Collective Growth: Nurturing Innovation Within Family Enterprises

Welcome to Legacy Builders, strategies for building successful family enterprises. Brought to you by Beacon Family Office at Assante Financial Management Limited. I’m your host, Cory Gagnon, Senior Wealth Advisor. And on this show, we explore global ideas, concepts, and models that help family enterprises better navigate the complexities of family wealth.

Today, we welcome Thomas Clark, Chief Operating Officer at Veritage International. Thomas brings over a decade of expertise in the family business field, starting his journey in 2010 at the Business Families Foundation in Montreal. He excelled in education and content development, creating extensive interactive tools for enterprising families. After Business Families Foundation merged with Family Enterprise Canada in 2020, Thomas became the National Director of Content Development, focusing on Canadian family business research. He’s known for his passion for preparing and supporting the next generation to flourish in their roles.

My goal is to be the most curious person in today’s conversation with Thomas Clark, as we explore his journey from an educator to becoming the COO of Veritage International. We’ll delve into how Thomas’ diverse experiences in teaching, family business dynamics, and organizational leadership have shaped his unique approach to emotional governance and relational dynamics within family enterprises. Together, we’ll uncover Thomas’ insights on cultivating a shared language within families, the importance of collective learning, and his strategies for developing intrapreneurship and good ownership across generations. 

Now, let’s dive in! 

Cory: Welcome Thomas! We’re excited to have you here today to share your wealth of knowledge and experiences with us. Let’s dive in, shall we?

Thomas: Thanks, Cory.

Cory: Now, Thomas, imagine you’re delivering the commencement speech to the graduating class of 2024, and you have the chance to inspire them with your story.

How would you begin your speech to convey the incredible lessons and expertise that you’ve gained throughout your career?

Thomas: Well, it’s a really good question, Cory. I think I would probably start my speech with a quote or what’s been mentioned as a Greek proverb: “A society grows great when people plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.”

And I heard about this quote a couple of years ago, not verbatim, but the head coach of the Montreal Canadians, my favourite hockey team, as a big sports guy, Martin St. Louis, the head coach.

He mentioned that in the context of having kind of an older set of players and a younger set of players and wanting the older set of players to set the culture and really be a guiding light for kind of the younger players understanding that when the team is ready to succeed, they most likely won’t be there.

They will have moved on, either retired or perhaps gotten traded contracts. What have you?

And I think that’s a really important lesson for anybody to take, and within that, I would like not to be too cliche. Still, I think it’s important for people to be self-aware and understand their needs, dreams, and aspirations, but it’s also not necessarily always about them. You have the ability to also kind of be that high tide that lifts all boats.

Be a good citizen, whether that’s in your behaviour, in your family, in what you give back to the community, or in what you have. It also reminds me that another place I would go is one of the better commencement speeches I’ve ever heard. Arnold Schwarzenegger basically said, “People say I’m a self-made man, but I’m anything but.”

He talks about all the people who helped him when he moved to the United States, the people from the gym who brought him plates and pillows and other things.

I think that’s a really important message nowadays that, it’s okay to ask for help and if you want to try and go it alone and be that self-made person, hats off to you. The majority of successful people that I know did not have that path, and they were helped, asked for help, or offered help and took it.

And that’s an important lesson to take, not only in kind of who you surround yourself with but also your own path. I’m someone who comes from a relatively formal background. I went to a good school.

I’m the 3rd of 3 kids, but when it became my choice in terms of what I wanted to do, I did something very different than my brother and sister did. Because I and they supported me encouraged me to do this.

That’s because I guess I realized, thanks to them, that I was able to make my own choices and live my own life, and it didn’t necessarily mean I needed to follow the same path. I could go down a bit different path, but I also needed to understand how I can contribute by going down this path. 

How can I contribute to myself as an individual and be someone realizing my full potential? How can I contribute to supporting those I love and in whose lives I want to invest? But also maybe how can I contribute to something that I’m passionate about that I want to kind of have long-lasting in my life?

That’s the last thing, particularly when you’re addressing the young generation. You really, as someone who’s in his forties and still feels quite young, have a lot of your life to work and dedicate to things, and I think it’s really important that you find something that you’re passionate about.

And you may not always get to reap the benefits and rewards of that. Sometimes you are part of the journey in getting to the end goal, but you’re still playing a valuable part of that.

So that comes back to the, you don’t always get to enjoy the shade. But I think that those are some things that I would want to convey in the speech I would give.

