All families recognise the importance of measuring and monitoring their Financial Capital balance sheet.
Oxford Place has developed a unique approach to allow a family to also quantitatively assess their Human Capital balance sheet.
Our proprietary approach produces a set of incontrovertible data points, which allow a family to measure the quality of their interactions and engage in a fact-based dialogue around their preparedness for a successful transition.
The questionnaire reveals where each family member has concerns.
This can reveal interesting differences between family members. In this case, “A” is the father and “D” is his eldest son and successor.
Very often, differences between siblings becomes apparent.
This example helped a thankful father finally realise that his perspective was not shared by his wife or children, who he thought all shared an equal role in decision-making (albeit with his direction).
The data often reveals valuable and previously unspoken aspects of a family's situation. This family's data demonstrates they have no alignment on the purpose of the family's wealth.
The Human Capital balance sheet gives the family a solid starting point – in this case - to create a unified set of values.
Business people often talk about the “hard” skills of quantitative assessment and the “soft” skills of human behaviour.
In a family context, working to improve a family’s “soft” skills — the quality of their interactions — is the hardest task of all. It is easy to talk about the level of trust, the quality of communication, the ability of a family to make effective decisions together and so on. But what makes the greatest difference is a family’s ability to quantify and measure their Human Capital.
We create bespoke processes to enable a family to specifically assess and track the most important aspects of their Human Capital, including: effectiveness of family leadership, conflicting roles, ability to manage disagreements, effectiveness of family governance, likelihood of a successful transition, preparedness of the Next Generation, levels of trust, cross-generational affinity, alignment around the goal for the family’s wealth, effectiveness of communication and so forth.
Our approach begins with an anonymous 50 question survey. Each member of the family is invited to record their response — with total anonymity — to a series of questions about the family’s Human Capital. We focus on behavioural qualities within the family, such as trust, sincerity, openness, confidence, fairness and decision-making. Careful calibration of these questions yields a set of data points, which provides us with an accurate, independent and incontrovertible assessment of the family’s ability to undertake the process of a successful wealth transition.
This data is displayed as a set of bar charts, which point to the key elements of family interactions that need to be addressed. It is this data that enables a family to increase the likelihood of successfully passing on wealth to the next generation.
There are three parts of the mind we focus on when assessing individual family members. The Ancient philosophers Plato and Aristotle spoke of the three faculties through which we think, feel and act.
Our work is designed to help individual family members to measure, assess and improve the way they think, feel and act. The result is that individually, family members feel appreciated, empowered and understood. Collectively, the result is that family members work more harmoniously and effectively together.
The “Cognitive” mind is responsible for an individual’s intellect and skills. Our IQ, our capacity for reason, our thought processes, our specialist skills, our education, our job experience and our educational training are all within this area of the mind. All these factors can be accurately assessed and measured to help an individual improve their cognitive functioning.
The “Affective” mind is responsible for a person’s feelings and their personality. This part of the mind relates to an individual’s motivation and their level of commitment. This is where our desires, our values, our beliefs, attitudes, emotions and preferences exist. As with the Cognitive side of the mind, we can also measure an individual’s Affective mind to help improve their focus, drive and determination.
The “Conative” mind is responsible for a person’s natural way of taking action or modus operandi (MO). It comes from the Latin ‘conatus’, which is defined as “any natural tendency, impulse, or directed effort“. This part of the mind relates to an individual’s natural instinct and their innate talents which remain unchanged from early childhood. Importantly, this will not change throughout a person’s life. Although this part of the mind is set, it is nonetheless hugely liberating to measure individual family members’ Conative reasoning. By assessing each individual’s fixed natural tendencies, it is much easier to help family members identify new approaches to harmoniously relating to one another.