The Current of Individualist Societies
As Jim Grubman and Dennis Jaffe have pointed out in their new book Cross Cultures: How Global Families Negotiate Change Across Generations, our Anglo-American society has developed an Individualist culture. By Geert Hofstede’s widely regarded scale, the US scores a whopping 91 on the individualist scale, making it the most individualist society of all.[1] It turns out that the US is only one of seven countries that have individualism as its highest cultural value (the others are Australia, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Canada and Italy). We can easily point to various factors that have contributed to this as a national value – immigration, exploration, industrialization, entrepreneurship, the rise of a knowledge economy, personal liberty and a host of other cultural values, messages, and memes all support rugged individualism.
In high Individualist cultures, the self is seen largely through the lens of its uniqueness. Consequently, we Individualists tend to see family as instrumental. We tend to view the primary goal of childrearing as the nurturance of highly individuated, self-motivated adults who will sink or swim based on their individual skills and abilities. The family naturally becomes a means in service of individualism. Beyond that, marriage and extended family is viewed through the lens of self-development, self-authorship, and psychological health. Marriage is often about the fulfillment of each partner and the ways in which the marriage serves the needs of each person. Divorce rates in the United States are not as high as some other countries, perhaps because we tend to factor in the personal fulfillment of each spouse from the outset.
In our post-industrial, post-modern society, fragmentation of families by distance and frequency of contact is the norm, not the rule. Many people drift away from their families of origin, retaining loose ties with cousins, aunts and uncles, siblings and even parents. We tend to develop social structures to replace the family – friends, colleagues, and affinity groups that meet our individual needs for support and social engagement.
The Flow in Collectivist Societies
Other cultures have a different understanding of identity and self-development. Some place a much higher degree of importance on “groupness” – what Hofstede refers to as “Collectivist” cultures. Countries such as Colombia, China, and Indonesia are among the least individualistic national cultures on Hofstede’s scale. In these countries, self-identity is seen as interwoven with social context. I am who I am by reference to others in my group. My group status, social expectations, and defined roles play a more dominant part in determining my sense of self.
Collectivist cultures tend to define the self by the group to which they belong. In collectivist cultures, the family is not so much a means to an end, but is seen more as an end-in-itself. The family is paramount in forming identity and, thus, maintaining familial relationship is more important than individual choice. As one might imagine, these cultures place a high value on harmony and closeness.
Of course, neither the Individualist way or the Collectivist way is inherently superior. Each approach has its set of strengths and weaknesses. Each reflects the evolution of that culture in its historical context. The reason I bring this up at all is to make a point about the development of family culture in families of wealth in the United States and Canada.
The Cultural Rub
When it comes to wealthy families, an additional dynamic beyond societal norms is put into play. A wealthy family situated in the United States often has had imposed on it a weighty overlay of legal structures (in the form of trusts and entities). It is expected to work together to make these function effectively, but it does so without much support from the broader culture. Families in the US that chose to be more Collectivist than the norm (in order to preserve or grow wealth) are fighting the powerful headwinds of an Individualist society in which every member of the family is socialized from an early age to be an a strong independent adult trained to go his or her own way. When looking at the three possible endgames of wealth – Division, Preservation, and Growth – our culture is almost wired for Division.[2]
Swimming Against the Current
For families swimming against the current of rugged Individualism, this impulse to work together is often coupled with the fact that planning for the patrimony (the wealth created by the founding generation) occurred within what we have been calling the primal contradiction. That contradiction states: “A strong individual leaves an organizational legacy that utterly fails to come to terms with the hard reality of collectivity.” Under these circumstances, the strategic organization of the estate (structure) is eaten for breakfast by the failure to take into account the collective nature of the family (culture).
The strong-minded Individualist founder, often with high control needs and a proclivity to dictate, plans in such a way as to see his (or her) vision realized in the estate documents. The very set of values and behaviors that created the wealth becomes institutionalized in the plans the wealth creator leaves behind. The deep irony is that to sustain and grow wealth in a family requires not strong, independent individuals, but strong independent individuals who are able and willing to work together. The abilities required to work well together are often diametrically opposed to the values that created the wealth. Where the founder wants clarity, the heirs must live comfortably with ambiguity. Where the founder was decisive, successful heirs are deliberative. Where risk built wealth, undue risk will destroy it. Where control developed wealth, flexibility sustains it.
