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Family, Innovation, & Storytelling - Pitcairn€¦ ·  · 2016-09-29Family, Innovation, & Storytelling ... stories to remain vital enough to engage ... storytelling should have a

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Page 1: Family, Innovation, & Storytelling - Pitcairn€¦ ·  · 2016-09-29Family, Innovation, & Storytelling ... stories to remain vital enough to engage ... storytelling should have a

Family, Innovation, & StorytellingBy Joline Godfrey & David Wegbreit, Independent Means, Inc.

update In 2008, the Ford Motor Company was perhaps at the nadir of its 100-year history. At this point, as Bill Vlasic reports in Once Upon a Car, the Ford family had an opportunity to sell its controlling stake for significant cash. In those dark days, it must have been a powerful temptation for many family shareholders.

But as Vlasic tells the story, Bill Ford III had a vision of a “green” Ford. If his great-grandfather was the man who made a car anyone could afford, he would make a clean car that anyone could afford—and want. At a family meeting, Ford “gave an impassioned speech to his relatives, asserting that nobody could bring down the family but themselves. Ford Motor Company was their destiny.” He reminded the family of their history and provided a picture of the future he was trying to build. He needed their help to maintain family control of the company—and realize the vision. No one dissented.

The ChallengeBill Ford III used the power of story to keep legacy and mission front and center for his family. The legacy created by Henry Ford and passed down the Ford family for four generations speaks to the core of that family’s values—values aligned with the family mission.

Business and non-profit leaders have known for years that to be successful they must be clear about their mission. The idea of a mission for the family is newer. Yet,

(continued on page 3)

while more families are adopting mission statements, most amount to little more than blandishments that do little to unify the family.

So why do so many families fail to articulate their missions clearly? In part, because the mission of a family is not obvious. In a company, the raison d’être is clear: it exists to profit. Ideals may temper the profit motive, but profit is the company’s Polaris.

Stories illuminate the family mission. They are the familial ligaments that bind a family together with experiences and emotions from the collective consciousness. By mining stories for values and meaning, and using them to illuminate our family mission, we define who we are.

Innovative StorytellingWhat Bill Ford III knows, and other families are discovering, is that for stories to remain vital enough to engage generation-to-generation, storytelling must be an intentional undertaking. Stories cannot be “the soft stuff.” New innovations and insights may help families tell their stories better.

In The Art of Immersion, writer Frank Rose explores the emergence of immersive storytelling—that convergence of technology and entertainment, demonstrated in current shows such as Lost, Mad Men, the new Batman film —that stretches beyond one screen, allowing the audience dozens of doors through which they can enter the story.

Fans can participate in these stories by voting, commenting, taking on roles, and offering ideas. They can experience layers of information through blogs, Twitter, live events, as well as through their relationships with other audience members online and in real life. This über-participation in the story explodes the ancient art of storytelling in which

Most families do not have a multi-generational operating business under whose banner they can march, but every family can have a big, bold vision like Bill Ford’s—a BHAG (Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal, as described by Jim Collins in his book Built to Last). What if the vision of a family was to empower each individual to pursue his or her own vision? What if your family mission was to make your family a learning family? Or what if the mission was simply to be kind to one another?

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Kathy Wiseman is the President of Working Systems, Inc., a family business consulting group that uses systems thinking to help families make the next best decisions for their assets, family business, family office, or family philanthropic efforts. Central to Kathy’s approach is the practice of storytelling. Through decades of working with families, she has learned that sharing stories engages family members, stimulates thinking, promotes new solutions, and fosters communication, all essential components to successful family decision-making. Currently, Kathy and colleague Hartley Goldstone are working on a book of stories about trust administration, with the hope that sharing positive experiences of trustees and beneficiaries will promote positive experiences for others. We talked with Kathy about the importance of storytelling.

Pitcairn: How did you become interested in storytelling?

