FOX Foresight keeps you up to date on our latest thinking about matters affecting families, family offices, and their advisors. It gives you our forward look on what we're learning from our members and subject matter experts. Please share it broadly with your family, your office, and your advisors. 2023 FOX Foresight is presented in 8 chapters:
Strategy is often thought of as an art form—an unstructured, intuitive exercise propelled by inspiration and brilliance. However, just like finance, operations, or marketing, strategy is a functional discipline with tools, frameworks, processes, best practices, and metrics. This checklist is end-to-end process for developing and executing a compelling corporate strategy.
Having observed private investors at work over many years, authors Jonny Lach and Sara Hamilton see some clear patterns separating the most successful family investors from others. They offer some of the lessons learned, including the advantages and challenges that family investors face.
Private investors including family offices can be great investors, but many are not. They have some big competitive advantages over institutional investors which live with significant constraints imposed by law, stakeholders, media and regulators. Private investors are usually less constrained, but often fail to recognize and exploit their competitive advantages. The advantages should be seized upon; fortune favors the bold.
In The Time is NOW for your Rising Gen, FOX Chief Learning Officer, Mindy Kalinowski Earley, cautions families on waiting too long to involve their future family leaders. Outlaying personal quotes from members of the rising generation and relaying best practice first steps, Early argues that when starting family learning and leadership skills…there is no time like the present.
The new year brings unique opportunities for families and their offices, but it can also create new obstacles to navigate. FOX has identified three dominant themes that will drive disruption and opportunity for families of wealth, their family offices, and their professional advisors. We call them the “3Ts” – transitions, talent, and technology.
The past two years have tested even the most resilient families and family-held businesses. Balancing domestic obligations with managing companies virtually is stressful even on the best of days. But when employee relationships include family relationships, workforce dynamics take on a whole other level of complexity. Add a global pandemic on top, and family-held businesses find they now need to support their workforce’s mental health in addition to maintaining financial sustainability.
As we approach the two-year mark since the COVID-19 virus first hit and start to envision a “new normal,” Family Office Exchange (FOX) has identified three dominant themes that will drive disruption and opportunity for families of wealth, their family offices, and their professional advisors. We call them the "3Ts” – transitions, talent, and technology.
It's not news to family office hiring managers that prepandemic employment challenges have only become more intense. COVID-19 just fanned an existing flame of empowerment and flexibility demands. Salary is no longer a potential hire’s biggest concern. When the postpandemic conversation becomes less about where work is done and more about how (and how well), thoughtful programs focused on health and wellness will become table stakes. If your organization doesn’t have a competitive total-compensation philosophy, be prepared to lose in today’s fierce talent war.
Preparing the rising generation for leadership can feel daunting at the beginning. It takes courage and vision to get things started. Along with understanding five key things in your preparation, advance incrementally and look for ways to use education to get family members excited about the future of the rising gen and their leadership positions in the family.