Carrie Pallardy

Apr 02, 2024

Credit: KRISTINA RUOTOLO

David Werdiger is the managing director of the private family office Nathanson Pearson in Melbourne, Australia, and the author of Transition, a book on preparing for wealth transfer. Werdiger spoke with Crain Currency about how he works with high-net-worth families and on planning for succession.

Can you tell us about your background? What led you to work with high-net-worth families?

It really started with having grown up as the youngest child in a HNW business family and one very involved in community. I worked in the family business as a child and as a student and felt quite self-conscious, as the boss’s son, about how others might perceive me. By the time I finished university, I decided not to join the family business. Three other family members all 10-plus years older than me were already working there, and I didn’t see a place for myself. I had a job for a few years but always wanted to be in business because that’s what I saw growing up.

Through 20-plus years of my “second career” as a tech entrepreneur and through several nonprofit directorships, I learned a lot about governance, strategy, intergenerational issues, philanthropy and family offices. I got to know a number of other families and heard their stories. I observed up close what no-profits and families did well and the huge cost to them when things don’t go well. This fed my passion for good governance — what I essentially describe as the responsible use of power.

After completing a master’s of entrepreneurship and innovation, I found myself writing and speaking about family wealth. I was thinking about what I wanted to do with my life — aware that in my own family, there would be an intergenerational wealth transition. I had already learned a lot but needed to continue that and to prepare myself for that future. At that stage, I decided I wanted to help other families on their journey, so I wrote a book and became a family enterprise adviser. That was the beginning of what has become my “third career,” and it has been developing nicely over the past few years.

How would you describe your approach to working with clients?

Holistic. I serve the whole family rather than any one family member. And when working with an individual, I work with their entire self: business, personal and the integration of all parts of themselves. I’m very top-down, pulling back to the big picture and then working down from there. That means there’s initially a focus on values and purpose, and everything either flows from that or has some connection to it.

It’s easier to answer questions like “Why are we doing X?” when we can link them back to the family’s or individual’s values.

Another big area of focus for me is process and decision-making. My goal is to help families make good decisions together. That means families need a good decision-making process — one that raises all voices, considers decisions within the broader family context and therefore generally leads to better-quality decisions. These principles apply equally to my work with family groups and also entrepreneurs and family businesses.

You wrote a book, Transition, about preparing family businesses for wealth transfer. What do you think are some of the most important steps family businesses can take today to prepare for the inevitable changes they will face in the future?

Firstly, be open to change. Not every family business is meant to last forever. The ones that last do regular strategic planning, are prepared to reinvent themselves, make significant changes to the way they do business and avoid holding “sacred cows.”

Secondly, ensure the family members involved are there because they want to be. In families, there can often be an implied or actual obligation to join the family business. When this happens, it can lead to resentment and a sense of being trapped. Being part of the family business isn’t for everyone, and having clear policies on how family members are prepared and qualified to join leads to them being more engaged and aligned.

Finally, provide a pathway for incumbent family members to move to the next stage of their lives. Note: I didn’t use the “r-word” [“retirement”] for a reason. It has connotations of being moved out to pasture and no longer being of value. In a family enterprise, it’s the opposite. More senior family members are a huge source of social capital in the family. So, it’s about helping them transition to the role of “elder,” where they can support/guide/mentor others rather than remain operationally focused until the day they die.

You are writing a second book, focusing on social media. How do you think the constant connection to the digital world has impacted succession planning?

That’s a fascinating question. I actually wrote an earlier version of that book before I wrote Transition, then put that project on hold. I have wondered about the link between the ideas in the book and the work I do with families. The constant connection to digital is, among many other things, another manifestation of the generation gap, which has existed for centuries. Parents and children often live in different worlds and talk different languages. The bigger impact of the digital revolution on succession planning is how it has disrupted so many businesses — that is probably a more significant threat to family business continuity.

What are some of the common succession challenges that you help your clients work through?

