For the past several years, I have had the honor and pleasure of Co-Chairing the FOX Senior Management Council with Mariann Mihailidis at FOX. This council is a wonderful group of 25 senior family office leaders of multi-generational family enterprises who meet twice a year for a couple of days. My involvement in this council came in response to their desire for leadership training focused on the practical skills they need to engage and serve multiple generations of family members. One of the areas we’ve covered is the notion that different situations require different levels of leadership:

1. Expert - focuses on problem-solving (about 45% of leaders)
2. Achiever - focuses on strategy (about 35% of leaders)
3. Catalyst- focuses on culture (about 5% of leaders)*

*There are stages below Expert and above Catalyst but less relevant to our conversation here.
 

Leadership in any family enterprise is complex, interdependent, and changing more rapidly today than ever. Accordingly, leaders in both family offices and families need to be more agile than ever. Over-using any mode of leadership can erode your effectiveness. Let’s consider an example of how framing things for those you are leading can make all the difference. Consider that a problem well defined [i.e. framed] is a problem half solved (Charles Kettering, famed inventor and head of research at General Motors).

Imagine you are a family office leader, and a family member in G2, Karen, calls you. She is concerned about some of the information her son Ernie is posting on Facebook. She asks you to help. Let’s look at three ways to frame this issue and see how each solution results in differing levels of efficiency and effectiveness.

The most efficient approach would be to frame this issue as a problem that you can solve. You can tell Karen that the most prudent thing to do is to not have any family members on social media to keep everyone safe. This is quick, decisive, and echoes the thoughts you have heard from people in the cyber world. Framing this using a problem-solving approach means you are the person charged with solving problems; you have the authority and expertise to do it; and you do so efficiently. This can be a great approach, as far as it takes you, and is the approach someone at the Expert stage of leadership development would tend to overuse.

But let’s pull back from the situation a bit and see it from a broader perspective. If you think about the fact that 12 other members of the rising generation besides Ernie (and their parents as well as grandparents, let’s say 20 people) all have a web presence, then a more strategic and systematic approach may be warranted. To get buy-in for your vision, you could meet with Karen, her siblings, and the members of their parents’ generation to craft a policy. After you get the buy in, you can present it to the rising generation. Framing this with the mindset that you are the leader tasked with solving it, but you see the broader picture and therefore think more systemically and strategically, you start to think about how to collaborate to get buy-in. This typically becomes both a cause and effect of being a bit more self-aware of how you are showing up (e.g. I advocate more often than I should), more empathetic to other’s concerns (e.g. Karen always wants to feel heard in such meetings), and more focused on facilitating than just advocating. This is the additional capacity and agility that someone at the Achiever stage has developed.

The shift from problem to strategy also tends to shift the emphasis from efficient (you solved that problem virtually during a phone call) to more effective (we agreed on a policy). Effectiveness usually involves changing the existing system in some way and very often takes more time because it places more value on the process, not just the outcome.

Now let’s pull back further still. Think of Peter Drucker’s sage advice: Culture eats strategy for breakfast. Even when you have a great strategy, if it isn’t aligned with the family’s culture, then you as a leader may be ineffective. What if you talked with Karen and the other members of the family’s two older generations about their thoughts on the family’s culture?

You could frame this as a chance to help the rising generation start to collaborate, make decisions, and interact more like engaged and informed professionals than compliant family members/children. Now, this might take longer, be more expensive, and not be the right approach for every challenge (i.e. sometimes ordering lunch just requires ordering lunch), but there are situations where the extra effort is worthwhile. This kind of effort would develop your skills as a leader to be even more self-aware, empathetic, skillful at framing, and innovative. This capacity, to factor in the culture of an organization, is one that evolves for leaders at the Catalyst level.

Effective leaders can work on framing things with agility by pausing to consider:

• Is this merely a problem to solve?
• Is this a systemic issue that is best addressed by a strategic approach?
• Is this something best seen as part of a cultural dynamic?

Each way of framing involves a trade-off between efficiency and effectiveness; the key is to make the choice mindfully. Today’s world, perhaps especially family offices, requires leaders who are more agile, have greater capacity, and are willing to invest the time to reflect to most effectively frame the challenges they face.

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