You can have the trust set up, the succession plan buttoned down, and every legal document in order. But if your family hasn't answered one question, none of it holds together. The question is simple. Why are we doing this?
I sat down recently with Nike Anani on the Decidedly Podcast. Nike is a top 100 global family business consultant who helps families navigate generational transitions. She grew up in a family business herself, worked at Deloitte in London, then moved back to Nigeria to run her father's family office overseeing construction, real estate, and engineering consulting. She's lived this from both sides.
And the thing she kept coming back to throughout our conversation is something I see constantly in my own practice. Families pour all of their energy into the technical side of the transfer. The trusts. The shares. The operating agreements. And then they skip the conversation that actually determines whether any of it works.
I asked Nike what she hears most when she walks into a family business engagement. The answer was almost always the same. "My next generation doesn't care about this business. How in the world are we going to pass it on and leave a legacy?"
And that's where things get interesting. Because the founder's definition of legacy and the next generation's definition of legacy are almost never the same thing.
The founder wants continuity. They want to see the business keep running, stay in the family, stay under family control. That makes sense. They built it. They bled for it. Of course they want it to continue.
But if you ask the next generation, Nike says you hear something completely different. They want to carry the entrepreneurial skills, the knowledge, the intelligence that Mom and Dad built, and use it as a platform to find their own place in the world. They're not rejecting the legacy. They're trying to redefine it.
And if the family never sits down and has that conversation, if the founder just assumes that legacy means "keep the business going," you end up with a plan that nobody has buy-in on. That's when things fall apart.
Nike told me about a client whose father had passed away. He'd done the technical legacy planning. He pulled in his attorney. Set up the trusts and foundations. Everything was buttoned up on paper. But when he died, the four siblings couldn't make a single productive decision together...
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Each sibling had their own idea of what Dad would have wanted. Each had their own priorities. And the squabbling turned into repeatable conflicts where they simply could not make decisions together. It threatened the survival of their partnership. They stopped having meetings entirely. Each wanted to sell their share.
That's when it hit Nike. The industry spends too much time speaking in the language of the technical, and not enough in the language of the relational. The relational is actually the foundation.
I feel that deeply in my own work. I can't tell you how many times someone has come to me and I've asked, "What's really the purpose of your money? What does it mean that you've built this wealth, and what does it mean for your children and your children's children?" And the answer I get back is, "Well, I already met with an attorney. Got the trust set up."
That did not answer my question. In fact, it told me something important. It told me they haven't done the real work yet. Because if the answer is "I got the trust set up," you've told me the how. You haven't told me the why. Why did you even get the trust set up? "Well, so we don't have to go to probate." We're still so far off.
What do we really want it to look like when you're not here?
This is why I ask the same question five, six, seven, eight times in a row when someone comes to me wanting better returns. "Why do you want better returns?" They look at me like I have three heads. "Well, that's obvious." But it's not obvious until you get to the real answer. And finally, after enough asking, I get something like, "Because I want my children to be able to have an impact. If I don't grow my wealth, they're going to be focused on survival and not impact." Now we're having a totally different conversation that doesn't look anything like "should we hire this investment manager or that one."
Nike works with families to get clear on exactly this. Individual vision, values, mission. Then aligning on a shared vision, a shared mission, shared values as a family. Not just as a business.
Because business families focus so much on the business. We want to expand. We want to grow. New office, new city, new market. But what about, "We want to build connection. We want to have harmony within the family. We want to build trust amongst each other. We want to learn together." Those are equally as important as the business outcomes.
There's another piece to this that I think every family needs to hear. The way the founder became successful is not necessarily the way the next generation is going to become successful. Nike sees it constantly. Founders look back on their lives and say, "What I did to get here is what my kids should do to get to the same destination." But that's not necessarily true. The world has changed. The business has changed.
My dad Sean and I went through our own business transition. He sold his business about two and a half years before this conversation, and I was on the receiving end of that process. We muddled through it. We're both still here, still hanging out with each other, which is a win. But I told Nike, "I wish I had known about your work when we were going through our own transition. If we had trusted somebody who's been there before and knows how to guide a family business through that, it would have been a different experience."
One thing Nike does that I think is brilliant is she facilitates what she calls a family lifeline exercise. Each family member shares three pivotal moments, three highs, three lows, and then they unpack what they learned from those moments. What core values came out of them. You build this bank of intellectual property, this intangible knowledge within the family. How did we get through the trials? The early days of the business that were so tough that we rarely talk about. That kind of sharing opens the door to better dialogue and more meaningful, purposeful conversations.
It's almost like codifying the institutional knowledge of a family. We would all do that in a business. We know we need to document what made us successful. Why wouldn't we do the same thing within the family?
Nike's last piece of advice was simple but powerful. Invest in spending time together and having purposeful conversations. Be intentional. Find the time, not just in the calendar but the emotional space, to bond on the more purposeful questions. Why are we doing this? What's the compelling reason for us to stay in business together? To stay investing together?
It seems like an obvious question. Why are we still a family? But I love questions that have seemingly obvious answers. Because when you push past the obvious, you get to something real. And that's where the legacy actually lives.
This article was adapted from Episode 62 of the Decidedly Podcast, "Nike Anani - Deciding to Create a Family Legacy." Insights, advice, and comments provided by Sanger Smith and members of the Decidedly Wealth Management team should not be considered personalized financial advice or recommendations. This content is produced solely for informational and educational purposes. For personalized guidance, book a free conversation.
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