Cory: I love that. There is so much wisdom there, Thomas. As you mentioned in your forties, I think the fact  that what I heard is that you have garnered so much information and stories from others. Your background and the journey that you’ve been on, just that wisdom from the research, from listening to other stories, what you’ve been able to convey here. 

So I’m not sure that we’re here to talk about the Montreal Canadiens. I know you’d love to spend the hour chatting at any time.

But thinking about a sports team as it relates to a family enterprise, how do you see the connections between the younger players and the mentorship of the older ones who may have won the cup or gotten to the end? And how would you bring those similarities in?

Thomas: Well, it’s an interesting question, and it conflicts with me somewhat because I’ll take it to a different sport, and that’s the sport of rugby.

I am currently the COO of Veritas International, and Franco is the CEO, managing director, and founder. He and I love rugby, but our love of rugby is on opposite sides 

My mother’s originally from Southern Africa, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and so I’m a huge Springboks fan. South African Springboks, I love them. Franco is a huge New Zealand All Blacks fan.

And if anything about rugby is anything, those are kind of the two competing forces, but I’m going to take the lesson from the All Blacks. They have a culture, and their principle is that you leave the jersey in a better place than you found it or that you took it.

It’s similar to a family business. If we want to look at a larger trajectory of maybe not just 5 or 10 or 25 years but a legacy, what the All Blacks are saying is that every time that you step into that jersey, you have a cultural responsibility to uphold the values and principles that we hold dear and that embody who we are.

But you also have a responsibility to keep it in good shape and perhaps progress it for the next generation of players. I think the parallels between the multigenerational aspects and family business are quite clear. 

I mean, when we look at a family business, we want it to succeed generally and to be in a better place than it was previously, generation after generation. 

And I don’t mean financially. In fact, the financial aspect of that would probably come last. What I mean is, are we improving our relationships? Are we improving what it means to be part of this team, part of this family? Are we clear on what is the objective and what is the goal that we’re going for? 

Because in rugby, you’re a 15, you’re a 15-person squad on the field. If you don’t know the plan, if you don’t know where you want to go, you’ll have 15 people running in different directions.

Now, family may be smaller over generations that may be bigger, but what is that kind of red thread? What is that north star that everybody is trying to achieve? 

I think it’s really important to be self-aware enough and understand your role and contribution within that system to again understand that you have a role in cultivating, progressing, and propagating this culture to have it become something that the people before you would be proud of, and also the people that are going to come next would be proud of and can really take and carry forward.

Cory: I love that. I love the fact that the family might not be as large as the team on the field, but we actually know each other well enough to understand where that person’s headed, pass the ball or receive from them, and communicate appropriately. That’s a great connection. 

Thomas: It is. And even to add to it when you look at it, in my comparison, there, it’s a national team.

And if you look at a national team in any sport, it’s a collection of individuals that generally play on different clubs. They may not even play in the same country, a lot of them. And if families are a little bit different you’re from the same place and what have you. 

But nowadays, families are often very geographically dispersed, and you might go to school somewhere different from where your parents went. You might have the opportunity to travel and discover new cultures. 

But how can we bring that back to be successful as a team, as a unit, even if we’re not always playing on the same field together? And that’s where the learning comes in. 

I come from a background of education, studying education, and having education play a foundational role in how I got into the family business industry. I lean on that as sort of the glue that really can help families tie themselves together and speak the same language.

Cory: Right. And so that language that they’re creating, Thomas, in your experience, where are they building that language from? 

As you mentioned, cultures might be geographically dispersed, and some of that connection might be difficult to find in what somebody would naturally say. Here’s what connects us outside of the fact that we are family: maybe we are in this business together. But what are they doing from that perspective? 

Thomas: Well, I think this is not any sort of earth-shattering revelation. But when it comes to things like that, it’s really kind of one of 2 approaches. Either it’s top-down being like, this how we do things. 

This is how we speak about things, and this is how it will be. Or is it more bottom-up? Where can we co-create? Can we create this new language? Can we take our collective experiences and harness them into something that’s positive? 

And I’ve always, again, a lot to do with my background, my educational background, and my work experience, but I believe that families need to learn together, and I’m not saying that you need every week to go and learn something. 

I’m saying that families should have a learning budget. You should, as a family, whether it be a day session on something you’re interested in in your local town or a retreat that intrigues you about something that could help your family get over an obstacle or really propel them forward. 

