David has been recognised in Passion Vista magazine‘s Top Men Leaders of 2024.

The feature showcases his multifaceted career: from software developer to tech entrepreneur and now a globally recognized family enterprise advisor, author, and speaker. The article highlights David’s passion for creation, his innovative approach to business, and his dedication to helping ultra-high-net-worth families navigate complex intergenerational challenges.

Read the feature here.

 

At this time of year, aren’t you itching to know about family office trends for 2025?

Don’t waste your time. There aren’t any.

Morgan Housel explained this through the difference between cumulative and cyclical knowledge. In some fields, such as medicine, what we know builds on the knowledge of our predecessors. That way, the body of knowledge continues to accumulate and improve.

But in the realm of money and wealth, the same themes have been regurgitated for hundreds of years:

• Anxiety around maintaining wealth
• How not to let wealth spoil us and our children
• Economic bubbles and crashes

The classical Jewish work Ethics of the Fathers (written around 2000 years ago), put it very succinctly: “The more property, the more anxiety” (2:7).

These challenges are not new, and will never get old.

You will not read about a family office trend of age-appropriate rising gen education about living a good life with significant wealth.

Why?

Because unlike medicine or mathematics, our relationship with money and wealth is as much emotional as it is rational.

What drives us to create and sustain wealth goes to feelings about power, our place in society, and our relationships.

My favourite quote on this was from the mobster Tony Montana in the movie Scarface (1983): “In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women.”

No trends there.

Just eternal truths about the human condition.

Our attitudes to wealth are established in our formative years. They are a product of our upbringing and experiences. They remain with us for most of our lives, usually buried deep in the subconscious.

Appetite for risk, attraction to certain asset classes, approach to diversification, scarcity or abundance mindset.

They can usually be traced back to baked-in beliefs rather than anything scientific:

• “Property never goes down”
• “Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations”
• “Debt is bad”
• “Debt is good”
• “Giving children money will spoil them”

So what to do instead of embracing the latest “family office trend”?

Firstly, skim those “trend” articles with a heaped tablespoon of salt.

Read a “trend” article from a few years ago and laugh at it.

Then, start this during the holiday season (preferably with your family):

• Articulate your own money beliefs and challenge them.
• Understand where they came from and why.
• Think about how your children’s (and your parent’s) beliefs may differ and why.
• Decide what you want to keep, and what you want to change.

Our greatest risk lies in the things we don’t know we don’t know.

The first step to changing anything is self-awareness.

Thriving families focus on communication, learning and growth, not trends.

That is the key to thriving across generations.

Conversation Starters:

What are the ‘money myths’ in your family?

What are the stories that gave rise to them?

How has behaviour been reinforcing them or challenging them?

What stories (money-related and otherwise) help the family thrive?

Further reading:

FIVE FAMILY BUSINESS TRENDS FOR 2019
Asian Family Office – Recent Trends and its Non-financial Role
Ten Trends That Will Impact Private Wealth And Family Offices In 2021
Three Pivotal Trends Impacting Growth
Family office executives reveal the 10 biggest trends shaping the industry

“The problem is not wolves at the door but termites in the floor.”

Author Os Guinness was talking about the future of America in his 2012 book, but the comment applies equally to families.

It’s obvious what to do when wolves are at your door; they pose a clear and present danger. You need to act with urgency to stave them off.

Termites in the floor, on the other hand, are barely noticeable. You can deal with them … tomorrow. So instead you push things off and do nothing … until the house collapses.

Termites are actually worse than that, because the floors and walls may be full of them but you may not see them … unless you look closely for the signs.

—————————–

Your family is like a house – it needs a strong foundation:

• Communication & trust
• Shared vision & purpose
• Good governance

From time to time, wolves will come to the door. They are crises that you need to deal with immediately. They are usually things external to the family – changes in market conditions or the economic environment, or competitive factors that affect operating business.

These external challenges often relate to financial capital. You can keep the wolves from the door by ensuring that you (as a family) are aligned on purpose, have well-articulated investment policy and governance, and are suitably diversified. While you can’t control or prevent those external factors, you can be ready to weather them when they happen.

A family flare-up that relates to non-financial capital, such as family dynamics, succession & the rising gen, might seem like another wolf at the door. But it’s not.

These things don’t come out of the blue; they often relate to longstanding and unresolved issues between family members. These are the termites in the floor.

Either you don’t notice them, you pretend they are not there, or you consider them important but not urgent. Dealing with them is much harder than things like investment policies. They relate to deeply held emotions. It’s much easier to put them on the back burner, find other priorities etc.