Family business succession can be a tricky one. There is the “sticky baton.” The incumbent who says they want to retire but don’t really. So they talk about it and talk about it but never push the button or agree to a formal plan. Or — and this can sometimes be worse — retire but don’t really let go and remain involved.

Then, there is the situation where none of the children want to join the family business. And the reverse, when children are in the business and aspire to move into a leadership role but don’t have the capability.

Another big challenge is when there is an existing conflict situation, sometimes between the incumbent and the rising generation over key business decisions, or within the rising generation over roles within the business or distribution policies or … well, anything.

How can family members develop productive and open ways to discuss and overcome these challenges?

The way to overcome these challenges is largely through discussion. The problem is that just the relevant family members sitting down around a table and trying to work things out often doesn’t work. There are a few reasons for this. One is that there is far more around the table than just the family members. There is the implicit family hierarchy and power dynamic, which means parents will act like parents rather than business owners or partners. Birth order and gender stereotypes can also be an impediment to hearing voices on their merits. I know this from experience — I’m the youngest — and from families I’ve worked with.

Then there are the decades of emotions and family baggage. A conflict that is expressed as who should be CEO might actually be a proxy for a sibling rivalry that started when the siblings were children and remains unresolved. The real issue is often beneath the surface, the things people don’t like talking about.

That is where having a genuinely independent voice around the table can help facilitate open discussion, confront the actual problems and reach consensus. The discussions can be very difficult, but that’s not a reason to push them off. In fact, it’s the reverse. Issues often fester and grow the longer we delay dealing with them. Part of that process is developing a set of guidelines — they might be called a code of conduct or a family charter — which determine the rules by which the family operates. These are all the tools of good governance, and they apply equally to families as they do to organizations.

AUTHOR Carrie Pallardy

Carrie Pallardy is a freelance writer and editor in Chicago.

This was originally posted at [Craincurrency].

The post David Werdiger talks succession planning in the modern world appeared first on David Werdiger.

source https://davidwerdiger.com/events-news-media/interviews/succession-planning-in-the-modern-world/

“The opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference”. This quote has been widely attributed and the concept dates back to the 19^th century. We can understand this by considering two dimensions to a relationship: valence and intensity.

 

By valence, we mean if the relationship is positive or negative, and we add to this a second dimension of intensity that represents how strong our feelings are. This is illustrated in the diagram: a positive valence with high intensity is love. As the intensity reduces, love reduces to like, and hate to dislike, but as the intensity reduces even further, the relationship devolves to indifference.

This differs from typical 2×2 models – the shape is a triangle rather than a square. This is because as intensity gets lower, valence becomes less important. In the extreme, the relationship is reduced to “I don’t care”, which can be a far more difficult relationship to mend.

When the intensity is high, even if it’s negative, there is something to work with because the person cares enough to express their negativity. It is possible to engage and deal with those negative feelings and address them.

By their nature, relationships involve at least two parties. That means we need to consider the valence and intensity of each party and not assume they are the same. If A feels love and B is indifferent, then not only are they far apart (so bringing B back from indifference is an important step), but A is also experiencing a lack of reciprocity to their love.

When it comes to family relationships, things are more complicated. There may be more than two parties in conflict, and sometimes conflict can coalesce around groups within a family when family members take sides which can lead them to become amplifiers of the conflict of others, rather than seeking to limit the conflict to the protagonists. When we add a family enterprise into the mix, things become more complicated still. In addition to the family relationships, there may be business and ownership relationships. A family member can simultaneously feel love for another yet despise them for the way they act in the family business context (and vice versa).

This state of mixed emotions – known as ambivalence – can itself exact an emotional toll. It can help to acknowledge that they come from different contexts within a broader family situation, rather than seeking to net off one emotion against the other. That can allow the specific issues to be addressed in relative isolation.