Those are instances where I think family or I believe families need to make those more of a priority. One thing that I remember from years ago is that I was working for Family Enterprise Canada, and we were doing our family summit of mines in Banff, and there were a couple of families that came there. 

They came to the retreat, but then they also decided to take a couple of days afterward, go somewhere else, spend time together, and just talk about what they learned and how they might be able to integrate it or how it might change their perspective on where they want to go or their relationship and how they’re working together. 

That blew my mind. Everybody in a family business needs to do that. I would say probably once a year, you probably want to do it more than that, but find time to learn together and to develop that language together because I can tell you just like we have in other experiences in our lives, if you’re being told to do something a certain way and you’re being put in a box, you’re probably going to get a little bit uncomfortable in that box at some point. 

And I think it’d be more valuable to have that cooperation. What sticks in my mind is years ago, being able to interview John Davis, who everybody knows. He really, at the time, and I’m sure he still does, advocated for a closer relationship between the senior and junior generations. 

The more time they can work together, the better they’ll be able to co-create these things and build what they want to build going forward. And so that’s where it starts: learning together and being able to build that language in a little bit together.

Cory: I love that and there are a few things that I want to follow up on: the learning budget. So setting that in place so often we have and thinking about public companies, where they establish a budget and maybe even more so governments. They set a budget, and now, jeez, we need to spend that money.

There are points in the calendar where the question is, how do we spend this? How do families become proactive enough to know that this is what’s happening? 

You talked about Family Enterprise Canada; I know many other organizations have these retreats. But this is something where we can be proactive and know that that budget isn’t just being spent because we said we’re spending it; there’s some mindfulness there. 

Thomas: Yeah. Well, it’s a great point. I mean, there needs to be buy-in anytime you’re doing something like this, and there needs to be an inclusive aspect to it. It would not work if the leader said we’re going to have this budget, and it’s just going to be able to fund me to go Tokyo for FBN global summit. I mean, great, but how is that kind of benefiting the wider, group? 

Now in my experience, a lot of this starts with the family learning champion. Someone who really says, okay. We’re becoming kind of a professionalized family here. I can definitely see that there might be some issues coming down, whether relational or on the ownership side or what have you. We really should get ahead of it. 

Now, I think if you’re going to go about having some type of learning budget, there needs to be and I use this term somewhat more loosely than traditionally is used as governance around it. Meaning this is not you’re going to a conference and coming back. 

It’s if you’re going to learn something, then there needs to be a back-end portion where, okay, let’s all get together and  hear about what was learned. Now I do think it works a lot better if you have a group together. 

What I’ve seen a lot of families do is sort of plan out year to year. So much like we do a financial yearly plan, we’re going to do a family learning yearly plan where we’re going to look at what’s available to us. 

We’re going to look at our schedules, and we’re going to pick 1 or 2 things that we’re all going to be able to attend, and we’re going to make it a priority by putting it in our calendars and not having other things take it off the calendar.

Early on in my career, someone told me that you vote with your agenda, and that’s something that has always stayed true to me. If you’re not making it a priority, it’s because you’re choosing not to make it a priority. 

I think learning together and learning as a family, I think, has tremendous benefits, but they aren’t necessarily like, you don’t get your return on investment right away and that’s where there needs to be a little bit of patience within families.

We often talk about patient capital and seed funding with families and things like this, but we also need to be patient and understanding that if we’re going to go and learn something, we’re going to try and make even a small change in what we’re doing, maybe in our family meetings. Like, it’s not going to happen at overnight. We’re going to have to work at it like anything else. We’re going to have to practice. 

If you want to get good at anything in life, you’re probably going to have to practice it a little bit. I think it needs to be thoughtful and inclusive, but it often really starts with a little spark, usually the learning champion in the family, who says, “I think we should be doing something on this front.” 

Cory: To go back to your comment about the tree, how do we learn? How do we know that there’s a little sapling coming out of the ground, that the tree is actually starting to grow, and that this will provide shade one day? What is a family using to measure success and say, “We’re making a difference here, and future generations will see the benefit?” 

Thomas: Yeah. That’s a good question. I mean, I think each family needs to develop their own KPIs. And, again, I use KPIs very loosely here because we’re a lot of what we’re talking about isn’t necessarily tangibly measured easily. 

Now, I’ll give you an example from my work. As I mentioned, working for Veritas, we focus on emotional governance and relational and behavioural aspects within families. 