In this sense, “passing on the founder’s values” actually becomes the seed of the destruction of the patrimony he or she worked so hard to create. This failure to take into account the culture of the family (the “hard reality of collectivity”) when creating the estate plan becomes a fatal flaw for many plans and it helps to explain why so many great fortunes result in human tragedies.
The Achilles heel of most plans to protect the patrimony is that they were not developed collectively – with input from the people who would be most affected by them, who will live with their consequences and who are charged with managing that wealth wisely. The plan was not conceived as a collaborative venture – designed to work within family dynamics. Nor was it designed for a collective governance structure with the assent of the governed – with checks and balances and opportunities for varying degrees of control by the beneficiaries. Perhaps more importantly, the family was never educated to work together. Instead, such plans are almost always organized to put professional advisors in the seats of real power. This leaves the family with the job of coming to terms with the collective impact of the structures put in place by well-meaning but myopic founders. All too often the family is ill-prepared and unequipped to cross the deep chasm between the planning and the execution of those plans. Often they simply become passive recipients of wealth.
So what are we to do? Is there a framework to help us in starting to sort through this dilemma?
Burn the Mission Statements, Tell Stories Instead
First, it seems that families (and the industry that supports them) would be well advised to move away from mission and vision statements that force people to conform to a set of idealized, abstracted – and ultimately artificial – notions of unity. Such statements often purport to express the will of the group, but all too often they require the suppression or sublimation of personal outcomes. As such, they can become expressions of illegitimate power with a view to suppressing individuation. Such brittle vision statements simply shatter in the face of social complexity and real familial stress. The alternative adopted by many families is to create a vision statement that is so innocuous – so vanilla – that no one will object. Such statements are rarely strong enough to generate the deep motivation necessary to move forward in the face of challenges. They are cast aside at the first sign of trouble.
The only way I have found to move forward beyond contrived unity is to tell nuanced “stories of the future” in which each family member can visualize and connect emotionally with how his or her legitimate needs will be met and how he or she can contribute in his or her own way. These stories honor individuation and individualism. Such stories describe a kind of territory the family could occupy if it worked together for the good of each individual in the family. Scenarios allow for a diversity of contribution and opportunities of pluralistic support. They allow all voices to be heard and reflected. When developed well, these stories are simultaneously plastic and inspiring. They can change and adapt with time.
When each family member sees how enough of his or her agenda is reflected in the possible futures of the family – and see his or her unique and powerful place in these stories of the future — the stories have done more than forge mere consensus based on a series of personal compromises. It has made the “pie” to be divided larger for everyone involved. Family members are not forced to “align” but instead have fabricated an entire “world” [3] that can attune a diverse group of people with different agenda’s to act in concert (albeit as individuals) to reach for common well-being (familial commonwealth).
If vision statements create marching bands, good scenarios create jazz ensembles. There is room for self-expression but self-expression within a broader theme that will evolve and shift over time. The creation of a shared set of multiple scenarios (rather than a singular vision) creates the space needed by each person to take account of (rather than to subordinate) the multiple truths that comprise family in Individualist societies.
The best family stories I know of are the ones that see that the family – and its individual family members – are in some form of what Joseph Campbell called the “hero’s journey.” In the hero’s journey, a likable but very human hero is called from his or her normal existence to face a daunting challenge. The hero heeds the call and moves through circumstances of real difficulty and even darkness to arrive at a place of great reward. The hero then returns to the ordinary world transformed and ready to help others.
