Navigating the Future of Family Offices

Kirby Rosplock
Welcome to the Tamarind Learning podcast. I'm your host, Doctor Kirby Rosplock. And today we have a real treat because we have Peter Vogel, who is a director at the Global Family Business Center, and he's also Chair of Philanthropy at IMD Business School. And Peter is a legend and a thought leader and has been prolific for the last number of years. But he also has a lot of deep experience working with enterprising families and family businesses. And today he's coming to us all the way from Zurich. So welcome, Peter.

Peter Vogel
Thank you. Thank you, Kirby, for having me.

Kirby Rosplock
So, I know we have a lot of good, interesting things to talk about today, including family offices, enterprising families, a new book that you recently released. But first, let's just roll back the tape. How did you get into this type of work? And tell us more about your interest with family businesses and family offices.

Peter Vogel
Yeah, I'll try to do this brief, even though there's a very long story to it, but effectively, I can summarize it in the word of serendipity. Even though there's been a family business background on my father's side, it has been very abstract, let's say, but maybe there has been some natural affinity to the topic. But I've been more on the technology side, an engineer by training, and then I've been an entrepreneur, created my own software company and did my PhD in entrepreneurship. Did a lot of work around youth entrepreneurship and helping young folks, millennials, and digital natives, create their own companies and invest in startups. So I've been very involved in the startup ecosystem. And then serendipity came and the dots connected because obviously, within the realms of enterprising families, lots of NextGens are interested in entrepreneurship and investing. So I started working with enterprising families as an entrepreneur and as an investor, but then later on, also as an advisor and educator. And then one thing led to the other. You know, you go from NextGen entrepreneurship to succession, because obviously, if NextGen ends up creating their own ventures and not joining the family business, what does that mean?

Peter Vogel
So from there, you go to succession to governance, you go to family office to investing. So one thing led to the other, and, yeah, so now, many, many moons later, I work with family enterprises in a relatively holistic and integrative way.

Kirby Rosplock
Oh, I love it. I love how you kind of came up through the entrepreneurship path and sort of discovered the connections with the NextGen, but also how that just permutated into working with bigger families and more enterprising families and then all the way swimming all the way up to the family office realm. And speaking of family office, what makes you really excited about this space right now, and what do you see happening?

Peter Vogel
Yeah, many, many things. I think what is exciting is putting on my entrepreneurship hat. I see this as an immense opportunity space, not necessarily for business, but for creating interesting things and creating value for families, because there's just so much momentum in this space. Obviously, some of the more established ecosystems have been around for a long time. Other ones are popping up, and more and more families are asking questions around this, are starting to navigate this. Even some of the long, multi-generational, dynastic families are just at the beginning of exploring what this might mean for them. And I think, again, when I started looking into this, I had immense respect for this space. I still do. But for me, it was like, oof. This is a very technical thing, which it is. And even though, as an entrepreneur, I obviously had a lot of exchanges with family offices because some would invest in our ventures. So I knew the space from back then, of course. But only then, over the last years and decades that I've worked with family businesses and enterprising families, did I start to realize where specific needs are. Even the financial sector seems incredibly premature when it comes to family offices.

Peter Vogel
And this is something I only started to realize over the last couple of years, that actually there's an immense opportunity to help shape this space and actually help create standards and frameworks and best practices and definitions. It reminded me of the field of entrepreneurship research even 30 years ago, when there was not a common definition of what an entrepreneur is or what entrepreneurship is. And I feel in the family office space, we're kind of at this transition. Well, what is a family office, and what does it mean? And how can the family office navigate that, and or families navigate the family office space? So this is what excites me, and I think with all of this momentum and all of these families that are pushing into the family office world, I think for advisors, for academics, for service providers, there's an immense opportunity to do good and to help families navigate this space.

Kirby Rosplock
Well, that's a good segue, because you use the word navigate. And I think one of the hardest hurdles that a lot of families face is feeling like there's not a good roadmap, there isn't clear guidelines or a path to the solution. Right. If anything, it's 50 shades of family office, and there's so much kind of word salad and confusion that happens in our space around, you know, what do I need? Where do I go next? What's important and so I am so grateful that you've written this awesome new book that for any of you who haven't gotten it, you should go get it. It's called the Family Office Navigator. This is Peter's new book, and it's just a really dynamic and interesting approach to thinking about family office. I've never seen anything like it. So tell us a little bit more about this book, why you wrote it. It's not your first book, and I love the approach around navigating. I mean, that's essentially the core discipline is around the strategy.