So, when I joined the firm about 14 months ago, I met one of our client families. We had a chat and tried to get to know them a little bit, and I was struck at how they spoke to each other. They recognized each other’s improvements in their communication. 

They were saying I really appreciate you telling me that and saying that because six months ago, you would not have said that to me.  They were noticing changes in one another and being encouraging about it because they actually saw it as helping them move the conversation along, not have it be so personal all the time. 

And I think that’s really important: being able to recognize change in yourself, having a level of self-awareness, and also encouraging and supporting others if you see change in them. 

It could be that I heard this thing at this conference, and it really sparked something in me. I really want to know more about it, and explore more about it. Anytime you have something, let’s go for a coffee. I’d love to hear more about it. 

I think it’s really important to be supportive, inclusive, and recognize positive change in people when they’re actually trying to do that and that’s how we can get to a level of kind of transparency and honesty in a lot of our conversations. 

And so that is just a piece from my everyday life that struck me because it occurred to me that we don’t really tell each other that often. I don’t really say hey to my friends. You’ve made an interesting change here. 

Way to go! I just internalized it. I wonder what that’s about and it was so refreshing to see siblings just say, wow. I appreciate you standing up for what you believe in there but in a very respectful, honest manner.

Cory: Well, and that’s a culture not only a culture shift in the development they made but also establishing that culture to celebrate those small wins, those achievements.

In our conversation, and going back to what Franco and I talked about in our episode, which our listeners can go back and talk about, is really the safety that family has to be able to make those comments to each other. 

One of those things, going back to the sports comment, is that you say that in the locker room with your sports buddies. They might look at you and say, what are you talking about? And 

So how does a family feel safe enough where you’re not going to be shunned for making those comments? 

Thomas: Well, that’s a really good point Cory, and a really good question. I think where I come at it from in a family business, and it may kind of differ in sports is I don’t think everything needs to be like a zero-sum winner-and-loser game. 

This goes in your relationships as well, and I’ve had this in my family, and, like, I’ve spoken to my family about it. If you’re in a conversation with someone you care about, you honestly care about, and perhaps it’s a debate, it’s an argument, what have you, if you believe that conversation saying I won that, that means that that person you care about lost. 

In my opinion, if anything happens in a family business, if anybody leaves a family meeting, an owner’s council, or what you name the board of directors, you name it, if they leave feeling like, “I think I lost, everybody has lost,” it is a loss for the organization. 

I think an attitude shift at all levels of families in business or even individuals, don’t look at everything like you have to win because if you have to win that and you care about the person, they’re losing. 

And I get business deals and things like that, but that’s a separate thing. I’m talking about the kind of relational dynamic. We’re in this together, and it’s important to remember that anytime you’re winning, someone you care about is losing, and that is just an opportunity for the organization. No one’s winning.

Cory: Well, in going back to your comment that it’s not all about me, how do we cultivate that attitude where we’re rising, everybody is in it together, that we all need to be winning or we’re not like, nobody’s winning if we’re not all winning. 

Thomas: Well, there certainly needs to be a level of individual and collective self-awareness. There also needs to be just that: comfort and safety. So, I come from a family business. Okay? And I can tell you that as someone in their twenties, I would have failed regardless of the family business. 

I would not have succeeded. I didn’t know who I was. I wanted to find myself, quote unquote. I wanted to travel. I wanted to learn about different cultures. I wanted to experience those things.

I didn’t want to go do more schooling after university necessarily, although eventually I did, but it took me 4 or 5 years to realize that’s what I wanted to do. 

We need to give ourselves a little bit of room to breathe and understand that just like we mature physically at different rates; we also mature emotionally at different rates. 

If I had been put into a position in my family business, which doesn’t no longer exist, although my dad did reinvent it, I would not have succeeded. I would have needed to realize that. I realized that a little later in life, but I did realize that that was not for me. 

But I also had to explain that to my parents, and that probably would have been disappointing to them if they had the desired expectation that I was going to come into the business. And it may not have been I’m not coming into the business, but it’s just now is not the time for me. I don’t know what my contribution can be. If I’m going to come into the business, I want to be clear on how I can contribute, and I want your buy in and everybody’s buy-in and to go through the proper steps. 

So that’s okay. It’s okay to not have all the answers. It’s okay not to feel ready, but I think it’s important that we feel safe enough to admit that, share that, and perhaps even work on that together as a multigenerational team.

