Every family in business fears conflict. The wiser fear silence. Not the silence of reflection, but the muteness that follows years of talking without address, minutes without meaning. Words continue to circulate, yet no one really speaks. The house is full, the table set, the board convened, yet the bond that gave sense to it all has thinned to a thread. Montaigne reminds us that we hold to one another by the word. When the word weakens, blood ties do not save us. Families m

Inspired by J. William Fulbright’s The Arrogance of Power (1966) I have just finished reading The Arrogance of Power by J. William...

In family businesses, as in life, there is truth in the belief that virtue matters. Doing good, supporting the weak, and acting with...

Written on the occasion of Robert Badinter’s entry into the Panthéon on 9 October 2025, inspired by his reflections on the meaning of...

Yesterday evening, I had the pleasure of joining the Howden team for an exceptional event dedicated to the evolution of the insurance...

Listening is the quiet art through which families rediscover one another. It begins with an awareness of where each voice speaks from,...

In every relationship, there exists a silent territory, a space that belongs to no one yet defines everyone. It lives between words,...

In many families, the real conflict is not about wealth or succession. It is about language. Each generation speaks its own dialect. The...

Why Silence Breeds Rumor in Family Businesses On October 1, Le Figaro published a striking piece on the “Grande Peur” of 1789. Historians...

The alarm bells are ringing. Artificial intelligence is already reshaping the labour market, and it is the youngest who are paying the...

Shaping Continuity, Building Tomorrow

The strict answer is no, and it should be no. Disagreement is the sign of life. The higher goal is a family without violence, a family...

In family enterprises, disinformation rarely arrives as an outright lie. More often, it takes shape through half truths, selective...

The FT Wealth (5th September 2005) portrait of Spain’s aristocracy is not a story about status. It is a meditation on continuity. The...

Twice in a matter of weeks, I crossed paths with Emperor Hadrian. This summer through Mémoires d’Hadrien, and again in Brunello...

I am often asked what I do. What is family governance? Many expect miracles, believing that I can dissolve in an instant the tensions...

On Wednesday, I described artificial intelligence as a mechanical cousin, a presence without blood or memory, yet increasingly...

Artificial intelligence has entered the family office not as a neutral tool, but as a mechanical cousin, a presence without blood or...

Artificial intelligence now stands at the threshold of the family office as a mechanical cousin, a presence neither of blood nor memory,...

Ricœur teaches that when consensus is impossible, compromise becomes the art of coexistence, the barrier between disagreement and...