Creating Capacity in the Family Office: Reflections of an independent business advisor

Navigating the complexities of a family office—especially in today’s global economy—makes preserving wealth, planning for future generations, and achieving goals an immense challenge.

Whether you are a family member or a family office executive, here are some observations and reflections.

Advisors and strategic partners need to learn as complete a perspective as possible of each family office team and family members to provide the partnership needed. And challenging and continually updating this perspective is at the core of providing long-term value.

We find that clients appreciate and benefit from a more considered approach, less rush to consultants, more listening, creating options, and then partnering through the execution directly, by monitoring vendors, and/or as an independent sounding board.

Vast experiences shape each partnership where multi-decade/multi-generational thinking, personal connections, and emotions intersect and need to be nurtured and considered. Helping family office executives and family members live the life they want rather than deal with a multitude of (often costly) other items is at the core of our work.

Some of the opportunities that you may be experiencing:

People:

• Navigating family relationships and differing opinions within the family.

• Ensuring a smooth transition of leadership and/or responsibilities within the family.

• Ensuring that new employees align with the family's values and culture.

• Evaluating people based on financial and non-financial metrics.

• Finding and retaining qualified, competent professionals and vendors who understand the unique needs of family offices, with attributes including:

  • Trust and respect

  • Growth and service mindset

  • Operate with curiosity and discretion

Finance:

• Preservation of wealth: Ensuring people, applications, vendors, etc. align with the unique family members today, with a vision for what it will need to be in 1-,3-, and 5-years’ time.

• Performance: Evaluating the performance of investments and the overall effectiveness of the family office (especially when there are multiple asset classes and jurisdictions involved).

• Identifying and mitigating risks across various asset classes and markets, especially in a rapidly changing economic environment.

• Managing liquidity needs while maintaining a diversified portfolio, especially during times of market volatility.

• Ensuring compliance with complex tax regulations in multiple jurisdictions.

• Pursuing and achieving simplicity in finance, accounting, and tax structures, operations, and governance.

Operations:

• Diverse array of resources needed to achieve sustainable operations in all facets of the family office.

• Managing a diverse portfolio of assets, often across multiple jurisdictions.

• The action of up-scaling or downsizing its operations.

• Establishing and maintaining effective governance structures.

• Implementing and maintaining appropriate technology to support the family office's operations.

So often at the core of these challenges facing a family office is capacity and independence.

It may be that you need an extension of yourself to help out while you focus your attention on key projects; or you may want an independent perspective to support or challenge viewpoints or mediate the discovery and decisions being evaluated.

We are grateful to serve boutique family offices so, at any time in the future, if you think that additional capacity would help you navigate challenges and achieve your milestones, please reach out and let’s schedule a 20-minute conversation to chat.