Kathy Wiseman: My interest in storytelling has its origins in my own personal love of stories. I’ve always loved hearing and sharing stories and have long recognized their transformative effect on both teller and listener. Because we tell stories to communicate what we believe to be true of the world, stories have an important role in family consultations.

I believe that people who “hold” stories and can communicate them have a place of significance in any system. Over time and with experience with more families, I’ve observed that storytelling is not only an entertaining pursuit, but also an opportunity to draw families together, to create new options, and to ignite genuine communication.

P: What gave you the conviction that storytelling should have a role in your work with families?

The Power of StorytellingBy Kathy Wiseman, Working Systems, Inc.

KW: I uncovered research that supported my belief in the power of storytelling. Research out of The Emory Center for Myth and Ritual in American Life in 2006 demonstrated that families who share stories are raising children who do better on a scale that measures self-esteem and well being. Similarly, studies done at the Foley Center for the Study of Lives at Northwestern University have shown the positive impact of sharing stories—specifically, telling children stories that demonstrate adversity on the path to a positive outcome. Sharing these types of

stories has positively impacted children’s resilience and has provided a foundation for healthy self-esteem. I found additional research linking storytelling to a positive sense of self, to the transmission of values, and to the adoption of a sense of balance in life.

Additionally, I see a need for new ways to engage families. I often encountered the desire among families to pass on knowledge. But it seemed only a small percentage of family members were interested in learning; the rest simply rolled their eyes. I asked myself, “How do I engage the family in a way that promotes their desire to work together?” I realized that when told well, a good story captures the attention of all family members. Storytelling was my way to reach the eye rollers.

P: What makes storytelling so effective?

KW: The oldest and most proven way that humans learn and remember information

is through stories. Storytelling evolved as a way to connect and to pass along knowledge. We’re constantly cognitively storing experience about relationships, objectives, emotions, and events we encounter in our lives. Storytelling enables us to digest this stored information and share it in a way that has meaning; in a way that not only tells the listener something about the experience, but also conveys something about the storyteller. Storytelling allows the listener to go beyond the facts, to deeply appreciate what goes into an individual’s point of

view, and to integrate the new information into one’s understanding of the storyteller.

In families, sometimes we lose sight of the individual because our focus is the togetherness of the family group. Thoughtful storytelling allows us to reveal to our family our own narrative and our own personal way of making sense of the world. Successful storytelling is a process that allows an individual to be a unique person in the family. The process can be especially surprising and illuminating because so often you think you know your family members so well, but hearing their stories allows you to be open to knowing something new about them. It gives you a broader context. It’s fascinating to hear how different people’s points of view are, even when they’re recalling the same events in the same family!

P: Some people might have the idea that they are not the best storytellers. How can they learn to tell compelling stories?

Sharing stories engages family members, stimulates thinking, promotes new solutions, and fosters communication, all essential components to successful family decision-making.

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Looking ForwardPrecisely what new forms of family storytelling for the digital age will look like is still emerging. What is clear is that the old way of doing things, where Dad took Junior aside and handed him a silver watch that was to carry a message across generations, will no longer suffice.

The stories we told and physical totems we shared in generations past went one way: Each generation passed their story downstream, suggesting that there was only one “true version.” A potential dialogue became a monologue, curbing the next generation’s ability to become immersed in the story.

The new way of thinking about an old kind of storytelling, whatever it looks

the village elder was the official keeper of the story—the controlling agent of what the story was and what it meant.

The age of the patriarch is shifting to the age of the collaborative family. Increasingly, we see families use family web-based tools, from closed versions of Facebook to blogs and photo albums, to tell family stories together. According to Rose, these new forms of storytelling allow us to become active players within the story. When families contribute and interact, their members become engaged generation-to-generation. Yet, Rose cautions that audiences—in our case family members—must both feel enabled to move freely within the story and be assured there is someone in control of the narrative.

