While process was at the forefront of this year’s Forum, the most poignant moments of the event dealt with why families stick together — the beliefs and values behind all of the how-to discussions. 

Bestselling author and Founder of Empower Wealth LLC Lee Brower touched on this issue on the first day of the Forum, saying families should plan according to a set of guiding principles. He said that these principles will vary from family to family, but that operating according to principle gives a family much needed direction. Similarly, Carl Robinson talked about successful leadership transitions beginning with a family committed to being a collective and taking stock of desirable and undesirable outcomes. In other words, success starts with arriving at a consensus on what the family is about.

A particularly powerful example of process led by principle was provided on day one of the Forum when Jim Liautaud, a clinical research professor and founder of the Liautaud Institute, discussed how his family set out to repair their fractured relationships by improving their emotional intelligence. The family put a number of processes in place to foster greater cohesiveness, including setting family meetings at the same time every year, establishing a trust to fund meetings and overcome the challenges of gathering geographically dispersed members, and a conflict resolution board to settle disputes. Liautaud studied the effects of these processes as a clinical case study and found that they not only resulted in greater transparency but his family reported that they now communicated 86% more than they had previously.

Lee Brower offered his own compelling guiding principle, saying a family business should create more than it consumes.  Perhaps no one at this year’s Forum embodied this principle more than our closing speaker, Revalesio Corporation President and CEO Eric Russell.  His family owned the Frank Russell Company, an investment firm whose patriarch’s guiding principle was to create a world safer for future generations. Revalesio epitomizes this idea.  Not only did Eric Russell's company develop a hydroponic technology to help address world hunger, but a byproduct of that technology may have some beneficial medical properties that could be used to treat a number of illnesses.  

Revalesio is not only an inspiring story, but one that captures the power of private capital in the hands of a responsible family with the vision to make a contribution to the world. We look forward to telling more of these kinds of stories here and at future events.