If everyone in the family is seen as someone who faces challenges and overcomes them – with the help and support of one another – some key principles are instilled. People see that adversity is normal – that wealth will not protect you from being human and that indeed the best parts of oneself have little to do with wealth. Wealth helps to free a person to find and express their potential but doesn’t substitute for it. People see that while wealth can be given, making meaning (found by building competence and connection) is something that money is powerless to deliver and can only support. People see that they cannot go it alone – there are always companions on the journey whether they are family members, friends, colleagues, or trusted advisors. People learn that triumph in life involves some degree of service to the world – creating something of value for others as well as for oneself.
In the end, the truly great narratives of wealth are initially forged in the creation myth of that wealth but then, in subsequent generations, in unfolding the ways the family deals with the brute fact of wealth in heroic (with a small “h”) ways. Every family that goes on to thrive has within it the family champions and leaders who are committed to remaining together as a family and have the skills to pull it off. Nathan Rothschild said, “It takes a great deal of wit to create a great fortune, and twice as much to keep it.” I have found that to be true in the families I advise.
The Will to Power and the Will to Empower
Second, as our last piece suggested, for the collectivism necessary to preserve or grow wealth, there is a requirement that legitimate individual agendas are served. The key word in that phrase is “legitimate” – who is to say what is legitimate and what is not? This is one place where the question of moral imagination comes to the fore.
If we see ourselves as standing in fluid moral relationship to one another, we have a chance of separating what is the “will to power” from the “will to empower.” It is not guaranteed that these two forms of power will differentiate, or that one is not being masked in the other, but with a moral commitment at its core, the chances are higher that the will to empower can emerge. That which empowers and liberates is presumptively legitimate. The first approach gives in to anxiety, the second yields to ambiguity. The first tries to create certainty, the second creativity. That which empowers individuals in an individualist macro-culture can be at least presumptively be viewed as “legitimate.” This means that players in the long game are seeking expanded outcomes for all. The best phrase I know of that captures this sensibility is “One for all and all for one.”
In such environments, there is a dynamic interplay between the ascendancy of the individual coming into her own and the role of the group in supporting that move to congruent integrity. Such families are intentionally developmental (more on this in a future post). There is also a responsibility of each individual to contribute to the group’s capacity to empower the individual – and particularly to empower the rising generation. This forms the base for the complex dance between independence and inter-dependence.
Avoiding the Individualist Trap
Third, let’s discard the quaint myth that we can forge a collective long-term “consensus” in families in which they are required to sublimate self-interest for the good of the whole.[4] Here it is important to distinguish between “soft” and “hard” consensus.
Because of the anxieties generated by potential conflict and the existence of divergent agendas, there can be a rush to paper over individual differences through weak agreements. It is this impulse — to define the good of the whole as abstracted from individual needs and interests — that often underlies such endeavors as unifying mission and values statements we pointed to earlier. Such exercises presume a commonality that often doesn’t exist in reality.
Sometimes these “soft” consensus interventions are developed in the hope that a vigorous unity will emerge. It rarely does. In other cases, the consensus is premised on finding least common denominators of group interest or, alternatively, by adopting aspirational statements that are beyond the collective reach of the actual people in the room. In other cases, this is a nominal agreement of adhesion shaped largely by power holders and imposed on the larger family using emotional or fiscal control. None of this provides a sound platform for the long-term collaboration necessary for growth and preservation strategies to flourish.
Many consultants use a soft consensus approach to uncover the “objectives of the group as a whole.” They ask individuals to leave their personal agendas out of the discussion. Often, and ironically, the person most likely to confuse “the good of the whole” with “the good of the individuals” is the consultant. Indeed, sometimes it is only the consultant who has a perspective on what the abstract “whole” might be. Family members in our society tend not to see wholes – they see individuals. The “whole” is often too abstract to be visible let alone be worthy of allegiance and the sublimation of self-interest. Soft consensus decision making in families is usually created through a series of personal compromises. The parties are encouraged to use moderation, engage in trade-offs, and find the middle ground. Often there is “a little something for everyone” in the resulting agreements.
