Family Matters

I was 24 years old, and it was my first board meeting as a part of our succession planning process. I was meeting with our independent directors, individuals whom I had known for many years, but often interacted with in more casual settings at dinners and events.

If you want respect, be respectable. This was the thought running through my head as I was chatting with an older next gen family member at a conference where I was speaking. He was telling me all about the challenges he was encountering assuming leadership of his family’s company. He

Despite the (un)popular belief, wealth does not change a person, it simply turns up the volume on who they already are. Why does this matter? I had a conversation with several family members who voiced their concern that the wealth they were planning to transfer to their children was going to “ruin them”.

We pulled into the driveway and my kids immediately hopped out of the car. They ran straight for the water, yelling, jumping, and acting as, well, kids. I don’t blame them; we had been in the car for almost six hours.

I was sitting in the American Airlines lounge in Charlotte. I saw him across the room; he was heavy set, had tattoos, a graying beard, and a shaved head. He was out of place in a sea of collared shirts, coiffed hair and roller bags.

I was talking to the CEO of a family enterprise who is incredibly accomplished. He built a highly profitable business, and it was something he was very proud of, as he should be. He spoke of his habit to follow his impulses and his ability to make decisions quickly, both of which had given him an edge. All this was true.

Inversion thinking is a cognitive strategy that involves approaching problems by considering their inverse or opposite scenarios. Rather than focusing solely on how to achieve success, inversion thinking encourages individuals to think about what might lead to failure and how to avoid it. This method helps to identify potential risks, obstacles, and mistakes that might otherwise be overlooked. By systematically staying in front of negative outcomes, a team can develop more robust plans and strategies.

If you're familiar with my Newsletters, you know I try to avoid the academic and tend to focus on the practical. That said, the academic term, linguistic influence, is one that has considerable practical implications for enterprising families.

If you work with your family members in some capacity, and you’re like 90% of the families I encounter, you have not had "the style" conversation. More likely than not, you started working together and used your family members' family style as a baseline for what you expected out of their professional style.

Your mom. This is a loaded phrase, full of emotions. The second you hear it, your mind will immediately jump to your own experience with your mother – be it joyful, painful, or somewhere in between.

Our natural tendency as humans is to separate the world into a We-They (or Us-Them) paradigm. We are like this; They are like that. This paradigm has been in the spotlight the last several years, however, this post is not about those challenges highlighted in mainstream society; the We-They I’m focused on is the We-They paradigm that exists in families.

While it is important to prepare the next generation for ownership and leadership, just as much care needs to be afforded to those who must make way for them. Many of my clients struggle with how to professionalize the next generation, yet another looming (often overlooked) issue is how to gracefully ask mom, dad, uncle, or aunt to step back from the work that has defined their life, the work that created wealth, freedom, and purpose for so many.