A Value Shared Is Value Earned
A common history presupposes certain common values in all of our families, and—as with individual fingerprints—no two sets are identical. But discovering those common values within our family group (even if it consists only of husband and wife) sometimes takes effort. "Before you can even do a mission statement, you have to be able to be aware of what your value system is," observes Judith Stern Peck, director of the Family Wealth and Family Life program at the Ackerman Institute for the Family in New York City. "We work with people to help them become more aware of what their values are."

One of the exercises that Peck employs with her clients involves prioritizing "thought" cards that enumerate ethical, relational, philanthropic, and economic values, such as honesty, justice, and fairness, family, friends, work associates, and so on. Once the client has done this, she then asks a series of questions designed to highlight discrepancies between values and behavior. A person who prioritizes family in the exercise, but who is constantly absent from home, has not necessarily internalized that value. "The greater the discrepancy between what one says and what one does, in terms of the family business, the greater the dysfunction." What is important, Peck says, is that the family initiate a constructive conversation on these topics in order to find their commonality and resolve tensions.
This resolution is critical in that all generations of our families need to buy into these values. While the head of the family is often the one to articulate its mission, each individual must internalize these ideas if they are to be acted upon, and so there must be agreement among members. Another useful practice in framing a mission statement is to ask individual members to write their own life missions—to describe, in other words, their own personal and financial goals; these can then be used as talking points in developing an overarching document for the larger group.