… until they explode and the house collapses.

This is the other important difference: wolves are external threats, but termites are internal. Most empires are destroyed from internal decay, and it’s the same with families. If an empire/family is internally strong, not only can it withstand wolves, but it is vigilant about staying termite free. If it is weak internally – poor communication, lack of trust, no shared vision, poor governance – then it’s just a matter of time before it will collapse.

How to be termite-free?

Build a strong foundation (see above)

Be on the lookout for termites

Don’t delay in dealing with them

Conversation Starters:

What issues are festering in your family?

What happens when they flare up?

Further reading:

Family firms need to have hard conversations, experts say
Use the festive period to prevent future conflict in your family business
Following Up the Family Meeting — Steps to Preserve Family Wealth
Opinion: Generation labels mean nothing. It’s time to retire them.
Why Family Disputes Are Rising In English Courts
Hoflander aims to help generations understand each other in new book
Succession Fireside Chat: How do business families deal with conflict? Part 1 – Key themes when helping business families

One of the biggest lies ever told is “blood makes you family”. Blood makes you related; loyalty, love and trust makes you family.

That was the meme that showed up on my feed recently.

It got me thinking.

Families tend to have a fixation on blood: that family wealth needs to be preserved along the bloodlines, that only blood can be trusted, that married-ins should be kept on the outer.

Some of these tropes come from longstanding cultural beliefs.

But we ought to challenge them.

As Jay Hughes noted, a family starts with a couple who are not related: two people who choose to partner and create a family. The bond between those two – the parents – are often the model for their children.

If you treat their children-in-law as second-class family members, it can send the message that you respect your own marital choices, but not those of your children!

This is not to ignore the fact that divorce can wreak havoc on family relationships and family wealth, that divorce rates are very high, and that some people marry for money.

Rather, be consistent, and aim to setup marriages for success to the extent that you can.

We can similarly challenge putting the sibling bond on a pedestal. My father-in-law put it well: “just because two people come out of the same womb doesn’t mean they will be friends”.

Every child is born into a different family – a different environment. They carry a different mix of genetic material from their parents. They are … individuals. Sometimes siblings fight because they are different, and sometimes they fight because they are similar. The way you treat them as parents can also drive conflict.

You might say that your children are equal, but that doesn’t always translate into practice. With each child, you are a different parent. The needs of each child are different.

Don’t assume your children would automatically make effective coworkers in a family business, business partners, or custodians of shared family assets.

It doesn’t come naturally.

In contrast to blood (and genetics, and life-partner choices), loyalty, love and trust are values that you can control, and prioritise when raising your children.

Those values carry a high degree of reciprocity: if you are loyal to someone, they are likely to be loyal back to you. Same for love and trust. This positive cycle starts with you as a parent: if you trust your children, they are more likely to trust you, and to be more trustworthy.

I’ve seen too many families where parents don’t trust their children: not to assume positions of responsibility within the family enterprise, not to know the extent of the family wealth (age appropriate of course), not to be a responsible custodian. Those negative cycles often start with parents, and then repeat.

A family is like a house: it needs a strong foundation. That foundation is mostly on you as parents. The behaviour you model is so important. And the behaviour you reward is what you will get back from your children.

Conversation Starters:

Whom do you trust more: your sibling’s partner, or your partner’s sibling?

How much do you trust your children?

How do your close friend relationships compare to your blood relationships?

Here is more reading on Wealth Transition.

Q. How to prevent my family from falling apart?

A. Make it Antifragile

Families are complex systems.

There are lots of intermingling pieces.

 

Unlike a jigsaw puzzle, the pieces are not a certain set of shapes.

The members of the family are individuals, with their own wants and needs, dreams and fears.

As individuals, they grew up with multiple influences:

• Their family (and each child is born into a different family)
• The events going on around them
• Their personality

 

Consider married-ins, and blended families, and the diversity of personalities, wants and needs within the family group only expands.

 

Unlike a jigsaw puzzle, they don’t automatically fit together.

We can’t assume siblings will get on just because they happen to have emerged from the same womb

All the more so for family members who joined later.

Family members are connected by bonds of all shapes and sizes – relationships.

Parents & children, siblings, spouses, cousins, in-laws, step-siblings, grandchildren etc.

Each type of relationship has its own features and complexities

If there are 4 family members, there are 6 relationships between them.

With 8 family members, there are 28 different relationships.

It doesn’t take much for discord to spread through the family system.

 

If that wasn’t interesting enough, add family wealth to the mix.

