By: Matthew Fleming
During our June 2024 NextGen programme, Matthew Fleming provided an overview of the sessions for the week which covered purpose, responsibility, leadership, entrepreneurship, communication, failure and much more.
When I reflect on the really remarkable people who've
given up their time to come
and share their perspectives with this very fortunate group
of young people, every session has had a really interesting
lesson or message.
The overarching theme of almost every session we've had
has been the importance of purpose.
You know, we're very proud of something
that we call the four Pillars of capital here,
which is a framework that we've developed, having spoken
to 300 families around the world, which, uh,
reflects the real concerns of families
and most people who have a degree
of wealth management in their business.
Imagine that the things
that keep families awake at night is,
is my wealth being protected and managed?
And of course there is a degree of concern about that,
but actually the common denominators
of real concern in families are, how do I lead my family?
How do we establish a sense of shared purpose?
How do I engage my children? How do we avoid family?
Ros, how do I help my children have fulfilled lives,
but being cognizant of the responsibilities
of the situation they're born into?
And this is all part of that. We talk a lot about purpose.
We talk about responsibility. We talk about leadership.
We talk about entrepreneurialism.
Communication about failure, about
wellbeing is a fantastic week.
And this is part of our way of fulfilling our obligation
to the families who are lucky enough to support.
We learn so much from having 35 young people from
around the world in the office listening
to their perspectives, the way they're thinking about the
world, how do they wanna be communicated with?
What are they worried about?
What are their ambitions and hopes?
And how can we help them achieve those?
So we learn as much as they learn every single person
that we work with, and we're lucky enough to support,
whether it be the next gen, whether it be my age,
whether it be my parents' age,
almost without exception, they want to talk.
So our role as a family office is just to enable people
to talk about the things that they've wanted
to talk about for a long time.
Our definition of success,
however, is have we helped them start a conversation?