Another attribute of family relationships is their longevity, and they endure much longer than people think. Only a small class of serious relationships can truly end, allowing the parties to completely walk away, such as when a couple divorce and have no children. In almost all other cases, they remain tethered in some way: divorced couples with children, estranged family members, and similar. While people may say “our relationship is over” or “we have no relationship”, a more accurate characterisation would be “we have an awful or dysfunctional relationship”.

Relationships within a family enterprise are, by their nature, complex. It behoves us to acknowledge and work within the complexity rather than seek to brush over and simplify matters.

Conversation Starters: In the broadest context of your family enterprise, how many different relationships do you have with other family members? To what extent do those relationships affect each other?

Further reading:

• Family and wealth: How can they stay together? – expert view
• How family businesses can weather generational shifts
• Blended families are seeing more conflict in estate planning,’ says advisor
• Warning family businesses: Will sibling rivalry be your kiss of death?
• The Silent Struggles Behind Mega Rich Families: Intergenerational Conflict and the Emotional Quagmire Amplified by Wealth
• The Right way in Managing Father-Son Conflict in a Family Business
• Welcome To The Family Office: Lessons From Fight Club

Here is more reading on Family Conflict Resolution.

The post The Opposite of Love appeared first on David Werdiger.

“What proportion of members’ giving is Jewish?” 

This was my question for the then-president of Jewish Funders Network at a meeting in Melbourne, Australia, in 2004 that would be the genesis of Australian Jewish Funders, a local sister organization of JFN.

Everyone in the room knew I was asking about giving to Jewish causes, but the president deftly sidestepped my point. 

“Our members give as an expression of their Jewishness,” he answered.

The debate about whether Jewish funders should prioritize Jewish causes has only been going on for a couple thousand years. The Talmud (Bava Metzia 71a, drawing on Exodus 22:24) lays out the guidelines if one is approached for a loan: Jew before gentile, poor before rich and your own city before another place. It concludes with the well-known adage that the poor people in your own city take precedence. 

Of course, decisions are rarely that binary. Furthermore, that was an era of Jews living in hostile environments, without the rule of law and basic rights that we now take for granted. In modern Western democracies, we are integrated with wider society and enjoy the same rights as other citizens.

One argument, which we can term particularist, is that we should prioritize Jewish causes because non-Jewish funders don’t generally give to Jewish causes. Our own charities need far more of our support than they would ever get from sources outside the community.

The other, universalist argument is often guided by the mission of tikkun olam — to repair the world, be global citizens, look after the stranger and the refugee (because we were strangers and refugees) and generally make the world a better place. For some, this puts advocating for the rights of minority and indigenous communities above supporting Jews and/or Israel.

Again, this is not a binary decision. We do indeed give as an expression of our Jewishness, and that means very different things to different Jews. Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks noted that straddling the line between particularism and universalism is the quintessential Jewish challenge.

When it comes to life as a Diaspora Jew, other factors come into play. Many of us live a life highly integrated with the secular world, whether professionally or personally or both. We are largely accepted as equals. Some giving is in part motivated by the desire for acceptance: Jewish names proudly adorn the walls of hospitals and universities, and Jews actively supporting the arts is surely a sign that we are a genuine part of society. 

For decades, Jewish funders have developed and adapted their approach to giving in line with their values and purpose as individuals, as families and as Jews. 

And then, on Oct. 7, everything changed.

Since the brazen and barbaric attack on Israel by Hamas, and Israel’s necessary response, we have seen a surge of antisemitism around the globe. The shouts of “f–k the Jews” and worse at a demonstration at the Sydney Opera House on Oct. 9 – before Israel had even framed its military response – clearly show that these views about Jews and our state are not a function of what Israel does. Later that month, the arts community in Melbourne hosted a workshop that produced banners with antisemitic and anti-Israel slurs as a crafts project. The wave of pro-Palestinian protests that feature antisemitic and anti-Israel messaging, as well as general antisemitic incidents have left many Jews not feeling safe walking the street in their own home cities; and many university campuses, despite the generosity of Jewish donors, are no longer safe for Jewish students. 

