Читать книгу Complete Family Wealth - Keith Whitaker, James Hughes E., James E. Hughes Jr. - Страница 37

In addition to these fundamental keys to flourishing, our research and experience have identified four other factors specific to flourishing within the context of financial capital.

 First, giving wisely: doing so requires thought and care on the part of both givers and recipients.

 Second, flourishing families encourage and promote individual identities separate from financial wealth. This task is especially important for the family's rising generation.

 Third, such families use trusts, and they make sure that these trusts are primarily human rather than merely legal relationships.

 Fourth, philanthropy provides these families a shared focus.

These keys to family flourishing share important characteristics. They reflect that families are made up of individuals. For the family to flourish, its individual members must flourish. They also reflect that every family has its own culture, shaped by its history, its stories, its founding values, and the values and dreams of its present members. No one individual's plans for the family, no matter how grand, will succeed if those plans run against the family's shared culture. Finally, every family belongs to a larger society that shapes its members and their choices. No family can chart its path as a family without considering the impact that the larger society will have on it and its members.

Based on these observations, we suggest reflecting on these three questions regarding your own family:

1 Is each individual member flourishing?

2 Does your family enjoy a shared culture aimed at promoting the individual flourishing of its members?

3 Do family members know how to chart their own paths apart from the family enterprise?