ORGANIZED COURSES
Our organized courses offer recommended reading from books available in our Raffles Legacy and Learning site, a substantial course book specific to the topic addressed and course content containing key questions, short introductory readings, summaries of e-lessons, video e-lesson access, examples and templates for you to complete, and an end-of-module checklist.
In each course, attention is paid to both the ‘hard’ (technical) and ‘soft’ (people-related) issues that require addressing for you to get the best possible outcome from your engagement with the particular course work at hand.
Courses are offered in three different formats:
Foundation Courses
These courses contain an introduction and between 4-7 modules, provide basic information on critical topics.
These courses are shorter in length than either Core Courses or MasterClasses, and can be pursued as standalone exercises or combined with other courses to expand on the material addressed.
The Foundations of Legacy course is included here as it provides a common foundation to all other course, ensuring that all strategies and plans reflect appropriate understanding and guidance from the content on family history, culture, challenges, purpose, vision and values.
Core Courses
These courses are approximately 8-10 modules in length and provide information and opportunities for you to develop your own strategies in specific areas within the four key areas described below.
MasterClass Courses
These are the most advanced and comprehensive courses with between 12-16 modules in each course.
They provide a ‘deep dive’ into material which ensures that you have a chance to understand, and apply, the information and guidance necessary to work through your own issues.
The courses here fall broadly into four related areas:
- Integrated Legacy Strategy, including the essential course in the Foundations of Legacy, which is a necessary precursor to virtually every other course on this site.
- Family Organization, Governance, Leadership and Succession, along with those aspects of the family enterprise that can have a particularly positive impact on family unity and ‘togetherness’.
- Family Business Ownership and Strategy
- Family Wealth Management
For each of these four topic areas there is one Foundation Course, three Core Courses and one MasterClass.
These broad course headings and course listing are reflected in the blue course listings ‘tiles’ as set out on the home page. The first column of course listings includes those related to Integrated Legacy Strategy, the second column those related to Family Organization, Governance, Leadership and Succession, the third Family Business, and the final column containing courses related to Family Wealth Management.
Examples of Introductory Material and Courses
Overview and Initial Assessment (Free and Open Access)
Statement of Purpose and Introduction to the Raffles Legacy Learning Center
Our ultimate purpose is to help you to create a better future for you and your family.
Far too often, due to a lack of knowledge, family leaders take decisions or fail to take the decisions when needed, that can have a major impact on the future of their families.
The track record of wealthy families, even the most famous, is not universally encouraging.
Comparing the list of the wealthiest American families more than a century ago (three generations in today’s terms), not one of the fables ‘Gilded Era’ families are on the list, or even anywhere near the top of the list of current wealthiest families. While still remembered for their business, social, philanthropic and other contributions, these great families may have a better past than future along many critical legacy dimensions
The Legacy Strategy Framework and Initial Assessment of Your Own Situation
Unlike a health check, which may involve complicated tests and analyses, a family wealth check to see whether or not your family could benefit from an investment in family strategy is simple, easy and painless. All that is required, no matter how wealthy your family, is a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer to three basic questions:
-
Do you have a clear and documented strategy to preserve and enhance your family wealth – in all its dimensions – across future generations?
-
Do all relevant members of the family understand and support that strategy?
-
Are you implementing that strategy successfully?
If your answer to these three questions is affirmative, you are among the very small minority of families who have properly addressed this important family issue. You should be firmly congratulated for having an effective family wealth strategy in place.
Foundation Courses
Foundations of Legacy: Family History, Culture, Purpose, Vision and Values
“Lend me the stone strength of the past, and I will lend you the wings of the future.”
— Robinson Jeffers
A deep understanding of the family – past, present and aspirations for the future – is a critical foundation stone for every aspect of legacy strategy, and an essential precondition to every course in this e-learning platform. This Foundation of Legacy course will provide the first step in addressing Integrated Legacy Strategy, Family Governance, Leadership and Succession, Family Wealth Management, Family Dynamics and every other Foundation, Core and MasterClass Course presented here. This course begins with defining who the family is – traditionally defined as bloodline descendants and adopted children of a defined individual or couple – but may also include other criteria such as being a shareholder in a family business, and may or may not include in-laws and stepchildren. How far back in generations a family goes in defining itself will have a major impact on the size of the current and future family as defined, which can have a major impact on family wealth and legacy planning.
Newly Rich: Managing the Risks and Opportunities of First Generation Wealth
“What do you do, and how do you begin, when you have created or received a substantial amount of wealth for the first time?”