The worst part? It is unlikely that anyone suddenly changed their views of Jews and Israel after Oct. 7; rather, they are now unafraid to say publicly what they really thought of us all along. That really hurts. It also serves as a reality check about what our so-called integrated life in wider society really was before Oct. 7.

Jews are wondering about their future in some parts of the world. Interest in aliyah from Europe and the U.S. has surged. Students are considering alternatives to the prized places in Ivy League universities.

With all of this in mind, it’s time for Jewish philanthropists to revisit allocations and strategy. Our idyllic views on Jews being accepted in the Diaspora may be fantasy. While some organizations in wider society have affirmed their support for Israel, others that we have supported so generously have turned their backs on us. How should we deal with them, and how should we adjust our approach to giving moving forward? How can we be more strategic about our giving?

One approach is to turn inward and focus on what our own people need ahead of others — to move our dial toward particularism. This might translate to increased allocation to Israel, whose needs for support have increased dramatically, as well as strengthening the Diaspora communities where we live.

Another approach — and these are not mutually exclusive — is to audit the organizations we currently support and stress test our values alignment. 

In Australia we have seen a number of Jewish supporters resign from board and committee positions in the wake of anti-Israel activism within those organizations. How many other such situations are on the verge of erupting? Looking at the organization’s mission and values doesn’t tell the whole story. More comprehensive due diligence should extend to key personnel, board and committee members and executives who may use their roles to further a personal agenda. We have seen this in Australia as a number of local councils have proposed ostensibly pro-Palestinian support motions that are littered with antisemitic tropes. Foreign policy is not within the remit of local government in Australia. This is coming from activist council members.

Asking people about their views about Israel and the conflict can be too direct; what I am proposing requires a softer touch and some nuance to determine what people really think about the issues. Hunting through years of someone’s social media feed is overkill, but browsing to get a sense of the things that are important to them can be very telling.

Scenario testing is another tool funders and nonprofits can use, and it can often be straightforward: Organization X did Y, and Z happened — how might you deal with such a situation? A more subtle form would be to ask loaded questions of individuals to test what they think of incidents that have occurred elsewhere. One of the best tests of an organization’s and individual’s values is exploring the boundaries — what they would not do or support because of their values. This serves as a test of their commitment to said values and what they mean in practice.

Good philanthropy isn’t about writing checks; it’s about using our resources to connect with the world around us in a meaningful way that brings meaningful change. Doing it well keeps getting harder. To paraphrase Hillel (Ethics of the Fathers 1:14), if we do not support our own, who will? But if we only support our own, what are we? And if not now, when?

This was also posted at [ejewishphilanthropy].

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source https://davidwerdiger.com/blog/philanthropy/revisiting-philanthropic-priorities-after-oct-7/

The author of this article – a family enterprise advisor, author, lecturer, tech entrepreneur and nascent family office principal – took away a set of ideas from a symposium in New York. Here’s what he learned.

The following article comes from David Werdiger, who describes himself as “a family enterprise advisor, author/speaker/lecturer, former tech entrepreneur, nascent family office principal.” His article stems from a UHNW Institute symposium held in November last year (in which Family Wealth Report was involved as exclusive media partner). 

We are very pleased to share these insights from Werdiger and, of course, welcome any responses. Jump into the conversation! You can email tom.burroughes@wealthbriefing.com. Remember, the usual editorial disclaimers apply to views of guest writers.

Remember the Great Wealth Transfer? You know – all those retiring Baby Boomers and the trillions of dollars that were going to be controlled by their children? The impact on advisors was expected to be significant – from the need to engage with a rising generation with different attitudes to their parents, to the risks of being dumped for being “our father’s advisor.” While the wealth transfer has been taking longer than expected, the effects are being felt by the advisor community. Not many firms have undertaken a systematic assessment of the risk of this generational transition. Indeed, the industry has largely been operating in a certain way for the past 20 to 30 years, in the false belief that things will largely stay as they have been. In the meantime, a group of family wealth advisors from a leading think tank have been thinking big about how advisors can more effectively serve families of significant financial capital.