Because even if you’re not in business together, you’re still in family together; you’re still a team on that front, hopefully.  Yes. And you get a little bit older, and you look back on your younger years and maybe realize that a bit more than you did at the time, but I knew that at the time. 

Like, I knew I wouldn’t have been good in an office when I was 25, and I wasn’t afforded that opportunity, and that’s fine. But had I known that and it’s incumbent on me to have that conversation or if the conversation’s not having I going to start that. Say, listen. I see what’s going on here, but I’m going to tell you I’m not ready for this.

Cory: Right. 

Thomas: And what can we do to prepare me if that’s something I’m interested in? But it also goes into some of the experiences I had when I was younger. I do think you really have to create a more emotional bond to the business than just, here’s a job, here’s the money, off we go. 

Cory: Right. And so creating that opportunity of and that freedom of choice, how can that elder generation create that where they’re still cultivating that talent and allowing that rising gen to develop themselves, not just scholastically as you mentioned, from an education perspective, but that emotional intelligence at the exact same time. 

How can they balance the needs of the individual and bring the greater family along? 

Thomas: Yeah. It starts 1st and foremost with understanding each other and understanding who we are as individuals within this family. What are our dreams, hopes, and aspirations? 

Honestly, not within the context of your dreams, hopes, and aspirations within the business. No, what are your dreams, hopes, and aspirations in your life?  

And it’s important that it’s funny, Cory. I’ve been working for 13 years, and sometimes, I laugh about it with my wife, and it’s like I pick my head up. It’s like, I’ve been working for a long time, but, like, I’m not even halfway through my career. It’s a long time to be doing anything. You’re going to love what you’re doing.

Cory: Definitely. 

Thomas:  What do I mean? You are going to love what you’re doing. Still, the best answer I found in the context of a family business is something that I ran with a number of years ago when I was working for the Business Families Foundation, and that’s the concept of intrapreneurship. 

Okay? So, what we saw was that this was in 2015 or 2016. We developed an incubator, for all intents and purposes, where it was all about bringing family businesses intergenerationally together: mom, dad, or whoever’s running the business, and NextGen around a project that NextGen leads but kind of advised on by their parents or the senior generation. 

It wasn’t always their parents. There were a couple of instances where an executive from the family business was there, and there were a couple of reasons we did this. 

So the first one was seeing that there are a lot of families out there, and that’s still true today, which is a little bit troubling. But what are we going to do with the business now? We’re getting into our sixties. Do we have a transition plan? The kids might be doing something different. 

What are we going to do here? Also, maybe we’re losing the opportunity to bring the kids in. So we developed this incubator that really brought in the two generations around a project that could be seen as an addition to the existing family business. 

Is there something we could do that leverages some of our expertise, but maybe in a completely different field or industry? We have the ability within our business. We have a marketing department, a legal department, and HR. We haven’t been. Could some of these resources be loaned out to this project, not at will, but for two hours a week or a couple of hours a month? The NextGen could use the knowledge we’ve built within the business to help further their project. 

We saw a number of really interesting instances where NextGen, who really wanted nothing to do with the business, was able to develop a project of their own that was, yeah.

There was some funding that went into it, but it was more resources and guidance that were being given to them and kind of allowance to say, yeah. 

Go and do this. If this is something you’re interested in, you have our support and some of it did revolve around the business, modernizing how they intake orders and things like that, but some of it was totally outside. 

And the one refreshing thing that I took from it was the parents or the senior generation were really interested and curious about how they could harness the knowledge of the next generation. They weren’t looking at it, as they didn’t want to be a part of it.

They were looking at it more from a positive standpoint, as I think my next generation has a good idea. I believe in them. Let’s see what we can do about this and so I think when we’re, we’re looking at, particularly the transition or succession coin, I think it’s incumbent upon us to look at maybe more the more positive side of it sometimes and not, what are we going to do? They’re not ready. They’re not willing. And well, what are they ready, willing, and good at? 

Cory: Absolutely.

Thomas: Can we look at that? Can we do something with that? Because I think everybody , a lot of people in family businesses that even if they’re not interested in it, can we can we develop them into good owners? 

And that’s as an aside. I don’t think the younger generation fully grasped the difference between an owner and a manager of a family business or the CEO and the owner. I think even if you don’t want to be in the manufacturing plant and run the day to day that you have a strategic mindset.

