Читать книгу Complete Family Wealth - Keith Whitaker, James Hughes E., James E. Hughes Jr. - Страница 32

Many families keep track of their financial capital on an annual or even quarterly or monthly basis. Careful stewarding of balance sheets and income statements is critical to the management of the family's financial capital.

Unfortunately, these efforts often don't extend to the family's qualitative capital. Without an assessment of qualitative capital, the family and individual balance sheets are incomplete and will not measure the extent to which a family is growing its complete wealth.

One way to measure, manage, and grow qualitative capital is Family Qualitative Capital Management, a program we developed at Wise Counsel Research. In this section we share a brief description of this process.

First, every twelve months, we measure our client families' qualitative capital. To do so, we designed a tool we call the Family Balance Sheet. It takes each family member about 20–30 minutes to fill it out online. The Family Balance Sheet produces topline results for the family that show its scores in human, legacy, family relationship, structural, and social capital.

Second, we aggregate all family members' responses to create a Family Qualitative Capital Report. This Report identifies the family's areas of strength and weakness in the five forms of qualitative capital. Based on the family's results, we include in the Report relevant and actionable recommendations for each family member and for the family as a whole.

Third, we meet with the family to review the Family Qualitative Capital Report. (Each individual family member's report is confidential to him or her, but everyone sees the Family Report.) The most important part of this annual meeting is to help the family discuss and decide on a Qualitative Action Plan. This Plan may include specific objectives such as enhancing cross-generational communication, engaging and educating rising generation family members, and creating effective governance structures. The Family Qualitative Capital Action Plan ensures that the family always proceeds forward in a thoughtful, deliberate manner, that responds to its true needs, and makes the most of family members' engagement and the resources committed to these efforts.

Fourth, family members pursue their agreed-upon Qualitative Action Plan in concert with appropriate specialists. These may include family office staff, attorneys, individual or family counselors, or governance specialists. This is the same as what is called “manager selection” in the world of quantitative capital. You don't expect one person to manage all your different financial assets. So why expect one consultant or adviser to help you with your different forms of qualitative capital?

Fifth, after six months, we reconvene a family meeting to evaluate progress toward the agreed-upon objectives and make any needed adjustments to the Qualitative Capital Action Plan.

Sixth, in the final month of each annual engagement, we meet once more with family leadership to summarize progress, identify changes in the family system, update the Family Qualitative Action Plan, and discuss overarching goals for the next year of the family's work together.

No doubt you've noticed the parallel between the process of Family Qualitative Capital Management and the process of financial wealth management.

There's one crucial way in which the two differ. As fascinating and as important as it is, financial wealth management is not an end in itself. Financial capital is a means to pursue other ends, such as security, comfort, health, meaningful experiences, etc.

In contrast, qualitative capital is both a means and an end. Having strong qualitative capital allows your family members to do more—to work together effectively, to make good decisions, to sustain their family business or family finances over generations. But it also allows them to be more—to be healthier and happier in their individual lives and with each other. It promotes true “wealth as well-being.”