I gave up and went to bed, figuring I would try to call and speak to someone the next morning.

I could send emails out, but I couldn’t receive any. A few years ago, this would not have bothered me, because when you run a family office, you usually don’t want to be found. But now, as a family business advisor, building a client list, this was a problem.

At about 4 AM, I woke up and could not get back to sleep. Was it because I was “off the grid”? Or was it because I was trying to figure out how I was gonna get back on the grid?

On their customer support website, it is nearly impossible to find a phone number, because it costs them a lot of money to help you that way. They prefer to minimize those interactions, but I was hell bent on calling someone, because I was hoping that they could revive my old email address, and that was the simplest solution.

So I googled “hotmail support phone number” and just like that, I came upon an answer with a toll-free number. I called, and “Jessica” told me this was a “paid support” line.

Now I had a live person, and I just “knew” that my problem only required a quick fix, so how much could that cost, I wondered. But I had that live person and did not want to let go, so I said OK.

Half an hour later, she was finally at the point where she understood my problem almost as well as I did. Another 20 minutes or so later, her tech friend, to whom I could hear her speaking in another language, had supplied me with a new hotmail address, which I could have done on my own, had I concluded that this was my best choice.

Oh well, we are almost done, so I let them finish up. Another 10 minutes with “Harry” to give him my Visa number to cover the $149.99 to pay their company, not Microsoft, but some randomname-noname.com service company.

I felt like I had been had, but at least I had something workable, and they did spend time helping me, and I had agreed to pay.

But my fun was just beginning, as I now had a new Hotmail account that could receive and send emails. However, my other account, where I had all my contacts and dozens of folders of saved emails, could only send emails.

I still needed to somehow “fuse” them together.

So do I call them back, or try another solution?

Hint:
Next week: How Microsoft saved the day, and how I learned that you don’t need to actually speak to someone to get things done.
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The Father-Daughter Ikea Assembly

Last week I came across a Tweet about how sitting can kill you, complete with all sorts of stats that made me think about my own habits and how sedentary they are.

A news report then followed, touting the benefits of treadmill desks that some companies have installed for workers, that has them walk slowly but for long periods of time, with great results.

In an effort to see if something like this was actually doable for me, I looked for a way to try this out with the treadmill that I already have at my office. So it was off to IKEA.

I purchased a small table that attaches to a wall, and brought it to my office. My 13-year-old daughter has assembled lots of her own IKEA stuff, and she offered to come to my office and do most of the work. What follows is our separate accounts of the experience.

His version:

What can you expect from an eighth-grader? Well, when she is MY daughter, I expect quite a bit. And she rarely disappoints, and she did not disappoint this time either.

She assembled the pieces perfectly with no instructions or supervision from me. So now it was time for me to get involved because it was time to attach it to the wall. It was also time for things to begin to go downhill.

“Oh, so those screws don’t come with it?” I asked. “No, I guess we need to go to the hardware store”. Off we went. But first I checked to see that I did have the plastic shields to put into the gyproc to make sure the screws would hold well. Check.

So we get there and I locate some good strong screws, ignoring the packs of screws that come with shields, since I already had those. Let’s go put in these 6 screws and our work will be done.

Except that the big screws did not fit with the shields I had installed, so we had to start over, with four big holes in the wall. We hit another patch of frustration due to one of my screw-ups, the details of which I no longer recall, resulting in more holes.

Long story short, we finally got the wall-mounted table attached, after more sweat (no tears or blood!) and a few muffled bad words.

She gets a 9/10, I don’t know if I deserve a 5/10.

Her version:

My father bought an IKEA desk, and seeing as I’m the IKEA expert of the family, I offered to go to his office and help him build it and hang it up.

When we got to his office, I decided to start off the building of the desk. I’d dealt with IKEA furniture before, so I completed it with ease, but it still needed to be mounted. The treadmill then needed to be turned 90° so that the desk could over-hang properly.

We realized that the screws required to hang the desk were not included in the box, so we were off to the hardware store!

We got big sturdy ones that could support the weight of the fixture. We came back and put in shields, but they didn’t go in properly, but we still tried to hang the desk and failed miserably. So we took them out, and moved it an inch to the right, and tried again. One of the shields broke, another one went straight through the wall.

At this point, I thought we were pretty much screwed. But then, we tried one last time, and we went a bit upward and took our time. It worked!

The desk is now hanging more or less properly over the treadmill (I’d give us an 8/10). I had an over-all great day with my dad, and I’m looking forward to having some feedback from my father about his brand-new treadmill desk.

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How May I Sell You Today? #FAIL (2 of 2)

Last week we looked at selling versus helping, from Zig Ziglar’s viewpoint that you should just stop selling and start helping, to getting paid to help in a field where clients are not accustomed to paying for it.

In addition to all that stuff, something that has thrown me for a bit of a loop recently was a twitter post from a business coach.

I have been following Leanne Hoagland-Smith (a.k.a. Coach Lee) for several months and she posts lots of great stuff. But then a couple of weeks ago, I was surprised that she was telling people to stop pushing the fact that they wanted to help.