— AUTHOR NAME
This quandary is surprisingly common among those who have created or inherited, but not yet figured out how to manage, a great financial fortune. This sudden wealth can come about through many sources: professional success, business sale, lottery win, inheritance or divorce settlement, to name but a few of the most common.
Many successful business owners or other ‘suddenly wealthy’ individuals have not had the time, training, and exposure to put together a clear legacy plan for themselves and their families. Others may not have had the interest or aptitude to develop the skills necessary to learn how to manage a financial fortune, much less an enduring family legacy. The key steps in that plan are as follows:
- Define your new vision of the future and supporting values.
- Decide on your future philosophy of wealth, and then structure and manage your wealth as appropriate.
- Establish a disciplined and professional approach to wealth management.
- Organise and educate the whole family, with a focus on NextGen leaders.
The Essence of Successful Family Business Strategy
“All men can see the tactics by which I conquer, but what one can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved…”
— Sun Tzu
Legacy families with existing core businesses have an extra dimension to consider in order to build a successful future for the overall family enterprise.
The role and impact of a family business can play a defining role in a family’s culture and in the lives of its individual members. Some families even define family membership by having a shareholding in a family business.
Challenges in this area are twofold, for there is both a ‘pure business’ component and a family aspect to a family business. Both provide challenges and opportunities that need to be mastered if a business is to prosper over time and through different economic cycles.
Getting Started: An Introduction and Primer on Family Finance and Investment
“If you don’t control your wealth, it will control you…”
— AUTHOR NAME
Many essential life skills are not taught in schools and can fail to get the attention they deserve in a busy home. Basic knowledge, such as the organization of family finances, an operating budget, structured approach to investment and wealth management, business leadership, philanthropy and risk management, is essential in a legacy family.
Managing family finances and wealth on a planned and purposeful basis begins at home, and the approach taken to managing basic family finances, savings and investment can serve as both a model and lesson in how to organize and manage greater family wealth later in life.
For younger members of the family, preparing a student budget (as offered here) can begin the journey to responsible stewardship of personal and family wealth over time.
Core Courses
Family Wealth and Legacy Planning: Turning a Financial Fortune into an Enduring Family Legacy
“Hope is not a strategy.”
— AUTHOR NAME
In every course, lesson and insight across this site, the role and contribution of leadership cannot be overstated.
Yet the kind of leadership required to diagnose, design and implement the most effective strategies for a legacy family differs in many ways from other forms of modern leadership models.
Mastering family leadership challenges in a legacy family setting requires defining and addressing all of the issues of a complex family – both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ – in a rapidly changing context. It requires investing the time and effort to develop an understanding of the changes taking place in the world surrounding the family as well as the evolution of the family itself, it requires long term thinking when many strategic cycles are getting shorter and shorter, and it involves identifying and implementing both proven ‘best practices’ from the past and creative new ‘next practices’ for the future.
The Family Office and Supporting Ecosystem
“No man is an island entire of himself.”
— AUTHOR NAME
Family offices are uniquely suited to integrate the broad expertise and advice that is necessary for the long-term benefit of the families they serve. A family office traditionally addresses wealth structuring; financial, tax and wealth management; legal services; family governance; risk management; communication and education plans. They may also provide family business support and concierge services, such as property management, art collection curation, security and travel.
Because of its close relationship with the family, a family office can help with sensitive family matters, such as conflict avoidance, dispute resolution, generational transitions and leadership succession.
But no family office, no matter how expert, operates on its own. The same is true for a legacy family. Surrounding the family and its family office is a complex eco-system of employees, friends, advisors, institutions and other sources of guidance and practical support on matters great and small. Understanding and managing both the family office and ecosystem are critical elements to the long term of a family.
Doing Business Better: Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainable Business Investment
“A good company delivers excellent products and services; a great one delivers excellent products and services and strives to make the world a better place.”
— Bill Ford
Chairman, Ford Motor Company
Ever-increasing pressure on businesses to pursue and report on their Corporate Social Responsibility (‘CSR’) objectives in a transparent manner adds to the momentum – and range of potential opportunities in this area. Clients, end customers and regulators are all increasing demands for responsible business practices, ethically sourced products, and insisting on assurances regarding the entire supply chain from their suppliers – even beyond the part they actually control. NGOs risk As the negative impact of climate change accelerates, diversity and equality issues become more visible, and as workplace safety concerns rise, companies now face the need to manage, and report on, a series of both internal and external issues. Increasingly, measurable performance in these areas is being required in order to comply with Global Reporting Initiatives and International Financial Reporting Standards.
