Dean Robinson, a good friend and Australian family business expert, once drew me a pyramid divided into three rows, with "business" at the bottom, "family" in the middle and "you" at the top. He explained it to me like this:

The company should be the foundation of everything the family wants to achieve, whether financial or non-financial. And at the same time, the family acts as the foundation and support for the goals of each family member. And as soon as these aspirations are known and shared, we can determine the direction the family business should take, at what pace, for how long and how.

In other words, define its strategy and priorities for a goal surpassing it, and go backwards, not forwards.

And this is the key: the strategy is a picture of the future in which your priorities and culture strengthen the direction of your business and the behaviour of the people in it. And, based on this picture, we think about what needs to happen to make it happen. For example, if we have a company with a turnover of 3 million euros and we want to increase our personal and family wealth and gain time on a day-to-day basis. Then we might decide that we would need to increase turnover by 1 million euros and build an effective management team, so we will first think about what our ideal business would look like in a year (strategy). With this in mind and understanding that our strategy is to get larger clients who buy projects of more than fifty or one hundred thousand euros, we know that we need between 10 and 20 new clients and that, therefore, we will have to put much emphasis on the commercial area of our business, both in the attraction and visibility phase, as well as in the sales phase. In addition, it will be necessary to create (or empower) the sales team so that it does not depend on us. And then we will have to see if we need (or not) to form the commercial team to lead these negotiations or even decide what we will do with the small clients that continue to come in, either by dedicating specific salespeople to them, separating them from the commercial circuit or referring them to a collaborator. In all cases, resources and information (financial and non-financial) will be needed to be tracked daily, weekly and monthly. And, if the objective is in the short term (less than a year), a really aggressive marketing plan, which places us in front of potential customers quickly.

Notice that it is not the business that determines what the family and the person who runs it will achieve. Still, it is the family that, with its clear aspirations (health, happiness, purpose, money, relationships, interests, reputation...), asks for the support of a family that has its interests (family relationships, heritage, legacy, solidarity, beliefs...), and chooses what the business should do and how it should do it to provide.

In my office, I have always had photos of my family doing what we love and, although some colleagues (when I worked in the family office) told me that it seemed unprofessional to have photos in t-shirts and dishevelled hair for my clients to see, I always replied that it was a reminder (to my clients and to me) of what the priorities were and what the business was for.

My work is based on asking questions that lead to conversations that allow us to discover these personal and family aspirations to align with the company's strategy and thus see ourselves fulfilled in the long term and gain focus in the short term. If you would like to talk to me without any obligation, email me oriol@oriolopez.com, and we will arrange a call.

© Oriol López Villena 2023

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