That brings a whole new layer of complexity.

Shared assets, operating business roles, estate plans, power dynamics.

 

Stack all that together and you get something that can be very fragile indeed:

So how to make your family Antifragile?

Much the same way you build a strong house

It starts with a solid foundation

 

The foundation for an Antifragile family is communication and trust

Lack of communication leads to a vicious cycle of assumptions and mistrust

Open and good communication lead to trust

 

Once the family knows how to communicate, the next thing to layer over that is a sense of shared values & purpose.

That needs to respect individuality, and still find what the diverse family members have in common.

It’s often more than you think.

With shared values, the family can develop a sense of shared purpose.

That’s one of the most important things – “social capital”

The ability for a group of people to work together to a common goal

 

With those two things, you have a platform for the next stage: good governance.

That’s just fancy for the responsible use of power and good decision-making.

Clarity over how decisions are made that affect the whole family.

The comfort that the family members in charge are acting as stewards of the family wealth – acting in the best interests of the family as a whole, and considering the needs of all family members.

This often involves documenting the ‘rules’ by which the family operates in some kind of document – a charter or a constitution.

With that foundation, you end up with a group of people who are willing members of a family of affinity.

They are part of the family because they want to, not because they have to.

They understand the responsibilities that come with the privileges they enjoy.

They respect difference and can work toward common goals.

That foundation makes a family robust, resilient, and Antifragile.

 

Conversation Starters:

How would you rate the quality of communication and trust in your family?

What rules (written or unwritten) does your family have?

How does your family manage conflict?

Further reading:

Transition – A family must first govern itself before governing the family business
Democracy or monarchy – which will family businesses choose?
Defective family constitutions are dangerous
Opinion: Intergenerational strife: Why can’t we all just get along?
The Role of Trust In A Family Business
Unequal Inheritances Often Equal Hurt Feelings
Why estate planning should be a family affair
Three P’s Of Family Office Culture: Developing Purpose, People And Plans

 

Here is more reading on Family Governance.

“I don’t need to work; I’m doing this for my kids.”

These words from a patriarch had wider implications than he realised.

 

Comments like these – ranging from “One day this will all be yours” to the patriarch’s statement – are about the purpose of family wealth.

Wealth creators start as ‘Owners’ – the wealth is theirs to do with, as they please.

While the initial intent of wealth creation varies, at some point, the thinking shifts.

From the future – to LEGACY.

 

The question becomes –

What should happen to this once I’m gone?

• It could all (or most) – go to charity.
• It could be used for SKI-ing – ‘Spending-Your-Kids’-Inheritance’
• It could provide for generations to come.

 

But then, other thoughts come to mind…

• If my kids don’t need to work, what if they end up lazy?
• I don’t want them to be spoiled, trust-fund-babies.
• How can I make them tough and resilient (like me)?

 

One way is to retain control over the wealth for as long as possible.

For some wealth creators, that means ruling from the grave.

After all, you know what’s best for them – don’t you?

 

Or do you?

 

Do parents really know what’s best for their children?

What’s the impact of doing what you think is best for them?

These approaches can be more damaging to children than spoiling them!

When parents act like this, their children can end up infantilised and disempowered.

They can end up resenting their parents’ attempts to save them, from themselves.

 

The statement – “This is for my family”, has huge implications!

It means it’s no longer just about you – the ‘Owner’.

It shifts the focal point from you to your family.

And it shifts the wealth creator from ‘Owner’ to ‘Steward’.

 

‘Owners’ own and control (family) wealth.

‘Stewards’ look after family wealth on behalf of something far bigger than them –

something that came before them, and will endure beyond them – their family.

 

Once the focal point is your family, you need to consider their wants and needs.

There is only one way to find out a person’s wants and needs, and that’s to…

ASK THEM!

 

That means, including the children in discussions about family wealth.

(Of course, do it in an age-appropriate way).

These discussions can be wide ranging.

Anything from –

• How the wealth can be used for the benefit of the family.
• Projects and initiatives the family can do together.
• How to raise future generations.

 

These discussions can be really difficult for some wealth creators.

After all, they did all the hard work.

What right do their children have to direct how to use the wealth?

But if the wealth is indeed “for the family”, then the family should have a say.

 

If family wealth discussions are ABOUT them, but do not INCLUDE them, then they are not truly FOR them.

 

This is where having an impartial third-party in the room can be invaluable.

Such a person can facilitate more productive discussions, and be enabling for all family members.

 

Conversation Starters:

• Who is at the table to discuss family wealth in your family?
• Who is not at the table? – Why?