This approach often generates brittle agreements that shatter against the hard reality of evolving individual agendas. In working with groups in Individualist societies, there is rarely a stable, unified whole – only fluid convergences of shifting interests. This means that there is never one “right” overarching answer that will “align” family members for very long. Each individual, each family branch, and each generation has its needs, interests, and ambitions. This means that multiple perspectives have to be accounted for to find a way forward. Procrustean compromise or weak “consensus” simply falls apart in the face of that level of social complexity.
What is perhaps the most pernicious of the effects of artificial unity is that it inherently and inevitably generates mistrust. If you create an agreement that all have nominally signed, but you know in your heart of hearts that no one truly supports, you have created a lack of authenticity that is inherently untrustworthy. The actual family culture isn’t reflected in the forged agreements thereby generating poor outcomes.[5]
What is required instead is hard consensus. Rather than agreements based on a series of weakly negotiated compromises, moderation, trade-offs, and finding middle ground, hard consensus will involve the more arduous work of negotiating differences that integrate solutions to meet the core interests of the various individuals and constituencies who are part of the collective. Such negotiations often involve vigorous debate, careful listening, skilled facilitation and a willingness to look beyond positions to core interests.[6] This process looks to surface “elephants in the room”. Over time, the family must be willing to deal with those issues. It will not seek conflict, but not go out of its way to avoid it. It will have as a part of its focus individual growth and empowerment. It will also contain within it a willingness to consider that there are advantages to collective action and that the interests of all are best supported by working together. Creating hardened consensus is not easy and in the end always contains within it ambiguity and uncertainty. Collaboration is hard work and requires real skills over longer periods of time.
Ironically, often families come to do the work of hard consensus building through trying weak approaches first. They create agreements that don’t work in reality. The path to negotiation lies in asking the question of why those agreements didn’t work. Such weak consensus often initially feels like relief from the anxiety generated by disunity. When families come to grips with the fact that they have smoothed over rather than confronted their real issues, they get to the real work. In a sense, the weak agreements make these more difficult issues visible. It is often then that hard consensus building becomes possible. The wise consultant knows that the mission statement the family so desperately wanted to create over the course of a weekend retreat is only am antechamber of deeper work. That consultant will warn the family that this might happen.
Action Based on Principles
Fourth, families that succeed in the counter-cultural move towards collective action adopt principles that support that movement. They have explicit agreements and those agreements mean something. Family members are expected by themselves and other family members to be more or less responsible adults who live up to their commitments. Far from curtailing autonomy, it is celebrated in these collective commitments. Each person entering into the agreement is a free agent committing to other free agents for mutual individual benefit. Of course in the real world, there are defections from these agreements. This gives rise to a need to candidly acknowledge these deviations, work through the conflicts that arise from them and moving towards reconciliation. This still honors the impulse to individuality. While such work requires both kindness and candor, when done well it sustains good boundaries and accountability which are at the heart of autonomy. This too, is the deeper work of hardened consensus building.
While in one sense principles are “values in action” in the sense used here, they are not aspirational. Rather they are actual operating agreements that create containers for work together that people view as fair and just. Such principles provide standards and norms for conversation. They are not rules so much as they are guideposts. They are not goals or outcomes. Instead, they define the process by which the family will pursue goals and outcomes. To violate a principle is to signal to the group that it is off track and that it needs to right itself. It is one thing to have declared shared values; it is another thing to operate on a set of agreed upon principles. Such principles set boundaries for the field of play within the family system.
The Importance of Gathering
Fifth, families must gather and bond. For a social fabric sufficient to sustain agreements, the family must find personal connections to things other than the structures of their wealth. They must come to see each other as a deep resource in the tapestry of their respective lives. One wise patriarch sent all of the women in the family (including married-in spouses) on an annual shopping trip. The informal bonds created had a lasting impact. The women didn’t always get along, and they often had very different views, but the nature of the relationship built in spending time together helped them to weather many a storm. This also forged bonds with in-laws and wove the family fabric in ways that were important. In another family, a seventh generation family member passed up the opportunity to ski in Gstaad with friends to attend her large family reunion. Families can create shared experiences through family gatherings that are not all business but filled with fun and re-connection. These kinds of tribal gatherings are critical to the creation of family culture.