Asset Structuring and the Principles of Wealth Preservation
“Our wish is that…[there be] maintained that state of property, equal or unequal, which results to every man from his own industry or that of his fathers.”
— Thomas Jefferson
There are countless reasons why individual families lose their wealth, but many of them can be avoided with careful structuring of wealth, and putting in place proven practices to protect the wealth once properly structured.
Clarifying the family’s philosophy of wealth, defining a purposeful approach to pools of wealth and protecting wealth from internal and external risks are essential steps to realize legacy objectives and achieve the broader family purpose.
On and offshore structures, effective oversight, prudent investment policies, an ‘ecosystem worthy of trust’ and clear principles on wealth distribution and family education can all go a long way to helping you beat the old curse of riches to rags in three generations.
The Renaissance Leadership Imperative: Mastering and Integrating the Disciplines of Our Time
“QUOTE TO BE ADDED SOON.”
— AUTHOR NAME
In every course, lesson and insight across this site, the role and contribution of leadership cannot be overstated. Yet the kind of leadership required to diagnose, design and implement the most effective strategies for a legacy family differs in many ways from other forms of modern leadership models. Mastering family leadership challenges in a legacy family setting requires defining and addressing all of the issues of a complex family – both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ – in a rapidly changing context. It requires investing the time and effort to develop an understanding of the changes taking place in the world surrounding the family as well as the evolution of the family itself, it requires long term thinking when many strategic cycles are getting shorter and shorter, and it involves identifying and implementing both proven ‘best practices’ from the past and creative new ‘next practices’ for the future.
The Renaissance Imperative
The successful example of the vaunted ‘Renaissance Man’ of the Enlightenment period, in many ways, captured the ethos underlying the model best suited to inform and guide leaders of modern legacy families in mastering the challenges they face today, and those they will need to address tomorrow as well.
Seven Principles of Success for Leaders of Legacy Families
- Aspire and seek actively to improve on what is currently there
- Master and integrate the disciplines of your time
- Apply the highest levels of creativity and innovation
- Take a holistic approach
- Do not be afraid to end the old to make way for the new
- Benefit from the wisdom and capabilities of others
- Provide authentic leadership in a manner which inspires trust and engenders support
Family Dynamics: Culture, Conflicts, Relationships and Individual Issues
“I don’t know why we call the people issues the ‘soft issues’ because they are not ‘soft’ or easy at all… maybe we should call them the ‘even harder issues.”
— AUTHOR NAME
We all aspire to create and perpetuate a flourishing family in all the ways that count. Yet understanding and managing family culture, relationships and the complex personal issues faced by individual family members, may be the most complicated task facing family leaders. In the modern world, and in particular within the legacy family, there are multiple layers at which problems and unique assets can be found in the way a family operate.
Culture is made up of a unique set of beliefs, attitudes and behaviors that differ from one family to another. Culture shapes the visions we pursue and the values we respect, it affects how we relate to each other, communicate, and create bonds (or not) between each other.
Good Governance: Addressing Board Structure, Composition, Leadership and Performance
“Global market forces will sort out those companies that do not have sound corporate governance.”
— Mervyn King
Numerous studies have shown the correlation of good governance with better decision-making, stronger financial performance and more effective risk management and sustainability practices. The role of governance, along with good ownership, leadership, management, succession and strategy, can be essential to the long-term health and prosperity of legacy families. This extends to their various family and philanthropic activities, their businesses, and other commercial and non-commercial initiatives around the world.
Good governance in the greater family enterprise addresses those structures, policies and practices that have proven successful in the past, and ensures they evolve to stay relevant and effective in the future as well. This will benefit from a focused effort to set out the purpose of a board and its related activities, define its structure and operations, provide guidance to its leadership and put in place an approach to objective review and constant performance improvement.
A Principled Approach: Family Responsibility and Sustainable Investing
“There is no Planet B.”
— AUTHOR NAME
With each passing year, more and more wealthy families become sensitive to the impact their businesses and investments have on the world’s environmental, social and governance challenges.
In response, responsible investing has moved on from traditional negative screens on such industrial sectors as tobacco, alcohol and firearms to a more comprehensive and effective approach to investing with a measured impact on their ‘ESG’ impact.
Today, while still using negative screens, many families are embracing a more comprehensive set of values, practices, and approaches that contribute to a more holistic and proactive approach to principled investing, which also aligns a family ’s investment practices more firmly with its core values and beliefs.
Living a Truly Wealthy Life
“True family wealth is about far more than money.”
