This week I have had the privilege of participating in a summit meeting of advisors who work with some of the most successful individuals and families in our country (and even the world).  Approximately twenty-five professionals from a variety of disciplines gathered to learn from one another and discuss how they can best work together to serve their clients.  Clients of the advisors present include royalty of countries around the world, former Presidents of the United States, top entertainers and sports figures in the U.S., leaders and innovators in the field of technology, “household names” of financially successful families, and generally very successful business families from various industries.

It was a fascinating two days of listening to presentations from the professional participants — who shared the latest advances in their field of service, and then to hear the team members discuss together the implications of the advances and how they can be utilized to help the families we serve.  The areas of expertise included:

*investment advisory professionals (one of the leading theorists in the field whose firm has outperformed the S&P 500 every year for the past 10 years)

*open architecture financial reporting (being able to report all of a family’s assets in one report — from multiple investment firms to including non-traditional asset classes)

*risk management  (an independent consultant who advises clients in assessing the various types of risks associated with their holdings and businesses and helps clients find the best provider for each type of risk)

*security of family members (a former intelligence agent whose firm provided security at the last World Cup games and who has successfully returned every kidnap victim safely)

*life insurance professionals (the ex-chief underwriter of one of the top five life insurance companies in the world)

*estate and tax planning attorneys (a team of attorneys who together train estate planning attorneys across the country and some of whom are involved in framing state laws in the area)

*business valuation and business succession experts (individuals who have been involved in helping transfer billions of dollars of business value from one generation to the next)

and more.

What was fascinating to me was to observe the following characteristics of these individuals:

• Humble.  Although each person was a leader in the own field, to a person they were not proud, arrogant nor self-promoting.
• A learner.  Each person was there to learn from others and people repeatedly commented on the privilege to learn from one another.
• Service-orientation.  These professionals saw their role as to serve their clients to the best of their ability.  Although everyone is also professionally successful, they were not focused on image or making a lot of money — they knew that if they served their clients well they would be fairly compensated.
• Collegial.  Although there were professionals from the same fields (e.g. accounting, tax law) as well as a variety of areas, there was no sense of “turf wars” or trying to take over areas. Rather, these professionals see and know the value of working together with others who are also competent.
• Integrity.  Repeatedly the issue came up that “we are not willing to do [x, y, or z] just to make money. We will only do what is best for our client.”
• Enjoyable to be around.  We laughed a lot.  The group was positive, caring for one another, and respectful.  I did not hear one cutting or sarcastic remark during the whole event.  And people genuinely expressed their appreciation to one another in numerous ways.

The group reminded me of an old proverb I have tried to pursue in my life:

“Do you see people skilled in their work?  They will work for kings, not for ordinary people.”

The lesson for all of us is this — do whatever you do well, learn and keep learning from others, and take the initiative to do what you can to be around those who are the best in their field.

A practical example: one of the participants who was younger (early 40s), but already extremely successful in his own field [he serves royal families in the Middle East], sought out one of the older participants and asked to be mentored by him stating “I’ll do whatever you need — carry your bags, sit in the corner and be quiet — I just want to be there, observe and learn from you.”

Share that perspective with your kids and junior managers.

Last night we had an interesting life experience — one of our neighbors’ home caught fire and burned to the ground.

For those of you who don’t know, we live out in the country surrounded by trees.  There are 8-10 homes in our area, with woods (currently very dry woods) in between homes.
Around 11:30 p.m., my daughter, Lizz, came into our room and said she thought she heard gunshots and then sirens.  Just then the phone rang and the wife of the leader of the county firefighters in our area called saying our neighbor’s house was engulfed in flames; she asked that we call our neighbors so we could all take preventative steps — it has been extremely dry with fire warnings posted; and the wind was blowing 25-30 mph.

We looked out our bedroom window and saw huge flames and an orange glow (about a quarter of a mile away), and then saw ashes and glowing embers coming down and settling into the trees next to our home.  After calling our neighbors, we kicked into emergency mode — getting the hoses going, loading up our cars with our computers and some other belongings, and then scouring the woods for any additional fires.

In actuality, we found a fire that had started in the top of a tree in the woods and directed the firefighters to it, where they had to carry portable tanks to put it out.  The “neighborhood” was out and shared our own personal stories of when we heard or saw the fire.  It is unclear how the fire started and the family actually was out of town.  Their home was totally burned to the ground and it was reported that their cars essentially were melted.

It then started to rain (we haven’t had rain for several weeks) which obviously lowered the risk for secondary fires starting; and the firefighters had the house fire under control.

