As no two families are alike, there is no one singular approach to family education—the cornerstone to a thriving, lasting legacy. The structure, topics, and educational methods all depend on the needs, wishes, and preferences of the family members. As you develop your rising generation education strategy, considerations should be made around the establishment of a solid foundation, forum and format, and taking a gradual approach.
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For most families, a large part of multigenerational success hinges on how they approach challenges and create opportunities. In unprecedented times of social distancing and school closures, there are ways you can use this unexpected “family time” to your advantage, including enhancing education for younger generations and foster family communication through virtual family meetings.
The most problematic challenge wealthy families face is not how to make more money, but how to ensure that it lasts. This requires focusing on something other than money. Successful families, whose wealth lasts for many generations, follow five key practices.
Taking cues from entrepreneurs, families with great financial wealth would be well-served to create environments where their children can fail and in doing so, learn the invaluable lessons about finance and resilience. While the older generations may set the tone by sharing their own stories about overcoming adversity, the rising generations will learn best by making their own mistakes.
Research indicates that multigenerational involvement is the single most important factor in sustaining family wealth into the third generation and beyond. Furthermore, the families that most successfully integrate younger members into their family operations seem to share the same philosophies and core values. It’s a family enterprise mindset that prepares the rising generation to be able to step in immediately and manage the family’s financial assets, run the enterprises, and preserve the culture and legacy.
At our Family Office Exchange (FOX) Rising Gen Leadership Programs held in February and June, we noticed developing themes from our next-generation attendees. It became clear their needs and concerns were coalescing around three emergent areas. In this article we’re presenting a simple engagement pipleline to guide families and rising gen on their learning journey. This intentional approach is based on our research and the best practices of leading families.