I am pleased to share that the latest episode of the Family Business Podcast is out today.

I sat down with two people whose work has shaped a huge amount the thinking in the field of family business. Dennis Jaffe and Cynthia Scott are the authors of the book Living Your Values. I often refer back to the ideas within it when working with clients, so having the chance to talk about it in more depth with the people who wrote it was a genuine joy.

Dennis has spent much of his career researching what allows family businesses to endure across generations, and one finding keeps coming up when he looks at the families who have lasted the longest. When he asked what mattered most to their longevity, the answer that came back again and again was values put into practice.

The difference between listing values and living them

The heart of the book, and of our conversation, is this distinction. So many families and businesses start, and often stop, at the point of coming up with the values themselves. As you can imagine, the usual terms come up: respect, integrity, teamwork, and so on. But as Cynthia points out in our discussion, a word on its own does not tell you very much. What does respect actually look like in practice, in this family, in this business, on an average day? Until you can answer that, the word is doing no real work at all.

As we continued our conversation, what struck me was how Dennis and Cynthia encourage families to name the opposite of a value too. If inclusivity is important, for example, what does its absence look like? Naming the anti-value, and telling a story about a time when you lived up to the value or fell short of it, is what begins to turn the word into something with real meaning.

Know yourself first before you try to share values

One principle Dennis and Cynthia were clear on is that shared values only work once people understand their own values first. Before a family can agree what they stand for together, each person should have the chance to work out what they stand for as an individual, and to appreciate the differences this will bring up around the table. That difference is not a problem to be smoothed over. It is, as Cynthia put it, part of what creates greater family resilience.

This is something I have taken straight into my own work with families: understand the individual as much as you understand the collective. I put real weight on working with each person within a group, not just the group as a whole, making sure no one’s voice gets lost along the way and that individual clarity sits front and centre before we ever get to the shared picture. Structure and governance matter, and I will always help a family put the right frameworks in place, but I have come to believe mindset and behaviour matter just as much, probably more. Frameworks on their own do not change how people behave towards one another, and that has to be understood before any governance work will really stick.

Why families get this wrong

Dennis and Cynthia were candid about the most common mistake: treating values as a box to tick. What actually builds commitment is the opposite of a quick exercise in a meeting room. There shouldn’t be a rush, but rather ongoing conversation, listening to every voice, constant feedback, and continued reflection on personal views. Values should be lived, tested and refreshed.

That is another part of their thinking that is reflected in my own work: don’t rush the process. Let it reveal itself rather than pushing a family towards decisions before they are ready. Time is not something to manage around, it is part of how the work actually gets done, and I have seen how much stronger the outcome is when a family is given the space to arrive there in their own time.

A conversation that is worth a listen

I want to thank Dennis and Cynthia properly for the generosity and depth they brought to this discussion. Their book is full of practical exercises rather than theory alone, and I would recommend it to any family, or any adviser working alongside one. You can find Living Your Values on Amazon here.

Please do give the episode a listen and share it with anyone you think would value it. And if this conversation has left you wondering how clear your own family’s values really are in practice, our family business assessment is a good place to start. You can find out more at familybusinessassessment.scoreapp.com.

If you want to listen to the podcast follow the link below or search “The Family Business Podcast”