Peter Vogel
Yeah. So what we observe is, in this moment in time, I think the family office world is in a huge transformation. Obviously, family offices have been around for a long time in various forms and shapes and so per se, this is not a new concept, but I think in the time that we're in now, with a lot of trends that we're seeing, obviously, digitalization is a big trend. The uberization family office as a service principle, the rise of hybrid family offices, virtual family offices, the big wealth transfer to the next generation impact and ESG topics. There are a lot of trends in the field that I think are really fundamentally changing the world of family offices. And paired with this increasing demand and desire of families to explore what a family office is, pairing that with these trends and pairing that with the fact that there is no common definition, and maybe there will never be a common definition, but there is this confusion about what is it? What could it be? What should it be? We feel like many families, especially in some critical moments, such as a liquidity event, in which families become extremely vulnerable, almost because it's like a lobster shedding their shell, they have to grow a new shell.

Peter Vogel
They have to think about their new identity and who they are as a family. If they sell their legacy business, their glue is gone, and they need to think about who are we next? So in these vulnerable moments, we feel like families need such a companion to help navigate this space, navigate the terrain, to define the purpose, define the identity, define the jobs to be done, what are our needs? What are our requirements? What does our ecosystem as a family even look like? And what will it look like? So we wrote this book to ultimately empower families, to give them this companion by the hand and say, okay, for whatever reason, and there are multiple reasons why families get to the point of saying, oh, we need to think about this thing, a family office, in whatever form or shape. And at that point in time, they need to start having certain conversations amongst themselves. And we wanted to empower families, not the service providers, not the banks, the families, so that they are in the driver's seat at any moment in time, that they're not being driven by the markets and providers, but they are in the driver's seat.

Peter Vogel
This was our motivation. And again, the family office space can be extremely daunting, especially for those who maybe don't have a financial background and come with the preconception that a family office is only about money. And then I understand if you don't have a degree in finance, then you're like, oof, you know, this is too technical. I don't want to even start thinking about it. So this was our mission and our purpose of the Family Office Navigator. Simple, but not simplistic, and empowering the families to navigate this space.

Kirby Rosplock
And inviting. I think your book is incredibly inviting. And to your point, if you're not a technical person, you didn't go up the finance or investing or entrepreneurship or business tracking. Family office world feels very daunting and intimidating. To your point. And I love that you use the ecosystem of coral, of a coral reef as your sort of your metaphor, to have families think about their family office ecosystem. Tell us a little bit more about that creative process and why you picked the coral reef as that main character.

Peter Vogel
No, the creative process is something that we feel very strongly about. Four years ago, we published the Family Philanthropy Navigator, which was the first navigator in a series of navigators we have in mind. At the core of the work is the framework, which is a toolkit. It's a framework that people can print out. You put it up on the wall. It was very much inspired by the work from Alexander Osterwalder, who created the Business Model Canvas, which I think has really transformed the way of business models and strategy and how companies, and also advisors, and educators think about business models. And this was the source of inspiration, really, and say, can we create these kind of frameworks, canvases. I love frameworks. I love gimmicks. Can we create something that is hands-on for the family? So at the base was this framework, first for the Philanthropy Navigator, then for the Family Office Navigator, and then, of course, when we think about navigating, we need to think about some sort of a journey, and we need to think about a metaphor. I very strongly believe in the power of design and visuals. I think being an academic, obviously, I have many, many books, and then you think about, well, which books are more interesting to read or not.

Peter Vogel
And so I strongly believe in the power of design. So we had partnered back then in 2018 with a design agency. They also, by the way, come into all of my programs as visual facilitators. So they also know how I work, how I function, how I think. And they've been part of this process from the beginning. So we're really a team. While we are. Well, we have authors, there's a team, and there's a whole team section in the book because it's a much bigger team. There are three, four designers that have been part of this journey from the beginning. Very intense. Obviously, for everybody who plans to write a book, it's obviously not exactly a cheap approach, but I think it's an incredibly rewarding one. Now to the question of how did we end up with a coral reef? Now, this is interesting because it comes back to the definitions that we are working with at the core of the Family Office Navigator. We have three definitions. We have the one that is the family enterprise ecosystem, which is, of course, composed of the family side, the ownership side, the governance side, the business side, the asset side.