When trying to go to sleep, I then reviewed how we did in our emergency response and what I would do differently.  I learned a few practical things — I need to take some practical steps so I can shoot water higher on the roof; and we need some other resources to get water up on the higher levels of our home.

In reviewing the experience, Kathy and I felt like we managed the situation well and discussed what belongings we would have gathered next (a few sets of clothes, our personal tax documents for this year, and family history photo albums that we don’t have electronic versions of the pictures).

All in all, we were extremely thankful for God’s protection of our home and of our neighbors’.  Additionally, in thinking about the neighbors who lost their home, the temporal nature of our belongings was emphasized to us — and caused us to think about those aspects of our lives that endure — family, friends, our character, and the freedoms and opportunities we have each day.

If you haven’t recently, I would encourage you to think through your own emergency plan - and to be thankful for what you have and your personal safety.

Have a good week!

There is plenty being written about the current financial crisis and, like the political elections this past fall, it is easy to become overloaded with information.  Obviously, there are a lot of opinions about what has happened, who is at fault, and what should be done.  Some of the comments are driven by philosophical beliefs (for example, about macroeconomics), some by political beliefs, and less seemingly by looking at the data in longer term historical perspective.

One interesting voice in the milieu is Peter Schiff, who has a video on YouTube with over 1 million hits, where he predicted the burst of the mortgage bubble and the ensuing market crash back in 2006.  In 2007, Schiff published a book entitled Crash Proof: How to Profit From the Coming Economic Collapse. And in a recent article in Fortune magazine, Schiff discusses his beliefs how best to deal with the crisis:  “shrink the government radically, cancel all bailouts immediately, take plenty of tough medicine, and let the free market do its job”.

Now I obviously am not a macroeconomist, nor a financial analyst, but it seems other business leaders are calling for similar (although maybe not as stern) actions.  Jim Collins, author of Good to Great,  also has an interesting article where he attempts to put the current economic situation in historical perspective.   Consistent with his message in Good to Great that business leaders must force their management to deal with the harsh realities they face, and not act like they aren’t there, Collins reiterates the point that the companies who survived the Great Depression and continue today remained true to their core values. Often these core values included commitment to their people, providing quality products even if it was costly, and maintaining a long-term perspective.

Often as a psychologist I assist people in dealing with their feelings.  And, in contrast to the old days of just helping people “get in touch with their feelings”, we now know that emotional reactions are intimately linked to an individual’s expectations — what “should” happen (or what “shouldn’t”).  So a person’s emotional reaction is an interaction between their expectation and what they actually experience — if the expectation is met, we feel pleased; if it isn’t, we can become angry, disappointed, hurt or discouraged.

I believe we are entering into an important time in recent history where individuals’ beliefs about life (about the way things should be) are going to be challenged with the reality we each experience.  And I personally believe that a lot of the psychobabble about “perception is reality” and “reality is whatever you want it to be” will crumble in the face of the difficult times many will encounter.

There is an objective reality (and, yes, our experience of it is influenced by our perceptions and beliefs) — and the choices that we each make will have increasingly important consequences for our lives.   This is true both at an individual level, as well as corporately for businesses, and also for our country.  There are some foundational economic principles — and the various macroeconomic belief systems will be proven either true or false by the results that occur.

But at a more foundational level, the following principles seem to be true over the centuries and across cultures:

• Work is the process of providing goods or services that others want or need and are willing to pay for.  Trying to make money fast on some scheme that is not grounded in providing goods or services ultimately will not work over the long-term.
• Spending less than what you earn, saving for purchases ahead of time, and “saving for a rainy day” (i.e. when you are not able to work) seems to be a wise strategy.  True, you won’t be able to maximize your opportunity for gain by leveraging your resources, but you also minimize your risk if everything does not turn out as planned.
• Often circumstances bring change that was not expected, and to survive (and thrive) we must adapt to the new circumstances, adjust our expectations, and not focus on the “good ‘ol days”.  Reminiscing about the past, and grumbling about how things aren’t like they used to be, doesn’t do much to help deal with the present.  And you can either accept the new aspects of the current reality, and learn to deal with them, or you can try to continue to live according to the rules of the past and probably fail.

I am sure there are other foundational rules that will become evident over time.  I would just encourage each of us to begin to re-evaluate our expectations, our beliefs about the way things “should” be, see if they match reality as we know it today, and determine if adjustments in our beliefs, habits and expectations need to be made.