Can we harness that to be good owners in our family business system? There are ways of looking at it more positively. How can we use the resources, knowledge, and skills that this person has developed to our benefit, as opposed to just saying it’s not aligned with what we do? Do your own thing, and we’ll let you know when the dividend is ready. 

Cory: Yes, Thomas, going back to that project, I was just thinking about a family member who’s listening to us, and you commented on bringing that connection to that rising gin, the connection between them and the business.

I feel like there were a lot of byproducts that came of this project, and what you realized as the rising generation was going through, the executives, and the now generation bringing that wisdom and those resources to it. 

I’m just thinking about the sustainability of the enterprise and bringing some of these new ideas. How much of that do you think just thinking about going in and what is the expectation is really kind of where my question is. 

Is it the expectation that they’ll love the business and want to keep it? Is it the expectation that they’re developing some of those strategies and that it’s an educational opportunity? Or is it multifaceted, and really, as you said, that curiosity of, let’s just see where this goes, and we could have something that we didn’t expect? 

Thomas: Yeah. It’s all of those things. I think a lot of the people that want to pursue something like this or that we interacted with in the program were the senior generation, they were entrepreneurs at their core. 

They had a family business for sure, but they were entrepreneurs and a lot of that entrepreneurial DNA had trickled down to their children because their children had a very similar mindset.

When I say children, I mean, these were adults in their twenties already having a career and what have you. But I think that was a big part of it. I also think it is one of the kinds of back-end benefits of doing that.  
And the other thing that I’ll tack on to that is that I did research a number of years ago, and one of the things that the next generation told us that really helped them was that they had a rotational program as they were coming into the business. 

So, the rotational program, the entrepreneurial thing where you have access to different departments, all of it is aimed at understanding what we do. How does this business work? 

Can we do what we want to do but also understand it a little bit better? And maybe by doing that, we can see, maybe the next gen does want to be more involved. Maybe they don’t, and that’s fine, and we can do the kind of ownership thing.

But there are really tangible benefits to having that interaction with the business, and the people within the business. Now I will say, like, this is certainly not for everybody. 

And within those organizations that did join this incubator, there was buy-in from top to bottom. Like people under people within the business, managers within the business understood that this was something they were going to look at. 

By the way, if you guys have great ideas, whether you’re family or not, I want to hear about them. So, it was kind of the first step in our family business. Still, maybe we’re slightly more of an entrepreneurial family, or the way we see ourselves is more of an entrepreneurial family. 

Now, the one other thing I want to mention here is that you mentioned a couple of terms related to expectations and things like that. 

I don’t know if you discussed this with Franco, but he has this concept that I love, and he called it the director. Essentially, the short form is that if your desires for something to happen are not communicated, then your expectations of that desire will not be met. 

What happens then is that you get resentful that your expectations and desires weren’t met, and then you start judging and punishing. The first step is the desired piece. We need to communicate our desires. 

Senior gen or current owner, founder, NextGen. If we don’t communicate what our desires are for the business, for ourselves, for the family as a whole, then our expectations are going to be unmet, and we’re going to go into that resentment, judgment, and inevitably punishment waterfall. 

And that’s what we want to avoid. So, having those early conversations and also understanding that there are opportunities here may lead to a, b, or zed. Like, who knows? But let’s give it a chance.

Cory: I love that. It’s a great way to transition as we end our conversation today. Thomas, I ask each guest a few questions before we wrap up. Are you ready for the tough ones? 

Thomas: I am. Yes.  

Cory: Alright. Now, what is one key strategy you believe is essential for building a successful family enterprise? 

Well, Thomas, am I allowed to be repetitive? You are. Yeah, this is a great opportunity to circle back and tie it all together. 

Thomas: So I do think the one strategy is learning, but I think that is multifaceted. I think we need to learn who we are as individuals, what makes us tick, what makes us react, and how we behave, and understand those things before we can be a productive member of a larger piece. 

So, we are learning about ourselves, our families, our family history, and the individuals in our lives more deeply. I can’t remember who I was talking to. We were talking to someone recently, and they said instead of asking people what they do, ask people what they like to do. 

So instead of learning about their job, you learn more about who they are. It’s like take that essence into kind of everything we do and learn together and grow together, I really think is the fundamental strategy. 

I would put that at if I started a family business today, that would be at the core of everything we did. 

Cory: Fantastic. And what is the most common challenge that you see family enterprises encountering when it comes to wealth transition and generational continuity? 