She was encouraging people to stop saying that they were there to help, since so many clients, when they hear the word “help”, now actually mentally substitute the word “sell”.

What? Was Zig wrong? Or is his messge now out of date?

So I started thinking about it, and I realize that maybe the word “help” does get overused, and maybe it isn’t much “softer on the ears”. Maybe Coach Lee is right. But then where does that leave us?

Maybe we should no longer emphasize that we want to help, maybe we need to say that we want to “work with” people to achieve certain results.

After all, much of what we offer in business family consulting isn’t content (a product) but much more assistance with process issues, the “how” more than the “what”. We don’t really want to do things FOR clients as much as work through things WITH them, to the point where they can do these things on their own, without our “help”.

So perhaps the real answer is that while we should still start helping (à la Zig) we shouldn’t SAY that we want to help (à la Coach Lee). The key might be to show some help, do some helping, just help, but not use the word, talk about it, or ever say out loud that we are helping.

In the process of receiving our help, clients will soon feel like we have become “indespensible”, to the point where we don’t have to sell them anything, because they will be so ready to buy from us.

Maybe what Zig was really getting at was that we should just start to make things easier for people. This reminds me of the word “facilitator”, as in “facile”, which is the closest translation into French that I can think of for the word “easy”.

But if I am actually making things easier, am I not helping? Well yes, but saying you want to help may be about as poorly received as saying that you want to facilitate. Very few people wake up in the morning and decide that they are going to find themselves a facilitator, even if that may be just what they need.
When speaking to classmates and colleagues in this area, I often make the distinction that while there is a great deal of need for our services, there is not necessarily a lot of demand.

Many potential clients do not know that they could use our services. A large part of the reason stems from the fact that they do not know who we are, what we do, and how we can help, without them feeling like we sold them anything.

As we mature as an industry, we need to do a better job of explaining how much of a diffference we can make with family businesses, and more importantly, with business families.

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

Today I want to talk about the debate between selling and helping.

There are some important distinctions that I will look at, mostly to help my own understanding of the subject as I wrestle with some of these questions in my mind.

For years one of my favourite speakers was Zig Ziglar, one of the most popular motivational speakers of his time. Ziglar passed away a few months ago, and a few of his fans started sharing some of their most memorable Zig quotes on Twitter.

The quote that struck me and stayed with me was this one: “Stop selling. Start helping.”

What I take out of this, is that if you forget about what you are trying to sell, and instead just focus on the client and how you can help them, then the selling will take care of itself.

My father used to make a similar point, in making the distinction between marketing and selling. “Marketing is solving the customer’s problem. Selling is reducing your inventory”. Thanks Dad.

But that was from the perspective of someone who spent his life solving customers’ problems by providing them (selling) a product. Can it still apply when you are providing a service?

And what if the service that you are providing is actually your help, i.e. your knowledge, experience, ability, time? Help!

As I was going through my recently completed Family Enterprise Advisor Program, we had a very interesting discussion on this subject.

You see, the program is aimed at professionals from a variety of fields, all of which deal with family business (or, as I preer to say, business families). But the variety, in addition to providing the spice of life, is also a source of confusion, especially as it applies to helping and selling, and getting paid to help.

I will just use my project group as an example. I was working with “Robert”, a CPA with an international firm, “Cathy”, a private banker from one of the big five Canadian banks, and “Gary”, a licensed insurance specialist with his own firm.

We worked together on a pro bono basis, on a project for a real business family. Although framed as an “academic exercise”, we treated it as real because it was real. The fact that we were all educated, experienced professionals, averaging around 50 years of age, also added to the seriousness.

But let’s bring this back to the selling vs helping question. If we had provided the exact same help to the family in a real life situation, how would we have been paid, or how would we be compensated for our help?

Robert, as a CPA with an accounting firm, would get paid for the hours he put in on behalf of the client, and most businesses have professional fees to pay for outside accounting services as a matter of course.

Cathy, working as a private banker, would not charge for her services per se, so the hours she put in are paid by her employer, the bank, who make a cut off the client’s wealth in other ways.

Gary, for his part, would get paid if and when the client purchased an insurance product from him.

So to summarize, every one of us would have been paid in a different fashion. But wait, I forgot someone. Me. Uh-oh. How is this gonna work?

The only this that I am actually selling is my help. And I am also going to need some help selling.

Next week, in part 2, we will get into a couple of other issues, like client resistance to people who are just trying to help.

See you then.

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

So many advisors spend so much time talking to their family business clients about the importance of succession planning. Many of us are guilty of over-using the term to the point of rendering it nearly meaningless.

I hereby implore everyone to just STOP. I am not saying that we should not talk about how to get the business, the family, and the ownership from where they are today, to where they will need to be some time in the future, because those are are still very relevant and important. But can we please stop using the term “succession planning”?

