Have you ever thought about your family with the same level of long-term strategic thinking that you’d apply to your business or other spheres of life?
This brief article is to prompt thought on just a couple of the aspects of our families that are in the background and super important but oftentimes not well chatted about within the family.
Success & Values
What is the family’s definition of success? You will have some thoughts, even if only subconscious, of how you hope to see your future family members act, behave, and generally live out their lives. It's likely you’ve worked hard to instil these values and set great examples.
We’d pose this question, if we sat and chatted with each of the various members, would their understanding of those ‘family values’ have a layer of consistency?
Mindsets
A lot is said these days about mindsets: being positive, having a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset, etc. Less spoken are the underlying circumstances through which we grow as individuals. In the context of intergenerational positivity growth, we’re bringing the concept of wealth creator, wealth builder, and wealth inheritor to the conversation. As you’d imagine, simply from the words, where a person sits in that equation makes a significant difference to almost all aspects of their life.
As a small snapshot:
Starting from very little has challenges and brings out the personal strength, fortitude and plain grit. There's a determination to learn, grow and make it work. Many of these attributes are less relevant when there is a layer of cash buffer and where you live is not on the line. Conversely, oftentimes the layer of responsibility weighs very heavily and can translate to risk aversion that is distinctly different to the initial entrepreneurial spirit of the past. Add to this the layers of implied or perceived obligations banging around in the ether, and the scene is well set for misunderstandings that can be very effectively avoided.
When a group of US high net worth families were surveyed on what keeps them up at night. It wasn’t business issues or items such as inflation, interest rates, the state of the economy or even political candidates – the answers centred around family communications, family decision making and the area of gifting/ provisioning, meeting the important human physiological needs (ref as outlined in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs)
Considering and strategically planning, in an open, inclusive manner, what they are about and what's important to them and establishing it in an evergreen long-term manner is a key component of developing and enhancing the situations of the future family.
At Kimpton & Co. we assist families to have the as yet unspoken conversations. Having a real focus across all domains of family wealth, we work cooperatively with trusted advisors or asset /wealth management structures, bringing the human elements to the conversation. Recognising the importance of family relationships and the various dynamics that play out, health, well-being, and educational circumstances we have specialists trained in family governance and decision making fit-for-purpose structures, leadership and capability development and work with individuals on transitional issues.
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