— AUTHOR NAME
Money can be an essential part of a wealthy life, but insufficient by itself in creating meaningful and fulfilling lives for individuals and families aspiring to pursue a broader, and deeper, life agenda.
If one aspect of a family’s purpose is to create something greater together than that which can be created alone, then the role of each individual family member needs to be considered by itself and as a part of a nuclear family, and as a piece of a branch or generation of a greater family.
Generational Transitions: Preparing the Rising Generation to Master the Challenges of the Future
“QUOTE TO BE ADDED SOON.”
— AUTHOR NAME
Generational transitions in most families now take place every 30 years or so, given modern family patterns. Any such change initiative will benefit from the family having established a firm foundation in unifying culture, effective governance and leadership succession plans and family communications long before the three phases of transition and succession begin:
- Phase I: Where the current leadership is in place and NextGen members are preparing for their future roles
- Phase II: Where the current leadership generation are still present and engaged in some areas within the family enterprise, but the process of transitioning to new ownership and leadership has begun, a phase of both stepping up by NextGen and stepping down by retiring members of both generations
- Phase III: When the NextGen are in full control of all ownership ad leadership responsibilities
Making a Difference: Effective Philanthropy and Social Engagement
“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.”
— Pericles
Modern philanthropy creates a wide range of opportunities for families to be both funders of activities and actively engaged in initiatives themselves to make an impact on the greater world and their selected causes within it.
Philanthropy can also be the glue that binds an extended family together, and a cornerstone of a family’s multi-generational legacy.
Many modern families have changed their approach to philanthropic and societal initiatives. Modern philanthropy offers a wide range of opportunities for families to fund activities and actively engage in initiatives. Philanthropic families can make an impact on the world through the causes they support.
Protecting the Future: Priority Risk and Crisis Management for Family, Wealth and Business
“QUOTE TO BE ADDED SOON.”
— AUTHOR NAME
Risk management is all about identifying potential family problems early and addressing them quickly and effectively.
Traditional risks include family, financial, fiscal and physical risks. Today data and cybersecurity concerns have added an extra dimension to risk management. Responses to priority risks can range from assuring the physical security of real assets to prenuptial agreements to complex financial market hedging instruments.
MasterClass Courses
Integrated Family Wealth, Business and Legacy StrategyTM
“Money, as money, is power in repose. Set in motion, it may fall like dew or rush like a whirlwind; it may be light to irradiate, or lightning to destroy… The conditions of stewardship are not the terms of bargain and hire, but of promise and grace.”
— Rev Thomas Binney
Money: A Popular Exposition (1865)
Very few wealthy families around the world have been able to preserve their financial wealth for more than three generations. Those that do tend to think consciously about all aspects of their multi-faceted legacy and address all elements of their strategies on a long term, even multi-generational basis.
Many legacy families do not yet have a clear strategy to protect their wealth and enhance their legacies.
It is indeed possible to set and achieve aspirational plans that will increase your family’s chances to beat the historic odds of ‘riches to rags in three generations’.
An Advanced Approach to Family Governance, Leadership and Succession
“Leading from the heart of the family, not just the head of the table.”
— AUTHOR NAME
Most leading families who are able to preserve their family wealth and harmony across generations have a structured formal approach to family governance, leadership and succession.
This course takes you through proven insights and practical lessons to help you define and implement a unique approach to these fundamental matters, addressing the core elements of family organization and leadership and incorporating both the ”hard” factors, such as formal governance structures, with ”soft” factors relating to family culture, relationships and individual family members.
Business Strategy: Improving Results and Increasing Value
“QUOTE TO BE ADDED SOON.”
— AUTHOR NAME
The ability to develop and implement effective business strategies need not always have a family component, but it must always be developed in a disciplined, thorough, and effective manner. It needs to link analysis, design, and implementation in a seamless fashion and connect the investment made to concrete results in the real world.
The sequenced approach set out here unfolds in three phases: diagnosis, design and implementation. There are seven steps within each phase, often with more than one display related to each step in the attached coursebook examples and templates.
Total Family Wealth: Integrating Portfolio, Business, Property and Private Investment
“Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort”
— Franklin Delano Roosevelt
This course offers a practical approach to family wealth management, which is essential for any family legacy strategy.
Each family needs to develop its own approach to wealth management. A solid foundation of financial market and investment expertise should underpin each approach. Understanding the positive and negative history of private and family investing is also required.
Many families are becoming more interested in sustainable and impact investing. Direct investing, co-investing and other sources of “finding alpha” and reducing concentration risk in turbulent modern markets are also integral to many wealth management agendas.