Peter Vogel
All of the things that make up this dynamic, living, breathing, evolving ecosystem, which already lends itself to the analogy of a biological ecosystem. Then we have the part of total family wealth, which is everything, including human, social, financial, reputational, intellectual, spiritual and other forms of capital, which we say is the treasure chest of a family that goes beyond the financial capital. And then, of course, the family office. What is the family office? In our case, we believe that a family office is this protective layer around this ecosystem with a job to nurture, groom, protect, and help evolve this ecosystem in whatever direction a family wants this ecosystem to grow and develop. So we were trying to think about how do we combine these parts with total family wealth. So we've been playing around with ideas of metaphors and transformations and metamorphoses. We've been playing around with recipes where you would throw in different ingredients. And ultimately, we ended up believing that this ecosystem analogy would be good with a coral reef. Then, of course, the challenge was to make sure that it doesn't look like a Disney book and a kids book, that it's playful but still serious.

Peter Vogel
You know, that's then the detail that you have to be very careful. How many fish and how many crabs do you put in the book?

Kirby Rosplock
Yeah, well, you walk the line very well. And I think what I also really appreciate about it is the number of activities, assessments, and engagement tools that you actually pack into this book so that every chapter you are actually going back to the reader saying, engage with your family, engage with your advisors. Figure this out, define it, and assess it, where do you fall on the spectrum? And I think that is really powerful and unusual. Do you have a particular favorite section where you're covering different topics or using different tools?

Peter Vogel
Look, I think every section is interesting. And I mean, you know, obviously, the book was created for both families that are thinking about setting up a family office, as well as families that have a family office or a quasi-family office. Or maybe they're not exactly sure if they do, and maybe they want to find out if it is one. Different families approach this book differently. Some will go from A to Z in a step-by-step process. Others might just jump into one very specific area. So I think it can be value-adding for the different readers. Now, let's say fundamentally we have these different parts where the first part is, before we even go into discussions about the family office, we talk about this ecosystem because we say if you haven't figured that one out, there's no value in talking about a family office because we see many families jumping immediately into, well, okay, I heard let's do a family office. And who do we talk to? Who do we work with? Which multifamily office? Or let's hire somebody. Wait, why? What do you want to do? What's the job to be done?

Peter Vogel
And that's where we say we map out the ecosystem. We help families map out the ecosystem first. And we say, where do you have complexities in your ecosystem and what are your needs? And also what are your projected needs if you go 510, 20 years into the future? Only once we know what this ecosystem looks like today and what it might look like in the near future, can we then say, okay, fine, now, what is the job to be done? How can a family office be of service to you and your family? To make the fun things more fun and the complex things less complex in some ways. And then we go into the purpose and the service levels and the organization part. So it's a step-by-step part. But look, your question was, is there one that I find particularly interesting? I mean, again, I think obviously all of them are interesting, but I think one thing that many families just don't think about when they think about the family office is to do this first part, to think about their ecosystem first. When it comes to, oh, do we need tax support? Do we need this?

Peter Vogel
I mean, I think there's a lot of literature that covers that stuff. It's obviously in there too, but I feel like there is a lot out there. I think the other part that is probably quite unique in this one compared to other existing literature, is the strategy review learning aspect to say, let's challenge the status quo, let's critically rethink what we're currently doing. Are we still on the same page? Does this actually still work for us or not? I think that's something that I believe we can also add value to how families approach this.

Kirby Rosplock
Well, I think that's spot on. And I agree that if you don't know the current state, it's very hard to start to map your future state. And I'm sure you see this, too. But I see so many families so focused on where they're going, they don't even know where they're working from. And sometimes they miss critical, urgent needs because they're so focused on, like, the future that they're not even focused on the right issues. And what I really like about your book is that I feel like it gets people to come together and make sure everybody knows the foundation or where you're starting from before you're trying to jump ten years down the road and iterate and build something completely different. I also recognize that many of the families I work with, I mean, if they weren't set up in the last ten years, many of them are feeling like, boy, we are being left in the dust. Right? We've had such an explosion of technology. Now AI is here to revolutionize every business system, and it's certainly impacting family offices. So I also like that your book is at a great time because I think there's actually a lot of pain points that families are experiencing because they know things are moving so rapidly and they're, they're trying to figure out how to keep pace.

Kirby Rosplock Do you see that?

Peter Vogel
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, and I think, like with any transformation, I mean, you have the same inside companies, but you can abstract that to family systems as well, where if you have large families, then you will naturally have a few family members who are more familiar with this, who work harder on this, who will advance quicker in their thinking. And it's essentially the same then if you're going through a big business transformation and the board of directors has been working on the new strategic direction for two years, only that nobody else in the company knows, so they're already up there. Only that everybody else still lives in the past. And in large family systems, we see the same, we think about family systems as kind of different concentric circles, with the core circle being the heavily involved, interested, engaged, and educated ones who are driving the agenda of the family. Then you go out, the ones that come to family meetings, they don't drive the agendas, but they attend, they participate, they read the material, they vote when there's a vote. And then there's the outer layer, which are the ones that might not even show up, but they're still part of the family.

