Wealth preservation is a dynamic, not a static, process. To succeed, each generation of the family must adopt a first-generation—a wealth-creating generation—mindset.
Any family whose complete wealth—qualitative and quantitative—is simply maintaining value rather than growing it is either in or in danger of entering into a state of decay or entropy. A family, like every investor, must maximize its return on capital if it is to achieve the growth necessary for preservation over a long period of time. What are some of the things a family can do to grow its various forms of qualitative capital?
Human Capital
With respect to its human capital, a family can consider implementing the following practices:
1 Promote each member's individual flourishing. (For more on the psychological aspects of individual flourishing, see the Conclusion.) This includes providing the best possible medical care to every family member whose pursuit of happiness is blocked by addiction or physical or mental illness.
2 Ensure that every family member's basic requirements for food, shelter, and clothing are met, and for members who experience a life emergency, that those needs are met at a level adequate to allow them to regain the capacity for the pursuit of individual happiness.
3 Emphasize the importance of work to an individual's sense of self-worth and assist each family member in finding the work that most enhances that individual's pursuit of happiness. All such work is of equal value to the growth of the family's human capital, regardless of its financial reward.
4 Encourage all family members, especially rising generation members, to develop a strong sense of personal identity separate from the family's financial success.
5 Promote the family's geographic diversification. The world is becoming smaller every day. Families must participate in all corners of the world if they are to meet today's global challenges.
Legacy Capital
With regard to legacy capital:
1 Help each member of the family clarify his or her values. Discuss what matters most to each of you. Identify areas of overlap, of shared family values, and respect areas of difference.
2 Share stories of the family's history, and of the history of the various families that preceded yours. Tell stories of failure and disappointment as well as of success. Sometimes the stories of failure followed by striving and achievement are the most powerful ones.
3 Honor family traditions, whether around holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, or other important milestones in the lives of family members and of the family as a whole. Discuss which traditions family members are eager to preserve and celebrate, and which some or all family members might be ready to let go of.
Family Relationship Capital
Here are some ways for a family to grow its family relationship capital:
1 Consider beginning or continuing the practice of holding regular, well-designed and facilitated family meetings to discuss topics of importance to the family as a whole.
2 Set aside time during a family meeting to work on enhancing effective communication among family members. That may take the form of learning about individuals' particular communication styles, understanding how different styles complement or clash, and developing strategies for navigating points of friction.
3 Talk about the reasons for including family members' spouses in important family discussions. What are the fears of or challenges to doing so? What do family members see as the benefits? Spouses often bring valuable perspectives to family discussions, in addition to being the parents of the future rising generation.
4 If the family suffers from breakdowns of trust, respect, or fairness among family members, use resources to secure consultation for members to surface, manage, and possibly resolve these conflicts.
Structural Capital
When it comes to growing structural capital, families can:
1 Rapidly provide clear information on all family governance matters to all family members at the highest level of each person's ability to understand and seek feedback.
2 Invite trust counsel or other advisers to design engaging educational sessions to inform family members about their wealth structures, their functions and goals, and the roles and responsibilities attendant on these structures.
3 Develop a leadership development plan that takes into account the future needs of the family, the evolution of its wealth or business structures, the true interest of family members in serving in leadership positions, and the needs they have to develop the skills and knowledge to serve effectively.
Social Capital
Many of the practices in the rest of this book describe how families can grow their social capital. Some steps families may particularly wish to consider include:
1 Talk about ways that all family members, regardless of age or stage of development, give back to others and find joy in giving.
2 Consider building or amending philanthropic structures to give individual family members' choices in how they deploy charitable resources.
3 Provide rising generation family members with opportunities to connect with the larger community through service in the family's business efforts or in its philanthropies.
4 Consider ending every family gathering with a brief gratitude exercise, in which members envision someone in the family they wish to thank and identify ways to offer those thanks.
Financial Capital
We will leave the growth of a family's financial capital to the many other authors who have made this capital their focus.1
We add only these two considerations, reflective of the often-difficult relationship that families have with their financial capital.
First, many family members who have inherited financial capital do not know how difficult it is to create it. They may feel awed by the presence of the wealth creator and define success as the creation of great financial capital. Defining success in financial terms can create a sense of not being good enough. In addition, their experience of the wealth creator may have some negative associations. As a result, later-generation family members often do not feel the same motivations that fueled the creativity of the originator of the family's financial capital. This is a problem for the family's financial sustainability. The problem is compounded if the family imagines or, worse, assumes that every member will turn out to be an entrepreneur. Such assumptions can become counterproductive. Only through undertaking the hard work of identifying and supporting each family member's own talents and dreams can the family hope to see—perhaps—the blossoming of the entrepreneurial spirit that will, in turn, contribute to the larger family's financial capital.
Second, most families have a hard time talking about financial capital. Money is perhaps the last and most pervasive taboo. Many times, this is for bad reasons: family members feel uneducated, disempowered, and embarrassed. This silence comes with a real opportunity cost. As we will discuss more fully in Chapters 14 and 17, long-term success depends on helping family members talk productively about money with each other.
That said, as with any taboo, there are also some good reasons that people are hesitant to talk about money. No one knows better than people with significant financial capital