Invest in your family’s values, purpose, and generosity
The Harvest Is Plentiful
Driving across Indiana and Illinois to visit my mother this week, I saw combines and corn pickers busily gathering in the harvest. Despite drought in a few areas, we anticipate a bumper crop of grain this fall. It’s astonishing to contemplate how such an abundance of harvested grain originated with mere seeds.
As the owner of a successful family business, you understand instinctively the need to invest now for a greater harvest later. You have made long-term investments in physical assets like equipment, property, or technology that were aligned with strategic goals, financial capacity, and expected return on investment. That’s CapEx.
Investing in Family Legacy
Now, apply that principle to your family’s long-term holistic well-being. Good family outcomes don’t happen by accident – they’re cultivated through intentional investment over time, even across generations. The holiday season is a great time to consider family legacy. What time, energy, and resources will your family devote to clarifying your values, creating a sense of shared purpose, and discerning how to give back? Think of this as sowing seeds today so that you may eventually reap a harvest of family harmony and enduring prosperity.
Seed #1: Clarify Your Values
The single most strategic investment in family legacy is clarifying your values. “Values are the foundation of who you are, what you stand for and how you make life choices.” – Dennis T. Jaffe and Cynthia D. Scott, The Values Edge 2.0, p. 7. We all have values, and our values are shaping our goals and behavior. But we may not be consciously aware of our values. Articulating our individual and shared family values is a strategic investment, because values are part of the system of assumptions, beliefs, and actions that compose a family culture. Culture, in turn, exercises a profound formative influence on the souls of family members.
The Values Edge Process
We are certified facilitators using the Values Edge Toolkit, which has been designed specifically for business-owning families. This tool has been used and refined for over 30 years in work with hundreds of families. We typically use it in two separate half-day sessions. In the first session, individual family members define and share their core personal values. In the second session, they collaborate to identify shared family values.
The values selected in any given session are not set in stone; values may well evolve and shift over time in light of new personal experiences, a different stage of life, and changes in our environment. But clearly articulating core values, here and now, provides a strong foundation for family resilience and renewed purpose.
Seed #2: Define Your Purpose
With shared values as background, your family can sow a second family legacy seed: creating a statement of purpose or family mission statement. This involves convening the family in a comfortable setting that allows for reflection and unhurried dialogue. In a skillfully facilitated process that creates a transparent and participatory environment where every voice is heard and respected, the family works out an articulation of their “why.” What is our sense of the meaning and significance of life? What is the role of family life within that broader purpose? To what uses, then, should wealth be applied? How have these understandings and priorities emerged organically from our family heritage? How have they evolved over time?
Impact on the Rising Gen
Clarity around these kinds of questions is a gift to the entire family, but especially the rising generation. We’ve worked with families who worry about this dynamic. As Dennis T. Jaffe notes in his research, “Many business families are concerned that rising generations will become entitled, looking at what they will get rather than what they can give. The core purpose of creating a family tribe is to redefine the role of rising generations from being heirs and consumers to being responsible, accountable citizens.” – Borrowed from Your Grandchildren: The Evolution of 100-Year Family Enterprises (Wiley: 2020), p. 202. The sense of being accountable to a transcendent purpose is a cornerstone upon which family identity and strong character can be built.
In her new book The Myth of the Silver Spoon: Navigating Family Wealth and Creating an Impactful Life (Wiley: 2023), Kristin Keffler describes the unique challenges of young people like herself who were born into wealth. Among them are what she calls the three paralyses: “paralysis by predecessor, paralysis by privilege, and paralysis by possibility.” (p. 4) Applying positive psychology to these challenges, she highlights Meaning as one of five essential components of human flourishing. Meaning, she says, “is about experiencing your own sense of worth and value while also serving a purpose greater than just yourself.” (p. 127) Family legacy is of great value here.
Seed #3: Begin Giving Back
During the holidays we celebrate gratitude and abundance, which leads naturally to a third seed of family legacy: giving back. In what ways over the years have members of your family given of themselves and their resources to promote a cause or assist those in need? When have you been on the receiving end of charitable assistance, and what difference did that make in the welfare and future trajectory of the extended family?
Generac founder Robert D. Kern of Waukesha, WI and his family gave generously for decades to a variety of scholarship programs, inspired by gratitude for a seminary scholarship Bob’s father received after returning home from service in WWI.
Ways to Give
There are many ways to give; we like Melinda Gates’s suggestion that everyone has something valuable to contribute, whether it be money, time, expertise, and/or voice. The important thing is that you give, and that giving back is modeled as a priority. If the time is right, your family might consider establishing a family foundation or other giving vehicle. A recent Bank of America study found that, “Strategic philanthropy is on the rise, as donors increasingly use giving vehicles and impact measurement tools to refine their approach. Families are also becoming more collaborative in their giving decisions.” Collaborating on philanthropic strategy is beneficial on multiple levels. It helps those who receive your gifts; it creates greater family awareness and cohesion; and it provides an onramp for the rising generation to learn about both your philanthropy and the business making it possible.
Sea of Galilee or Dead Sea?
When I was in middle school I had a gifted Sunday School teacher, Mr. Richardson. I’ve never forgotten his lesson on the difference between the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea. Mr. Richardson died this fall at 102, but his teaching stays with me. To this day, I think of it whenever I see a map of the Holy Land. The Sea of Galilee sustains life because it has both an inflow and an outflow of fresh water, creating a dynamic ecosystem. The Dead Sea, by contrast, has no outlet – water only evaporates, leaving behind extreme salinity that makes it inhospitable to fish and plant life.
Both inflow and outflow are essential to life. How will your family give back? We have long experience in philanthropic strategy and can help your family address this question.
Sowing Now for a Harvest to Come
The commitment to begin sowing these seeds initiates a virtuous cycle of positive effects. The WAY you do the work together is just as important as the WHAT you eventually decide. In fact, it may be more so: “Remember, as important as the content of the policies you adopt will be to your family and your business, the process that family members go through to agree on content is infinitely more valuable.” – Craig Aronoff, Joseph Astrachan, and John Ward, Developing Family Business Policies (Palgrave: 1998), p. 17.
Challenges
This work can admittedly be difficult and messy. Values among individual family members, between generations, and among different branches of the family can vary significantly. These conversations can surface old tensions. Progress is not linear, but it is possible. Challenges can be overcome with patience, persistence, and good facilitation.
Be “Radicle” – Invest in Family Legacy!
Building a family legacy is investing for the long term. While there will be some obvious, immediate benefits of doing the family work described above, much of the benefit will become evident only years later. Business-owning families with clear values, shared purpose, and a reputation for generosity tend to raise well-adjusted children, enjoy a cohesive, resilient family culture, and strengthen the causes and communities in which they invest. It all begins with a few seeds.
Before a seed can produce a great harvest, it must first grow downward. 7th generation family farmer Ann Voskamp writes: “When you plant a kernel of wheat in the ground, its first growth is always downward, not upward, the seed sending out an embryonic root, called a radicle, pressing lower into the soil.” (Christianity Today, November/December 2025, p. 63)
A radicle – the tiny embryonic root that anchors everything to come. That’s what these family legacy seeds represent: small beginnings with transformational potential. May this season’s reminders of an abundant harvest inspire your sowing. Contact us to schedule a free 30-minute discovery call to explore how you might begin investing in family legacy.