Peter Vogel
Or, of course, you have a huge diversity in terms of education and knowledge base. And, you know, I think, and having spoken to so many families also ahead of this book, you know, we've done a huge research project going really in depth in interviews with single family offices and families learning about the evolutionary nature of their family office or whatever they might call it. And some of the lessons learned are also, oh, we should have taken everybody in the family alone had we only known. Or sometimes we get calls from family members who say, hey, we have a family office. Cousin X has set it up on our behalf 20 years ago. It's going well, but we feel left out and we feel somewhat uneasy about this. What can we do? So I think this inclusive approach is incredibly important.

Kirby Rosplock
Well, I was going to echo that because your whole framework to the reader right away is not leaving anyone out of the conversation. And I think that's super powerful because my humble experience has been, there's been a lot of really smart people that mastermind to solve for the grader, and then the grader sort of says, hey, but I don't know that I want to sign up for that or I signed up for that. So the whole way you've written this from the beginning to the end is actually inviting the entire family system and then whoever in the family office or the advisor networks to participate in this design thinking, which I think changes a lot of the outcome. Right. And it also means that you're moving people through the knowledge gathering, assessment, and deployment so that they're all learning and coming in a no strange way, kind of consensing as they're moving through the process, which, again, I haven't seen a family office resource like this, and I think it's super duper powerful. So speaking of bringing the family in, you have a wonderful section on governance as well. You have some incredible, great tools in there, and maybe you can just speak to that chapter for a little bit.

Peter Vogel
Yeah, I mean, I think there's obviously a lot that we can focus on in this. But when we think about governance in the context of family offices, there are a number of things to think about. One, I mean, governance and monitoring. Right. These two come together, obviously, and it's quite important because, especially if the family is not necessarily operationally leading the family office, but somebody else's, then these two parts come together. But I think one big question that is always interesting and families need to think about is how does the family office, or where within our family enterprise ecosystem does the family office sit? How does it interact? How does it relate to the other parts of our family enterprise ecosystem? What are the connections? How do we make sure that every family member or the key family members have the necessary oversight over all of the activities? How do we make sure that we are in the driver's seat? When do we know that we actually are no longer in the driver's seat? How does it relate to the family governance? What is the role of thefamily council, potentially, in all of this, or some call it the family board that is hovering virtually, maybe above the whole system?

Peter Vogel
And also, obviously, the different complexities in family systems depend on whether are we a family of four? Are we a family of 500? How do we come to decisions? Obviously, is this family office servicing us as one group? Because maybe we have our assets bundled in a holding company and the family office based on our investment strategy that hopefully we kind of came up with together. Is doing a specific job, or are we individual clients? Are we serviced differently, which obviously all has a lot to do with the governance. I think, again, the first point is, how does investment governance or family office governance sit within the ecosystem and interact with the other parts of the ecosystem? I think this is particularly important in case of families that still have their legacy businesses. When they say, and the logical trigger there is, let's diversify. Either we have accumulated some dividends individually or in a holding, we have a bulk risk financially. We have high asset concentration. Let's diversify. Okay, that's logical. Okay, how do we do this? And how will this work? Are these, are the business and the investment side somehow connected, or are they completely separate?

Peter Vogel
So these are some of the practical things. It's technically a bit easier if you no longer have the legacy business, of course, then the only question is, do we handcuff everybody into one joint deal, or is everybody an individual client? But then I think then if we go really into the family office governance, they're having the discipline of thinking through the different layers, similar, like corporate governance, where you have the shareholders, you have the General assembly, you have the board of directors, top management team, blah, blah, blah, blah. The same logic is mimicked on the investment governance side with, again, the owners, the investment committee, the top team, with CEO, Chief Investment Officer Analysts and so on, and just mimicking good governance and reporting lines and monitoring and making sure at any time that the family is actually in the driver's seat. Do we even have good investment policy statements? Do we have clarity on that? All of these things are incredibly important. And the monitoring, do we have the oversight? Do we have the necessary infrastructure, including technology? Do we have the right dashboards? Do we get data in real-time to review and assess all of these things to make good decisions?

Peter Vogel
But then obviously you can only take those decisions if you also have the skills and capabilities to assess what you're reading. We see so often that families, especially if it's a broad group of family, maybe the second generation of the family office, maybe patriarch, matriarch, set up the family office, and then the next generation comes in. Maybe none of them are operationally involved anymore. They just sit there as owners and the family office executives come and they report to the family. But does the family have the right tools to actually assess? Is this good news or is this bad news? Having the basic financial literacy to challenge also the executives? I think that is where good governance and good monitoring and good investment policy statements and tools can come in. We could talk for hours on this, of course.