Collective GeniusIn their forthcoming book Collective Genius, Greg Brandeau and Linda Hill examine a dozen organizations to understand why some thrive while others falter. Searching for the holy grail of organizational effectiveness, they discover the simple reality that a willingness and ability to work together, to take advantage of individual “slices of genius,” helps build organizations that can be creative and successful.

Their colleague Jim Morris observed that slices of genius flourish when great leaders, “create a world to which others want to belong.” Good stories help create such a world. Imagine a family where each member wanted to belong, in which each member’s slice of genius was celebrated, where the family applied its collective human capital—that mass of talents, values, knowledge, and social connections—to the task of realizing its mission. In this family, few goals would be unobtainable.

KW: It’s important to distinguish between a story and an anecdote. An anecdote might be entertaining, but it’s not a story. I try to get storytellers to think about the structure of stories in the following way: A good story involves some type of learning that comes from a bit of a challenge or a small crisis. A story works best if at the start it describes the context and the situation in detail, then goes on to explain how the crisis evolves and the eventual outcome.

For example, I recently told my grandchildren about my experience having Passover dinner at my grandparents’ house when I was a child. The story itself wasn’t especially gripping, but I set a detailed scene of the Philadelphia row home with a big wooden table lined with unmatched chairs and crowded with mixed dishes. The room was hot and close and full of people ranging in age from 3 to 60, talking quickly in Yiddish and English. The challenge or crisis in this story was that my grandfather used to get angry and yell harshly at my cousins if they had too much to drink at dinner. It made me very uncomfortable, so I had

Family, Innovation, & Storytelling(continued from page 1)

The Power of Storytelling(continued from page 2)

to learn how to cope when the yelling began. I coped by sitting in the back at the kids table and telling jokes from a joke book no matter how old I was. Telling my grandchildren this story now, I recognize that over the years I’ve learned that grandparents yelling at their grandkids is not a big deal. It is just the way it was and the way my family related at Passover. This is a small story but one that seems to fascinate my young grandsons.

The story doesn’t have to be profound; the Passover Seder story I shared with my grandchildren wasn’t. The action of family storytelling broadens the lens and is the first step toward family engagement. Stories reveal diversity, highlight differences in a sympathetic way, and help families visualize the future. I find that the challenge and understanding created by sharing stories allow families to tolerate differences, resolve conflict earlier, and provide grease for moving toward collective action in ways that I’ve not seen any other structured exercise or process provide.

like, will turn a story into a gift that goes upstream and downstream. New technology will allow family stories to become iterative hypertexts, to which each generation adds. Every generation will be able to become involved in a dynamic story that shares the family mission and engages all generations in the ongoing process of fulfilling and shaping that mission.

Independent Means, Inc. is the leader in financial education for high net worth families. It helps families, family offices, financial institutions, and schools instill the new generation with skills that ensure financial self-reliance and well being, and values that support lives of purpose and passion.

P

©2012 - 2013 Pitcairn

P©2012 - 2013 Pitcairn

Page 4: Family, Innovation, & Storytelling - Pitcairn€¦ ·  · 2016-09-29Family, Innovation, & Storytelling ... stories to remain vital enough to engage ... storytelling should have a

Pitcairn Update is a publication prepared by Pitcairn for the exclusive use of its clients. The information provided should not be construed as imparting legal, tax, or financial advice on any specific matter. For more information, please call us at 1-800-211-1745 or visit us on the web at www.pitcairn.com.

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About PitcairnPitcairn is one of the world’s leading family offices. We are dedicated to helping families sustain and grow their substantial, often complex financial assets and supporting the unique heritage of our clients across multiple generations. Pitcairn works with families and single family offices filling one need or providing comprehensive solutions. Since our founding as a family office in 1923, we have successfully transitioned wealth across generations of families through a combination of effective planning, strong investment results, thoughtful governance, and a commitment to education. Headquartered in Philadelphia, Pitcairn also has offices in New York and Washington, DC as well as a network of resources around the world. You can learn more about our family office services as well as find additional articles, news, and events on our website at www.pitcairn.com.