Deliverables

Family Qualitative Capital Management™ provides families with significant wealth a continually-updated comprehensive analysis of their Qualitative Capital and a plan to continue to grow it. As a result, our clients can always answer the questions: “How are we doing, as individuals and as a family, with regard to our non-financial wealth?” and “What are we doing to improve?”

Family Balance Sheet®

The analysis of how a family is doing rests upon family members’ annual responses to Wise Counsel Research’s proprietary Family Balance Sheet. Developed over twenty-five years, the Family Balance Sheet measures the five forms of Qualitative Capital. The Family Balance Sheet also includes open-ended questions to enable family members to share what they would most like to learn from each other and what messages they would most like to share with each other. All individual responses to the Family Balance Sheet are treated as strictly confidential.

Family Qualitative Capital Report

From family members’ responses to the Family Balance Sheet, Wise Counsel Research produces for the family an annual Family Qualitative Capital Report. This Report includes the family’s aggregate results from the Family Balance Sheet, benchmarked against our database of results from hundreds of families. It also highlights family-specific areas of strength and opportunity, and it offers our expert, customized recommendations for specific action and learning for the family to pursue over the coming months. The Qualitative Capital Report allows families to measure their progress in growing their Qualitative Capital year-over-year.

Individual Qualitative Capital Report

Because we believe that healthy families are made up of healthy individuals, Wise Counsel Research produces an Individual Qualitative Capital Report for each member of the family. This Report includes the family member’s individual results and customized recommendations for the individual family member’s specific actions and learning. As with the Family Qualitative Capital Report, the Individual Qualitative Capital Report allows each family member to measure progress in growing Qualitative Capital from one year to the next.

Qualitative Action Plan

Once the Family Qualitative Capital Report is ready, Wise Counsel Research will design and facilitate a family meeting to discuss the Report and to help the family prioritize their goals and desired action steps, based on our expert recommendations. This discussion results in the family’s Qualitative Action Plan for the coming year. The agreement on the annual Qualitative Action Plan is an important opportunity for the family to clarify their goals, practice shared decision-making, and for family members to share with and learn from each other. Elements of a family’s Action Plan may include learning more about personal finances, family finances, family trusts, effective communication strategies, prenups, practices of effective parenting, and the selection of wise trustees.

Rising Generation Council

Many families with significant wealth decide to establish a Rising Generation Council, to serve as a forum for rising generation family members to practice effective communication with each other, enhance the trust for and understanding of one another, and identify topics of importance to them that they want to learn more about and discuss at family meetings. Wise Counsel works with rising generation family members to establish the Council, develop ground rules and agendas, and to make the Council a vibrant part of the family as a learning community.

Trusteeship

For select families, Dr. Keith Whitaker, Wise Counsel’s Managing Director, serves as individual trustee, trust protector, director of family private trust companies, or independent member of family private trust company distribution committees. Based on his co-authored work Family Trusts, Dr. Whitaker seeks to make family trusts a true blessing and source of enhancement for family members’ lives.

Process Evaluation Meetings

Throughout each year’s engagement, Wise Counsel Research will schedule several process evaluation meetings. At the six-month mark, we will design and facilitate a family meeting to monitor the family’s progress in the Qualitative Action Plan. Wise Counsel Research will also hold process evaluation meetings with family leaders in the first month of each year’s engagement, before each of the two family meetings, and at the end of twelve months in order to review progress and discuss the family’s needs for the coming year.