Kirby Rosplock
I know. I love it. I love it. And I think you're bleeding into my kind of last question, which is just around you very specifically chose to end the book focused on learning and education. And I know that wasn't by happenstance, I know that was super intentional. And I think you were getting there with your comments about having educated family members. Maybe they're beneficial owners and not active operators. But why it's so critical, especially to the family office domain, that learning is not just casual? Maybe I get educated, maybe I don't, you know, but why it's actually such a necessary component to being a strong operating and enduring family?

Peter Vogel
Yeah, I mean, I guess, obviously, you know, being an educator in this space, maybe I have a slightly biased view. But, you know, I think, again, because we have these different sets of skills and capabilities of a diverse group of family members coming into this. So far, the only way in which I managed to get a diverse group of family members to around the table to agree on certain things, is to educate them, to give them the same tools, the same language, the same terminologies, the same definitions, so that they can have meaningful conversations amongst themselves. Now, again, if you have a group of ten and 2 march ahead on behalf of the family and they educate themselves, but the eight others are left behind, then you will never be able to have meaningful conversations. So obviously, I think the single most important thing is, of course, you want to educate the ones that are taking the lead in the family office space. But even more so, I believe it's important that you educate the ones who are not leading so that they can have a seat at the table, that they can have an opinion, and that they don't feel left behind.

Peter Vogel
And so far, the only way in which I could figure out doing this is through education and learning. Critical reflection, stopping every now and then, reviewing what we have done in a critical way, and also in a self-critical way. That's why we've created this learning section in the end, which includes both a whole bunch of insights, because we interviewed 50 families, multi-generational family office families, and we asked them, you started there. You are here today. You're planning to go there. What are your learnings? If you were to start again with the knowledge that you have today, what would you do different? We said a let's compact the learning that we have from others. Let's not duplicate mistakes, even though sometimes the best way to learn is through mistakes, obviously. But then we created this assessment where we go through all of the dimensions of the navigator, and we say, how are we doing on this? On a scale from one to five, is this still aligned with what we had in mind? On a scale from one to five? And that, I think, is a fun exercise where you can, if you're a larger group, you do it individually, and then you compare notes and you say, oh, you put a two, I put a five.

Peter Vogel
Let's talk. Somehow we seem to have a mismatch here. And obviously, if we both agree that we're really okay with this, that's fine. If we both agree that we really not. We're not that good on this. Okay, then we know what to do. Really interesting. If we have different points of view, then we should talk. Then there's an information asymmetry in the system, and then we should talk, in particular to avoid conflicts and other things. So I think learning is paramount. And critical reflection and reviews and due diligence and family offices constantly change and evolve. And I think in the beginning, more frequently over time, a bit less frequently. Having these critical moments of reflection are, in my view, essential. Like in any company, you have a five year strategic plan. You have review meetings. I mean, I think it's just best practice.

Kirby Rosplock
That's a great way to close. So, Peter, if you had one or two takeaways from your book that you want to impart to our watchers listeners today, what would those be?

Peter Vogel
There is no family office. Lesson one, there's just a bunch of jobs to be done, and there are different needs that families have. They can be financial and they can be nonfinancial. Every family office is unique. So yes, you can learn from others, but you need to decide for yourself what your family office should look like. Take your time. Don't rush. Especially if in a moment of a liquidity event, there might be an urge to deploy the resources quickly. Those might be some of the most costly decisions you make. So take your time. There is no rush. Even if inflation is high, there is no rush. Educate yourself. Obviously, make sure that everybody from the family is involved in the conversation. And even if some say I don't want to be involved, still involve them. Be careful who to trust in the market. There is a lot floating around. If you go to LinkedIn and you type in the family office, I mean, it's incredible what you find. So just be careful. Do your due diligence of partners very carefully. Are their interests aligned with yours? Are they really neutral? What kind of deals do they have in the background?

Peter Vogel
Be incredibly careful when picking and choosing partners and doing the due diligence. I think this is super important. And yeah, again, I mean, maybe start with the big picture of why having a clear purpose. Don't just set up a family office for the sake of setting up a family office. What is the job to be done? How can something make our life easier? And then let's design from there.

Kirby Rosplock
Great words of wisdom. Peter Vogel, thank you so, so much for being here today on the Tamarind Learning Podcast. You were eloquent and you have some incredible activities and information in your family office navigator that I hope everybody will pick up if they haven't already. Thank you again, Peter, for being here today.

Peter Vogel
Thank you. Thank you very much.