About Wealth 3.0
This story starts with the UHNW Institute, a nonprofit think tank and learning exchange seeking to raise the wealth management industry to a new standard so that families and their advisors can have more meaningful and multigenerational relationships. Three senior faculty members from the Institute have published Wealth 3.0 – a clarion call for a new approach by advisors to ultra-high net worth families.

Over the past few decades, in what they describe as Wealth 2.0, the advisor narrative has been (a) based on fear and negativity, and (b) dominated by the financial aspects of family wealth. The adage “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves” has been branded a “curse” and used to strike fear in the hearts of family incumbents: spoil your children and they will lose it all. But it is not a curse – rather a statement about how different generations relate to family wealth. And one of the most quoted statistics about the survival of family business – that only 30 per cent of family businesses make it to the second generation etc. – is based on flawed research that has not been replicated.

It’s time for both of those narratives to be disrupted. The negative tropes need to be discarded: family wealth can, in fact, keep families together and bring benefits to society. We should stop conflating family business with family wealth – they are different and need distinct approaches. And the focus of family wealth advisory needs to widen and consider the other forms of family capital behind the financial: a family’s human capital, its knowledge, networks, and purpose. A more integrated advisory approach draws on the Institute’s Ten Domains of Family Wealth model, and is articulated in the acclaimed paper The Rise of the Integrated Advisor.

Why it matters
This is the call of Wealth 3.0. The wealth industry is shifting. This is not just about “alts” and large allocations to illiquid asset classes. It’s not just about the rising generation’s different approach to investment and impact. Rather, it’s a major “upgrade” to the way advisors serve families. As an advisor, are you ready for this?

One way to find out is to do a “SWOT” on your advisory practice: examine your internal strengths and weaknesses in the context of this emerging trend, and the external opportunities and threats that will come with it.

Strengths
These are the internal capabilities that you will be need to leverage and build upon to be an effective advisor in this new paradigm.

While the idea of integrated family advisory is very important, there is no expectation that every advisor will transform into a generalist. Nor will there necessarily be a wave of M&A that will bring together disparate disciplines such as wealth management, law, and family dynamics into fully integrated advisory firms. There are levels of integration, and some firms may choose to stick to their lanes. If they do, they will need to develop existing collaboration skills. Practitioners may also need additional training in other disciplines – not to become experts but rather to know enough about adjacent and complementary disciplines to know when to bring in outside help. In a time of great change, the species that survive are not the strongest or the fastest, but rather the most adaptable.

The key strengths you will need in Wealth 3.0 are: collaboration, learning, and adaptability.

Weaknesses
Some firms are overly protective of their client relationships to the point of blocking other professionals – even if their expertise is different and non-competitive – for fear of losing a client or weakening their standing with the client. Some firms purport to offer a full suite of services to clients when in fact they are very strong in one of two and mediocre in others (or dismissive of their importance).

Wealth 3.0 demands that advisors increase the emphasis on what is best for their clients. Family clients often have complex needs that cannot be met with a single firm, or in an environment that is overly competitive between firms that are servicing the same client. The client will often be better served by the mix of providers that meet their needs. That is a reality that firms need to accept. Would you rather have a larger “share of wallet” with a client that is not being served well and is therefore at risk of leaving, or a smaller share but a sticky client who loves you for what you do? It’s time to think about customer lifetime value rather than margin maximization. This is especially true for clients with generational wealth who in theory could be with you as a client for decades.

The weaknesses you will need to address are competitiveness, short-termism, and zero-sum game thinking.

Opportunities
In any industry going through disruption, there are opportunities both for incumbents and startups. For incumbents there is an important decision regarding what level of integration they seek, and with whom they will choose to form alliances. There may be some M&A as firms seek to bring capabilities in-house rather than collaborate and look for economies of scale. We are a long way from understanding what service models are optimal both from a client and a firm perspective, and indeed there may not be any single “optimal” or “best practice.”

