Family Matters

This week I was in Mississippi working with a family that wants to define their path forward, both as a family and as operators of their business. Their family business started in the 1940s and has followed the arc of success emblematic of most of my clients: first generation had an idea, second generation put their heads down and built for decades, and now the third generation is accelerating that growth and professionalizing the operations.

My client was struggling. As a family, they were at a stalemate on how to move the family business forward. Things were going well – they had been for years – but as the family CEO neared retirement, it was time to determine the best path forward for their family and the business.

Warren Buffett is talking about investments and investment strategies. However, his sage perspective can easily apply to families looking for advise on how to raise responsible children in the presence of wealth.

Are you an amateur or a pro? Specifically, if you’re in a family enterprise, looking for respect from your family and non-family management, are you acting like an amateur or a professional?

Dr. William Ickes, a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas at Arlington, is best known for his work on empathic accuracy (i.e. being able to read other’s thoughts and intentions).

I had the privilege of attending a dinner with Jerry Colonna this week. For those not familiar with Jerry, he is a pioneering venture capitalist who has become a coach for Fortune 500 CEOs, technology titans, and celebrities around the world. His first book, Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up, was a powerful influence on my work advising families.

I’m on spring break with my kids this week and we went down to the ocean front to climb on the boulders protecting the marina’s shores from the battering tides. There’s no way around it, climbing on the rocks as a kid is pure joy. My kids acted like they were sea lions, barking into the ocean air. They laid on the rocks, as if they were sizzling pieces of meat (funny, and a little strange). Then they jumped from boulder to boulder pretending that giant geckos were chasing them.

The concept of psychological safety was coined in the 1950s by the famed psychologist and psychotherapist Carl Rogers. Originally focused on the conditions necessary for fostering an individual’s creativity, the term’s application has expanded to include significant research on high-performing teams and organizations.

In the United States, the employee feedback industry was valued at $1.6 billion in 2022. Companies are dedicating millions of hours a year to providing employees feedback on their performance. Feedback is so important, according to Gallup’s research, that employees are 3.6 times more likely to strongly agree that they are motivated to excel at work when their manager provides daily feedback, compared to annual feedback.

While the fairy has already graced our home once before, my son’s discovery of a second loose tooth was met, not with joy and excitement, but with fear and foreboding. That wiggly fellow on the bottom was terrifying for Henry for it meant “buckets of blood” (his words, not mine), not a shiny coin beneath the pillow nor the knowledge that bigger, better teeth were to follow.

In Charles Duhigg’s seminal book on habits, The Power of Habit, he found that nearly 40% of our actions in any given day are habitual. From our morning or evening routines to the way we interact with others, much of our life is spent on autopilot.

I stepped into my platform shoes, adjusted my feather boa, and slipped on my bedazzled glasses. I was ready. I could hear the crowd out front as the MC announced that the next contestant would be singing Elton John’s I’m Still Standing. It was time. I paraded around from behind the stage and took the microphone as the band started playing the opening notes of Elton’s iconic song…