Borrowed from Your Grandchildren

CHAPTER 13Releasing the Potential of the Rising Generation: How to Develop Capable Successors

One quality that showed up in almost every generative family is a deep, ongoing, active engagement in developing the skills and commitment of their rising generations. They realize that these young people are their most important resource, and they will not spontaneously grow up to become good stewards. They have an important, impactful, and unique opportunity in the family enterprise, but to make good use of it requires engagement, investment, and active measures. Family elders realize that wealth can have negative impact on their offspring, and so they thoughtfully invest in many programs and practices. This chapter begins with the challenges facing wealthy young people in general, and then looks at how parents, and collective generative families, develop capable, committed stewards for their enterprise.

Every family, wealthy or not, faces the daunting challenge of raising children to become productive members of society. But following the adage “to whom much is given, much is expected,” an extraordinarily wealthy family with many shared assets faces additional challenges. Since young members of such a family expect to become responsible for a large and complex set of financial and business entities, they have to learn skills that the less fortunate never encounter. They also need to learn and accept the family's values about work, responsible behavior, lifestyle, money, inheritance, ...