Ready for What? Rethinking Development in Family Enterprises
Updated: Oct 13
I recently had the opportunity to speak with Sarah B. Hood of Canadian Family Offices for her article on the UHNW Institute’s Family Learning & Development Domain.
One of the questions at the center of our conversation was deceptively simple:
What will this person be asked to do, and what will it take to do it well?
Families often talk about development in very general terms. They want to “prepare the next generation,” build financial literacy, develop leadership skills, or determine whether someone is ready for greater responsibility.
But ready for what?
A family member preparing to serve on a board needs different capabilities from someone preparing to lead an operating company. An owner who does not work in the business needs to understand different things from a family-office client or a participant in family governance. A spouse entering a family system may face yet another set of developmental challenges.
Once the role becomes clearer, development can become much more concrete.
Instead of asking whether someone is generally “ready,” a family can ask what capabilities the role requires, what evidence would demonstrate those capabilities, and what experiences would help the person develop them.
Education alone rarely produces development. People need opportunities to apply what they are learning, reflect on the experience, and gradually assume greater responsibility and authority. A seminar may provide useful knowledge. Real responsibility reveals and helps to develop judgment.
This is why I increasingly think of development as a pathway rather than an event.
The pathway may include formal learning, mentoring, and coaching. It also includes assignments that matter, opportunities to make decisions, feedback on those decisions, and progressively greater responsibility as capability grows.
And this applies well beyond the rising generation. Family members encounter new developmental demands throughout the life of a family enterprise: entering ownership, joining governance, assuming leadership, becoming the client of a family office, or reconsidering one’s role as responsibilities shift to others.
Development helps family members build the capabilities they will need as their roles and responsibilities change over time.
Sarah Hood explores these and other dimensions of the UHNW Institute’s Family Learning & Development Domain in her recent article for Canadian Family Offices.
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