Thomas: I would say having emotional conversations, and I’ll speak from a next-gen perspective.

And that is the fear of letting our parents down or the fear of staying the things that you want to say but they may not want to hear. But those are important things. 

I had a situation in my family around an asset that means something to me, but it’s not the asset that means something to me. It’s what it represents. It’s a place where I get together with my family. 

In conversations about what we will do with this and health concerns I, the message was, “I don’t care about the sale or this or that. I care about it.” I’m going to lose the place where I get to talk to you guys and I get to be with you guys.

It was very difficult for me to say that, but it was very impactful for everybody in the family to hear, like, let’s not talk about it as this financial asset. Let’s talk about it and what it means to us. What does it represent? I think if we can get to that level of communication with each other, we’re going to feel a lot safer having the more difficult conversations of, I’m not quite sure if this is for me, and what have you. 

In much of the research we see regarding wealth transition and generational continuity, what’s missing are the difficult conversations about what to do with this. Is the next-gen want to be involved? 

Do we need it for our livelihood? All those questions, I don’t think that those conversations are happening, and if they’re happening, they’re not happening enough. 

Cory: I really like what you said about being able to hear and be in tune with my own needs as well as those of others. You can’t communicate what you’re feeling and what you need if you’re not in tune with yourself.

And there are so many people who feel something, but they don’t know why, and they can’t articulate what it is. It’s not that I want the multimillion-dollar cottage. It’s that there are so many memories of that cottage or whatever it might be. And how do we communicate that instead of starting to fight about it because we can’t let go? 

Thomas: Yeah. And just add on to that. I think that’s dead on, and the other thing that comes into it, I’ve had a really difficult time accepting that, like, my parents are aging, and then they’re not going to be around one day. 

It’s a very difficult thing for me to think about, and I also kind of play that because I want their life to be good. I want to contribute to them having a good life. They’re in their late seventies. 

Like I don’t want to be a source of more consternation and anxiety for them, but I would be doing myself a disservice if I didn’t tell them how I felt, and we can work through that together, but I can’t hold it to myself. 

Cory: Yes, and such a balance. It’s there’s so much there. Now, Thomas, in your experience, what are the top three qualities that successful family enterprise leaders possess? 

Thomas: So I think they possess a lot of things. The three things that come to my mind right away are good listeners, good communicators, and, first and foremost, good listeners.

Do they have kind of an inclusive mindset? They think maybe more of the whole than of themselves or the individuals, and they probably need to have some level of prognostication. Let me expand on those three things.

I think in terms of listening, I think we need a greater focus, paid to kind of the human capital piece of our family business. So, More on how our people are doing versus how our business is doing more often. 

Like, we need a little bit, we need the balance to shift a little bit more and I think we need an openness to be able to share when things are challenging and to be able to kind of have those open conversations about dreams, needs, and aspirations and take that into account. 

I think the inclusive piece everybody needs should feel valued within a family business. Still, it’s important to include at a very young age and just quickly, like, an emotional connection was made to our family businesses. 

As I said, it doesn’t exist anymore, but it was when my grandfather started it. It was in food brokerage. When I was growing up, my dad and his two brothers ran the business. They had this big warehouse where they had all these products that they would house before they went to Costco or the grocery store or what have you. 

The entrepreneurs that they were, they would go to work on the weekends and often bring the kids, and we’d run around, my cousins and my siblings, and use the telephone or what have you.

But inevitably, we’d run into the warehouse, and we’d wear candy bars and this and that, and we were included in the physical space. However, the parents could have said to leave the kids at home. 

We had to go to work, but they included us in the work, and to this day, I mean, I was probably 7, 8, or 10 years old when this was happening. But to this day, 30 something years later, the smell of cardboard immediately takes me back to that warehouse. I’m a kid. I’m running around that warehouse with my siblings and cousins, and we’re looking for Mars bars. 

Like, anytime I smell cardboard. But I wouldn’t have that emotional connection to that place if I hadn’t been included, and they probably weren’t even thinking about this. But it’s like, we’re bringing the kids to work today? 

It was important for me to be able to see the environment, see my father in that environment, but also be able to leave the house a little bit. Then the prognostication, like, I think it’s probably not the right word, but I think we need to continually check in with each other, understand how we’re doing, and understand as individuals what that might mean for the longer term on our family business. 

