Family Matters

We spent a week interviewing numerous family members and members of my client’s leadership team. Our goal was to better understand the family's dynamics - what was going well and what needed to improve. The positive feedback was consistent; the family was "so nice" and communicated well together.

When I took high school geometry, our teacher was clear with us, we would not get full credit if we didn't show your work. As you may remember, when solving a proof in geometry, the process is just as important as the outcome.

There were dozens of photocopied pages covered with my father’s distinct handwriting. The dates on the top of the pages went back to the late 80s and early 90s; this stack of papers was a treasure chest of family memories.

I was sitting next to two gentlemen on a flight this week who were talking about how they are currently preparing for the next United States civil war. It was a fascinating discussion; I learned about food preservation systems, oxygen recirculation, as well as the types of weapons and ammo needed to defend against an enemy invasion. They went deep into where the attack would originate and how their advanced intrusion detection system would thwart the enemies’ plans. This was seriously sophisticated stuff.

As I hustled between meetings in New York this past week, I couldn’t help but think how much I might have enjoyed living in New York when I was younger. For a host of reasons (some good, most not) I never did the “big city” thing. I regret not doing it. Truly. It would have been an amazing experience and I would have grown a lot as a result.

According to a recent Stanford Medical study on human aging, we do not age in a straight line, instead our bodies experience a “massive biomolecular shift” around age 44 and 60.As a 44-year-old, I can attest to this massive biomolecular shift (ugh).Additionally, as you may know, when you start to feel the aging process, it often inspires a reflection on your life’s decisions, your relationships, and your impermanence.

This love seeks to nourish, protect, strengthen, and guide life’s choices.For most, this love requires nothing in return. However, I believe there is a seed in all of us (parents) that hopes our efforts will yield some semblance of adherence to the values, beliefs, and interests we seek to instill.

We negotiate all day long; if you have young children, it’s every 5-10 minutes. If you think about it, conversations with your partner and colleagues are often negotiations as you tussle between doing one thing versus another. And, if you examine your own thoughts, you’ll quickly realize that much of the chatter in your head is simply a negotiation between two competing sides of your personality: Should I eat this vs. that? Should I do this or that? Should I say X or Y?

I understand Kevin Spacey is controversial - this is not a newsletter about him. However, I recently listened to Spacey’s wide-ranging (and perhaps controversial) interview with Lex Friedman. In that discussion, Spacey talks about the power of playing a character

H3 is elemental. While not a part of the periodic table, H3 is essential to building multi-generational businesses and transitioning generational wealth. H3 is shorthand for what you can offer a loved one when they are upset: Would you like to be helped, heard, or hugged?

There are three distinct ideas in this quote we need to unpack: 1) hinting versus declaring; 2) recognizing a hint; and 3) not allowing our emotions to color someone else's hypothetical hint.

While most of my projects start as succession planning, establishing governance, or family alignment, all of them have seeds of human complexity. Specifically, those things said that continue to linger and those things left unsaid that churn beneath the surface.