 

If you’re an ‘Owner’ thinking about transitioning to ‘Steward’ and would like an external sounding board to help map out your options, my door is always open.

If you’re the rising generation and would like guidance/ support on how your role in the family is evolving, I’m very familiar with the ins and outs of that journey.

Please contact me by reply to talk.

Further reading:

3 Steps to Creating A Healthy Multi-Generational Family Wealth Culture
Introduce your children to your wealth manager
Strained relationships can lead to loss of generational wealth – Family advisor
I Come From a Wealthy Family: Why I Still Had To Take Out Student Loans
Family fortunes: the importance of multi-generational wealth discussions
Why We Don’t Talk About Money (and How We Can)
Family Business: The death of the founder
Hash Out the Inheritance Now, or Fight Your Family Later
The Kids Are Alright—But Are They Right for the Family Business?

Here is more reading on Family wealth advisory.

It’s a great visual: a relay race where the next runner is waiting in position ready for the current runner to reach the handover spot, at which point they will execute a quick and seamless handover of the baton so the team can continue apace.

The first runner arrives at the handover point, but for some reason, the baton is stuck in their hand.

They can’t let go.

The race stalls.

 

This happens regularly in family enterprise succession planning.

The rising generation is chomping at the bit to take their place and make their mark.

But the incumbent generation is … hesitant, uncertain, anxious.

 

What is at the heart of this hesitancy?

 

It might be expressed in different ways: the rising generation are not ‘ready’, the business may struggle with a change of leadership, the current economic environment is not suitable.

Sometimes, these are deflections from “The Sticky Baton”: the difficult emotions associated with letting go.

 

For the incumbent generation, the business is often something they put their heart and soul into for decades and watched it grow – almost like a child that is now grown up.

When our children leave home, we are often ambivalent – happy for them to be spreading their own wings yet sad to see them leave.

Their departure leaves a void in our lives.

 

In the same way, passing the business to the rising generation (or selling it) leaves a void.

 

As one person said: “if your business is everything, what are you without your business?”

That gives rise to some complex emotions: fear and grief.

Fear of a future without a clear sense of what to do each day, lacking in purpose and drive, and no longer being a useful contributor to the family enterprise.

 

Fear is one of our most powerful emotions, and our greatest fear is of the unknown.

 

What comes next? 

Golf and lawn bowls? Being put out to pasture?

The feeling of grief is genuine: for something that was for decades a huge part of our lives and now may be irretrievably ‘lost’.

 

The good news is that there are ways to address this.

 

Succession (done well) is not an event; rather it’s a process.

 

With the right preparation, it can be as seamless as the baton handover in the 4x100m race.

And it can’t be hurried – it can easily take several years.

That work pays off when the transition goes smoothly.

The preparation must work across several aspects of the family enterprise.

 

Not just the structural, organisational and financial, but also the emotional.

 

And any family enterprise succession plan takes (at least) two to tango; it needs to consider both generations.

 

What to do now?

 

The first step is to acknowledge the emotional aspect to succession, and to become OK with it.

 

Expressing emotions may not come easy for wealth originators and family patriarchs.

They are usually perceived (by themselves and others) as the strong ones in the family who look after others.

Any insecurities and self-doubts are pushed aside.

 

But they are as human as anyone else; they just may not want to show this to their children.

 

This is where friends, confidants and advisors can help.

 

People with the experience and understanding to help work through these issues, and with a level of independence to remain non-judgmental and provide sage counsel.

Conversation Starters:

Do you have a process for succession in your family enterprise?
What if anything is holding things back?
What tensions has either discussion about the process or the process itself uncovered within the family?

Further reading:

Why Leadership Is So Important To Millennials Right Now
Talking about family business: Planning for a successful succession
Succession Planning: It’s A Marathon, Not A Sprint
The Right Ways to Pass the Torch
3 STEPS BUSINESS OWNERS SHOULD TAKE PRIOR TO SUCCESSION PLANNING
Here’s 3 steps business owners should consider when succession planning
Trust more important than ever for successful transfer of family businesses between generations
COVID-19, Great Transfer And Bridging Generational Gap
The Succession Plan: Discovering Its Rewards Through A People-Focused Strategy
Half of Business Owners Do Not Want Their Children to Inherit, Run Business
6 Actionable Steps For Preparing Your Exit Strategy
Lonely at the top: The emotional struggles of wealthy families
Family governance is necessary — but not sufficient — for transgenerational success

 

Here is more reading on Succession Planning.