Continuity
Venting With Purpose: How To Complain About Your Family
Tips for complaining about family members and how best to respond In any family business, complaining about fellow family members is bound to happen. Our natural tendency as human beings is to focus on negative events. This negative bias leads us to complain—a lot. Ten good things may have happened at the office that day, but the one bad thing will get most of our attention. So, we will come home to complain about that one thing (and the one person responsible) with our spouse, or we will text our sympathetic siblings and cousins about it. But complaining in a [...]
Beyond The Box Thinking for Family Business Compensation
When it comes to compensating family employees, a common best practice is to pay family members a salary that’s in line with what non-family members would earn for the same job, adjusted for size and location of the company. A compensation consultant will often suggest such a pay range and, while many family members may receive the higher end of that range, some will actually receive the lower end in an effort to guard against the appearance of nepotism. While a ‘best practice’ such as this can work for many families, we believe this is a simplistic approach that [...]
Airing Grievances: 10 Tips for Better Communication with Family Members
The purpose of effective communication is to transmit information from one person or group to another and to convey a specific message that elicits a desired reaction or result. Communications among family members have an additional purpose: To deepen our understanding of each other, find accommodation for differences that remain, build resiliency and bring family closer together. Family relationships are uniquely permanent, so communication must serve not only the content of the communication but the relationship itself. Problems arise, however, when we’re not clear in our communication, when emotions get the better of us, or when we misjudge the [...]
A Succession Planning Guide for Family-Owned Businesses
Transitioning a company to the next generation of leaders is a complex process that can easily falter if there’s not a strong succession plan in place. When we talk about succession, we’re focused on BOTH management and ownership; these two are tightly intertwined and must be considered together. If either management or ownership succession fails, uncertainty and misplaced expectation can have major repercussions that can lead families into conflict. Additionally, encouraging family members to join the business as an employee without considering ownership succession will likely raise false expectations of ownership, issues of fairness, and give mixed messages to [...]
How Family-Owned Businesses Benefit from a Board of Directors
When a family-owned manufacturing business built an independent board and its impact on the company A family-owned manufacturing firm had just finished a six-month family business consulting engagement and now had a basic management and ownership succession plan in place. In addition, a family bank was set up to manage a vacation property, help avoid family conflict over money, and be used as a capital resource for entrepreneurial family members not in the family business. Satisfied with the work done to date, the founder asked, ‘What’s next?’ Editor’s note: Surnames are not disclosed and first names have been changed [...]
What Problems Does a Family Business Consultant Actually Solve?
What families call for help with when relationships and ownership are at risk Families rarely search for a family business consultant out of curiosity. They search when something feels off, when they feel stuck, or when decisions are harder than they should be. Conversations circle without resolution. Tension shows up in meetings, operations, or relationships. Often, family members sense that the problem is not just business and not just family, but something in between. Family business consultants specialize in that "in between" space. We work with enterprising families when family dynamics, ownership, leadership, and economics collide in ways that [...]
Wealth Integration: A Multigenerational, Multifaceted Approach for Enterprising Families
Prepare for challenges, manage risk, and empower future generations What is wealth integration? Wealth integration is about forming a powerful foundation for the future with multigenerational thinking and a multifaceted approach to wealth. It’s about how wealth can be integrated into the lives of individuals and families, productively. (And how individuals [i.e. inheritors] can avoid the Paradox of Choice and wealth’s unintended consequences.) Wealth affords access to opportunities and wealth integration helps families leverage their potential, and empower future generations. The concept of wealth integration places the individual and family as the center of concern, with money as simply [...]
The Paradox of Choice: How Wealth and Opportunity Can Empower or Stifle Potential in Families
Wealth Integration: Making Wealth and Opportunity Work for Enterprising Families The book The Paradox of Choice, written by Barry Schwartz and first published in 2004, posits that people, in general, suffer a loss of happiness because we have too much choice in everything we buy, do, and experience. We’re obsessed with choice—that’s why we have scores of different pasta sauces on supermarket shelves. One would think that having choices would enable us to maximize our happiness by finding the one option that optimally fulfills our needs and desires. Unfortunately, when faced with excessive choice, we find that we’re more [...]
Helping Inheritors Navigate, Understand the Complexities of Wealth
Six ways the rising generation can productively integrate wealth into their lives Having worked with affluent families for over 20 years, when I ask them what keeps them up most nights, roughly 90% of them respond with fear surrounding raising their children in a wealthy environment. Many of these parents didn’t grow up with wealth, while those who did regret that not enough attention was paid to the experience of inheritance and its challenges, rather than the obvious benefits and responsibilities. Wealth inheritors face many challenges that are often difficult to discuss. As a minority, they must deal with [...]
8 Ways to Manage Sibling Wealth Disparity this Holiday Season
The holidays can be the best time to address ill feelings triggered by gift-giving The holiday season is upon us and, for many families, this time of year can bring a multitude of issues to the surface. One such issue, sibling wealth disparity, (re)emerges when it comes to gift-giving. Money and items gifted by siblings may not be of equal value due to their wealth disparity, and this can wreak havoc and cause conflict among families. In order to maintain harmonious sibling relationships, it’s critical to understand how to manage sibling wealth disparity. To start, it’s important to ensure the [...]
