I’ve recently returned from a speaking engagement at a conference in Dubai, which was my first visit there. As I walked around the city and particularly the mall, I pictured “founding father” Sheikh Al Maktoum just a few decades earlier looking out on a desert, and imaging a future that few others could imagine.
Creating modern Dubai took a huge amount of money and some outstanding engineering, but the most important ingredient was … vision.
Those blessed with fewer financial constraints than most have an opportunity to make their visions a reality. Their vision can make the world around them a better place in so many ways. But it starts with imagining and dreaming of possibilities. For some, those dreams come spontaneously, but for others they can be stimulated through a structured process. For families, there is an opportunity to do this as a group, which has added benefits: the contribution of diverse voices to build the vision, and the power of shared vision to bind the family together.
Warren Buffet famously said that he would leave his kids enough to do anything but not enough to do nothing. If we are blessed with wealth, we ought to make our “anything” the best it can be.
Consider This: Has your family articulated a shared vision? Do you encourage rising generation family members to dream and consider the possibilities open to them? Whatever your age, what are you dreams?
Here is more on reading on family governance.