Larger advisory firms that are slow to adapt may be disrupted by startups, built “from the ground up” to serve clients using approaches inspired by Wealth 3.0. Such firms already exist.

The industry opportunities will likely be around collaboration and partnerships.

Threats
Mike Tyson famously said: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” Wealth 3.0 is a call to the industry, not yet a fully developed client engagement strategy. As such, the industry will be in a state of flux for a period of time as firms and advisors consider how to take aspects of this new paradigm, and families consider what changes if any they should make to how they are served. 

This is happening in parallel with a significant wealth transition, which means that rising generation family members are coming to the table with their own ideas about how things should be done. In some cases, there is a deliberate push against incumbents simply because they are “my father’s advisor.”

While you might think the threats are coming from competitors of all shapes and sizes (see ‘opportunities’ above), perhaps the biggest threat to look out for is from your clients. Between the inherent churn risk of the rising generation, and the greater awareness of the need to nurture non-financial family capital, clients may be looking for more. Understanding your clients more deeply as family systems (not just the people you deal with) may help you assess their broader needs as well as their risk of leaving.

The most challenging threats often come from where they are least expected.

Putting this into action
When faced with the prospect of significant change, some firms devolve into a flight/fight/freeze response: a hurried response (“quick, let’s …”), defensiveness or denial (“there’s no way our customers will just leave us like that”), or paralysis by analysis (“let’s conduct another review”). They would be better served by a process that helps them navigate through the changing environment. While a SWOT like this is a good place to start, it’s just that: the start. Firms will need to be proactive and decisive regarding what to do next. Frameworks like start/stop/continue will be helpful, as well as a good hard look at remuneration policies. The behavior you get is the behavior you reward, so the key to changing how you do business is changing how you reward your team members.

It’s still early days in the Wealth 3.0 journey. One of its calls is for better industry research, and one area will be research about advisory firms. If you want to participate in a longitudinal study of how firms are responding to Wealth 3.0, please contact this writer.

Conclusion
The only constant thing in life is change itself. If your relationship with your client is transactional and shallow, then it is at risk. Families of significant wealth think not in timeframes of five years, but 25 years or more. If your firm wants to remain a good fit with your clients, they you need to think more like your clients.

Forthcoming: Editor Tom Burroughes of Family Wealth Report is joining language strategist Michael Maslansky in conversation to discuss how firms and family members are thinking about the Language of Wealth, how it may evolve and how capturing stories of wealth creators and beneficiaries might change the greater narrative.

This was originally posted at [familywealthreport.com].

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source https://davidwerdiger.com/events-news-media/press-releases/wealth-3-0-swot-for-advisors/

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source https://davidwerdiger.com/events-news-media/on-r-adam-smiths-family-business-audiocast/

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source https://davidwerdiger.com/ultra-high-net-worth/the-burden-of-expectation/

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In a family wealth context, legacy is often viewed as transactional and financial: the assets that parents leave for their children. That is how the media reports it – whether it’s a transition of wealth or operating business, or a public family battle. But the way it is portrayed is only a reflection of the commercials of mainstream media and the public appetite it satisfies.

Legacy is really about what we leave behind for others. Someone who lives alone on a desert island can’t leave a legacy because there is no-one to leave anything to! Legacy is what people say about us after we’re gone. I’ve been to my fair share of funerals and don’t recall hearing much about people’s financial achievements. Rather, we talk about family and community, because that is what really matters.

The way our legacy is expressed is through stories. They are more than facts – they connect us emotionally with a person’s life journey. They are also an outstanding way to transmit values and wisdom. And as long as we are alive, our stories are not final, so we can continue to write them. If we’re not happy with our story, we can write new chapters.

Doctor Who expressed it beautifully: “Stories are where memories go when they’re forgotten.”