My feeling is that when clients hear anyone talk about the importance of succession planning, what goes on in their minds is some sort of replay of their mother telling them to eat their vegetables. Yes, Mom, I know I should eat my vegetables, thanks for the reminder. But I’m an adult now with kids of my own, so please back off. There is only so much you can take.

Then there are the advisors who use the term succession planning in their own way, turning it into something that they will help their clients get through painlessly, with very clear benefits. Just put together this little tax-minimizing strategy now, and then you can go on doing what you were doing before, knowing that your succession plan has been taken care of.

These advisors have hijacked the fact that clients realize that they must do something that can be called succession planning so that they can check that box off and tell everyone, “don’t bother me with that, I already did it”, as if “it” is a one-shot deal.

But it feels good to do that, because not only have your advisors shown you exactly how much you will save in taxes with their plan (down to the penny!) but you can get on with your life knowing that you have taken care of this important issue. This is like your Aunt Bea, who shows you how to drown your broccoli in a thick cheese sauce so that eating your vegetables is somehow palatable, despite the fact that the overall benefit is questionable at best.
I think that the main reason people hesitate to open themselves to discussing succession is that it focuses on change, and it is the kind of change that has them moving from a good position now, to a worse position later. Most people will try to delay dealing with questions about when THEY will retire, and when THEY will die. And if Grandpa hated to talk about it, and Dad hated to talk about it, why should I enjoy talking about it?

So if I am suggesting that you say goodbye to talking about succession planning, what I am I offering instead? Welcome to the world of Continuity Planning. Now I understand that you may be sceptical about the benefits of changing one single word, but let’s look at some of the ways that continuity is a better label.

Rather than focussing on change, like succession does, continuity focusses instead on what remains the same. I want my business to continue, I want my family to continue, and I need to figure out the best way for the ownership to allow the other two to continue.

In essence, the continuity plan is the long-range plan, the overarching plan, the big picture plan. Within the continuity plan, there are indeed a number of succession issues that need to be dealt with,

But when we start by stepping back, and concentrate on all of the things that we want to have continue, long after we are out of the picture, the succession issues become a lot smaller in that context.

When people can better grasp WHY they are doing something, as part of a larger whole, better results are almost assured.

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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Help is NOT “On the Way”

Kramer: “I got a lot of things in the hopper, buddy”.

Jerry: “I didn’t know you had a hopper”.

Kramer: “Oh I got a hopper. A big hopper”.

Even if they do not remember this specific scene from Seinfeld, most people will recognize the character names from the TV show. Kramer always had something interesting on the go, backed up by a hopper full of other ideas for future episodes.

For me, the hopper is full of potential blog subjects, and the hopper fills up faster than I can empty it. Today I tackle one that has been in the hopper for a while, but I saw a great TV commercial this week that moved the idea to the top of the list.

Here is a link to the video, along with the caption:
http://www.howrealtorshelp.ca/#video-look-it-up
Web searches, How To Videos, blogs and the rest of the internet have us believing we can do anything by ourselves. But when it comes to something important like buying or selling a home, we’re better off trusting an expert.

The initial blog idea came from a quote I read from novelist Margaret Atwood that I saw many years ago. It seems she was at a cocktail party and came across a doctor who mentioned that after he retired, he was planning on writing a book. She then apparently replied with “When I retire from writing, I plan to become a doctor”.

Now that is a pretty derisive comment no matter how you look at it, but her point is that you don’t just “write a book” any more than you just “become a doctor”.

Other examples of people who can do something versus people who do something for a living are all around us. I can write a blog, therefore I can write a book. You can take a picture, therefore you are as good as a professional photographer. I can drive a car, so I am Dale Earnhart or Sebastian Vettel. You just made dinner, so you are Gordon Ramsay or Rachel Ray.

There is a difference between being able to do something and being a professional at it. Now I am not saying that you need to have Jacques Villeneuve chauffeur you to work, have your photos taken by Ansel Adams and have Ricardo prepare dinner for you.

Most of the time, doing it yourself is more than sufficient. But sometimes, when things are truly important, it is worth getting someone who knows what they are doing to help you.

Notice that I used the word help there, and not advise.

Last week I tried to make the distinction between getting advice and getting help. The best helpers will combine a number of key elements:

– Listening to what you want to do
– Drawing up a long term plan
– Understanding all the pieces of the puzzle
– Help in keeping you on track
– Guidance at all key stages
– Explanations of pros and cons of alternatives
– Leaving the decision to you
– Getting out of the way after their work is done

My blog title mentioned that help was NOT on the way. Unlike Kramer, who was always just across the hall and whose impending arrival could always be counted upon, the right helpers do not just “show up” when needed.

You have to find them. Which means that sometimes you need to ask for help in finding the right person. Explain what you need help with to those you trust. Do not assume that they are the right person, because they probably are not. But ask them if they know someone else who might be the right person. And don’t stop until you find the right one.

Important transitions and successions should not be left up to what your accountant suggested to save taxes, or something your lawyer had drawn up for someone else last month. Take the time to do it right, you won’t regret it.

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