Building Capacity
Sixth, families that thrive consciously build capacity to address the problems they face. In another context, a good friend of mine was consulting with a two-star general commanding a very large, mission-critical base. This general had received a specific mandate from the Secretary of Defense along with an unlimited budget to meet the objective. Given how the base was working, he saw no way for the mandate to be fulfilled. It seemed impossible. With no clear path, the general meet with my friend. After getting a handle on the situation, my friend asked the general to describe the core challenge he was facing. He repeated the orders he had received and the difficult obstacles he faced. My friend said, “I think you are wrong. I don’t believe that’s your challenge…I will be back in two weeks, and we’ll see if you can give me a different answer.” Two weeks passed and the general repeated back to my friend the mandate in different words. My friend told him he still wasn’t seeing the big picture. He came back two weeks later, and the general admitted he was stumped. My friend then eased him off the hook by saying something like, “The mandate you have been given is a massive challenge, but it is not your biggest challenge as the commander of this base. While this project is significant, next year will bring an even bigger one and the year after that another even bigger one and so on. Your real challenge is not simply to meet this immediate challenge, but to ensure that, when your tour is over, this base can triumph over any challenge that is thrown at it in the future.” This larger challenge became the centerpiece of the general’s message to the military personnel and civilian contractors working on the base. As a result, they accomplished that first, seemingly impossible, objective months before the deadline. More importantly, they built capacity they didn’t know they had. This notion of building sufficient capacity to solve not only the problems of today but to meet the challenges of tomorrow is a good way to describe capacity building in families. There is always a challenge du jour – that is why I get hired. The question for the family is whether it is equipping itself to address not only that problem, but whether it is growing collectively to address the challenges of the future. It is in this later work that I earn my fee.
Building capacity is about building both skills and competencies. Benchmarking can be invaluable to ascertain where a family stands and what it must work on to be successful. Doing qualitative and quantitative analysis at the outset often “wakes” up the family. Engaging areas of weakness revealed in such benchmarking helps to identify and build skills, competence and capacity to meet future challenges. This is the stuff of resilient, successful families. From there the work of building capacity can be targeted and developed in progressive, laser focused ways.
Conclusion
These are some interventions that can radically shift family culture. Those families that can successfully create a counter-cultural collective mindset have a fighting chance to play the endgames of either Preservation or, in rare cases, Growth. Those that don’t intentionally build their culture are likely to fracture – either quietly or dramatically – in the long game of Division.
***
In our fifth installment of the Playing the Long Game series, we will look at the implications of the three scenarios for planning and present a tool to help family leaders and their advisors think through the planning process more clearly.
© 2016. Matthew Wesley. All rights reserved.
[1] While Hofstede’s model is not the only game in town when it comes to comparing cultural values (see e.g. Trompaneers, Hunt & Weintraub, Bacon & Spear, Hal & Tonna, Beck, Lenski), his website offers the entertaining ability to compare different cultures using his model.
[2] As Grubman and Jaffe point out in their book, globalization has brought with both the dissemination of Individualist values from the West and, largely through education of wealthy children abroad, transformations in other, more collectivist cultures.
[3] In The Moment of Clarity: Using the Human Sciences to Solve Your Toughest Business Problems, authors Madsberg and Rasmussen note how we speak of the theater world, the sports world, the world of business and so on. Each “world” has its own set of rules, its own language, its own rituals. The same is true of every family – the family has a “world” of its own. This “world” is the manifestation its invisible culture.
[4] Some of what follows is influenced by the yet unpublished book by Adam Kahane tentatively titled “Collaborating with the Enemy: An Open Way to Work with People You Don’t Agree With or Like or Trust.”
[5] Note, this is not the case when agreements are truly negotiated and where different points of view are raised and resolved. Some family constitutions, deeply negotiated over time and developed with a view to creating a process for self-governance are a solid example of this type of collective engagement with difficult issues. Things slapped together without really looking at deep divides is typically not resilient enough to weather family dynamics.
[6] See Fisher and Ury, Getting to Yes (1992)
— April 18, 2016