Consider This: How do you tell your story? What legacy do you want to leave? What is the legacy your children think you are leaving?

Further reading: https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/the-stories-of-our-lives/202308/why-sharing-family-stories-is-vital, https://hbr.org/2023/06/how-to-build-upon-the-legacy-of-your-family-business-and-make-it-your-own, https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulwestall/2022/09/20/what-family-offices-can-learn-from-the-queens-succession-plan/?sh=4c3ae9784af3, https://www.campdenfb.com/article/enduring-legacy-business-families, https://www.iol.co.za/personal-finance/retirement/estate-planning-5-steps-to-leaving-a-remarkable-legacy-00af56e4-dd0b-478d-88c0-b5380c71c3d3, https://www.bizjournals.com/charlotte/news/2019/09/20/managing-wealth-and-leaving-a-legacy-goes-far.html, https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/how-previous-generations-influence-our-decisions/

For more in-depth, thought-provoking discussion points and further commentary on family and business conflict resolution, access my Familosophy newsletter archives by signing into our newsletter https://DavidWerdiger.com.

#familyoffice #wealthmanagement #conflictresolution #strategicmanagement 
#nextgensuccession #intergenerationalwealth #governance #leadershipdevelopment
#entrepreneurship

The post What is Legacy? appeared first on David Werdiger.

source https://davidwerdiger.com/wealth-transition/what-is-legacy/

What kind of family office do you have? What kind would you like? Would you like fries with that? There’s regularly talk of family office trends and predictions, especially at this time of year, and the service models are regularly evolving.

Given family offices are entities that are (well, ought to be) built for the long term, it’s worth stepping back and looking at some macro trends. In the US, the family office market is mature yet still growing at a healthy rate. In Singapore, the number of family offices has grown nearly three-fold in the past three years, and in Australia half the family offices have been established in just the last ten years.

Such significant growth means the big picture of who is managing family wealth will look very different in five years to what it looked five years ago. The proliferation of family offices will take AUM away from large wealth firms and towards a multitude of family offices.

That means the market will be far more fragmented. This change poses a huge threat: a potential shortage in quality people to staff family offices. Families will either not have high quality staff (which may lead to poor decision making), need to develop generous compensation packages to retain staff, or seek economies of scale, probably by working with other families.

Also see Family Office Essentials on my web site.

Consider This: How does your family recruit and reward family office professionals? Has your family considered the key person risks associated with a single family office?

Further reading: https://www.asianinvestor.net/article/why-single-family-offices-are-transitioning-to-multi-family-models/492135, https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulwestall/2023/11/15/what-does-a-family-office-in-the-usa-look-like/?sh=6228c6342a19, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/debunking-family-office-trend-landscape-why-focusing-issues-marshall/, https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesfinancecouncil/2023/08/22/is-it-time-to-consider-a-multifamily-office/?sh=672aa6ce6f077, https://www.wealthprofessional.ca/news/industry-news/the-multi-family-office-structure-to-support-success/355383, https://www.ft.com/content/4e4f3a07-e2e8-43be-b024-9a24aed6069f, https://www.forbes.com/sites/francoisbotha/2020/06/28/how-to-identify-a-true-multi-family-office/?ss=leadership-strategy#301b1fcf4869, https://www.forbes.com/sites/whittiertrust/2020/04/01/why-high-net-worth-families-need-more-than-just-a-bookkeeper/#2678e1e65304, https://www.fa-mag.com/news/why-establish-a-virtual-multifamily-office-43191.html

For more in-depth, thought-provoking discussion points and further commentary on family and business conflict resolution, access my Familosophy newsletter archives by signing into our newsletter https://DavidWerdiger.com.

#familyoffice #wealthmanagement #conflictresolution #strategicmanagement 
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source https://davidwerdiger.com/family-office/single-multi-or/

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The post Test appeared first on David Werdiger.

source https://davidwerdiger.com/uncategorized/test-22/