So if you have a next-gen and they’re not really that interested in it, that’s fine, but you might need to anticipate what’s going to happen in 5, 10, or 15 years, and if you’re not able to do that, it probably doesn’t have terrible consequences. 

But I do think that I understand business cycles are a lot shorter. However, I do still think having that slightly longer-term view in a family business is beneficial because, yes, the business is the bottom line. Still, I think the impact that family businesses can have on the individuals within them, on the workers, on the community, whether that be local or provincial or however you define it I think it’s good to have a predictive view on where you want to go there and who might belong to that kind of, vision. 

We often talk about vision, but you must predict where you want to go and start building the steps to get there. 

Cory: Absolutely. Without the steps, it’s just a dream. So you actually need to put it to work. That’s right. 

Now, Thomas, before we conclude our discussion, I’d like to highlight where our listeners can engage in more of the conversations that you’re having, be it what you’re contributing to, what you’re listening to, or where our guests can find you.

Thomas: Yeah, sure. I don’t have as large a social media presence as many other people, but I’m on LinkedIn, Thomas Clark. You can find all the stuff we do at veritage.ca. That’s the firm that I work with. 

A lot of the emotional governance piece, as I said, is about really understanding ourselves and where we belong in the family system and I would just encourage people to learn as much as they can about yourself and what you’re doing and what you want to do. 

Sometimes, that’s putting on a good piece of music and trying to absorb that. It’s not always what we’re doing, and that’s important. So, take some time for yourself, but if you want to learn more about what we’re doing, you can find us and me on LinkedIn. 

Cory: That sounds great. And you’re quite humble in that, as you mentioned, your journey has lasted a little over a decade, but you’ve left a lot of breadcrumbs along the way. So, the work you’ve done with Business Family Foundation, the programs that exist today at Family Enterprise Canada because of your contribution, the work that you and Peter Jaskiewicz have done—and I’m sure I’m not even mentioning everything. 

There is a lot that will link in the notes to make sure that it’s not just what you’re doing today.

And I know that the work that you, Franco, and the team are doing will have just as much impact, and things that’ll live on beyond what you’re up to in the future. 

Thomas: Great. Well, I appreciate that, Cory. All those organizations and people you mentioned were the high tide that lifted my boat. Hopefully, I can start giving back myself as well. 

Cory: I love that. Now, Thomas, I wanted to ensure we covered everything today. Is there anything about our conversation you’d like to share with our audience that we still need to touch on?

Thomas: No. We covered a lot of things. I appreciate your questions. I thought they were very thought-provoking, but I did nothing off the top of my head, Cory. 

I’m pretty happy with our conversation, and hopefully, we’ll continue to reflect on it and listen to it when it’s over. 

Cory: Sounds great. Well, thank you, Thomas, for taking the time to share your expertise and experience with us today. I’ve found it incredibly valuable and learned a lot. So I’m grateful for that, and I’m sure our listeners will also. 

Thomas: Thanks, Cory.

As we wrap up this episode, we invite you to reflect on Thomas’ insights about the balance between individual aspirations and family unity.

Whether you are part of a family enterprise or provide consulting to family businesses, Thomas’ emphasis on understanding personal aspirations, fostering good ownership, and creating growth opportunities within the family business provides valuable guidance. 

Throughout our discussion, we explored the parallels between sports team dynamics and family enterprises, uncovering valuable lessons on legacy, culture, and sustainable growth. We delved into the concept of a family learning budget and the importance of collective learning experiences. His insights on developing intrapreneurship within family businesses and fostering good ownership across generations offer a practical framework for navigating the complex landscape of family enterprises. These perspectives provide valuable guidance for families, emphasizing the need for open communication, recognizing individual aspirations, and creating opportunities for growth within the family enterprise.

For those seeking expert guidance on family enterprise dynamics, developing family emotional capital and collective learning within a family business context, Thomas Clark and the team at Veritage International are ready to assist. We’ve included Thomas’s contact information, along with links to Veritage International’s website and additional resources, in the show notes to support you on your journey.

Disclaimer: 

This program was prepared by Cory Gagnon who is a Senior Wealth Advisor with Beacon Family Office at Assante Financial Management Ltd. This is not an official program of Assante Financial Management, and the statements and opinions expressed during this podcast are not necessarily those of Assante Financial Management. This show is intended for general information only and may not apply to all listeners or investors; please obtain professional financial advice or contact us at [email protected] or visit BeaconFamilyOffice.com to discuss your particular circumstances before acting on the information presented.