What Cannot Be Put in a Structure

Family offices are built around a reassuring idea: if something matters, we should organize it.

We structure ownership, define authority, establish committees, write policies and prepare succession plans. When relationships become difficult, we create dispute mechanisms.

All necessary.

But families eventually encounter a boundary that governance cannot cross.

No family charter can make siblings generous with one another. A shareholders' agreement cannot produce trust. A committee cannot manufacture empathy. And no dispute resolution clause can make someone pick up the telephone and say, "I was wrong."

Some of the most important assets of a family cannot be institutionalized.

This does not make governance less important. It tells us where governance must stop.

A family office should create order, fairness and places where difficult conversations can occur. But it should resist the temptation to regulate every human difficulty. A new rule after every disagreement eventually produces an institution designed around mistrust.

Sometimes families need something more demanding than another structure.

Someone must listen when they would rather answer. Someone must concede without calculating what they receive in return. Someone must forgive without pretending nothing happened. And sometimes everyone must return to the same table knowing that yesterday cannot be rewritten.

Over generations, families will disappoint one another. There will be bad decisions, harsh words, rivalries and periods of distance.

The strongest families are not those that successfully legislate these things away. They are those that preserve the ability to repair what no document can repair.

A family office can protect the family's wealth. However, only the family can protect the family.

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