Managing the Future - Ben Allen

HNW and UHNW families have, for many years now, relied on some of the best wealth managers in the world to ensure that historical value is retained over time. Ben Allen, Founding Partner of Education Concierge Allen & Jain, argues that the best investment is often the one closest to home.

Having spent more than half a decade dealing with Family Offices all over the world, it is interesting (or alarming, depending on perspective) to see the pattern of behaviour which is assumed to be a guaranteed formula for success. The ‘tried and tested’ formula tends to involve sending your child to boarding school and hoping that they will end up being able to make decisions about the use of vast quantities of capital. It is thought that the stiff upper lip, the deluge of traditions, and regular chapel attendance will provide teenagers with the best possible start in adult life. For a time, such an approach worked and served Britain, and the elites of the rest of the world, very well.

But we now find ourselves in the 21st Century, not the 19th. The meaning of education has expanded far beyond the ability to be able to recite prayers or be able to eat your dinner with the correct etiquette. The world has changed. Business has changed. But the very top of British and Swiss education has not. They still think that the tried and tested is going to work in delivering the next generation of leaders. The reality is that nothing is further from the truth. A number of books, most famously Nick Duffell’s ‘The Making of Them’ have set out the major impacts that unsupported attendance at boarding school can have on mental health and emotional wellbeing. Really, we should not be that surprised. Schools are, by their very nature, impersonal. You are just another number amongst the thousands to have passed through those halls. It is exceedingly difficult to be remembered, and all too easy to be forgotten.

Competition

People talk about the virtues of competition, and about the importance of learning how the world works. As a former international representative of Hong Kong in both swimming and debating,

I am a big advocate of competition in the right environment. But boarding schools have too often taught people that it is easier to cheat than to actually win on your own merits. To loosely quote Rab Butler (former Chancellor of the Exchequer): at schools, people who are dishonest tend to get away with it. The real world is not so sympathetic to such tactics. This is only one example of the wider issue of boarding school competitive culture. How can institutions which pride themselves on tradition be able to teach 13-year-olds the values of innovation and critical thinking? These are the skills that will ensure your grandchildren are still well provided for. The reality is that top schools often fail to prepare their students for admission to a university, let alone the working world.

There is one final issue which it is important to be aware of when sending your children to a school away from home. One of the great strengths of the British grammar school system is that it mixes people from all different types of economic background. Gone are the days where it was business smart to be only surrounded by people like yourself. Excellent businessmen and businesswomen are more than happy to look to anywhere in order to obtain the best possible deal. Most people will not remember the content that they were taught in secondary education. But the soft skills they are meant to pick up should last them the rest of their lives. Private schools, without any The world has changed. Business has changed. But the very top of British and Swiss education has not. “

”

engagement in extracurricular or super curricular activities, can very quickly result in narrow thinking likely to make simple, prejudiced, mistakes.

University degree

It is also important not to understate the importance of having a university degree in the modern world, and one which is compatible with individual preferences. It has become fashionable amongst the children of high net worth families to point to examples such as Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg as examples of people who managed to thrive without a college education. The inconvenient truth is that working hard is no longer good enough. Cardiff University produces a fantastic set of research called the ‘Skills and Employment Survey’ every 5 years. The next report is due to come out in the autumn, but the 2013 Report showed that 26% of all jobs in the United Kingdom had a minimum requirement of undergraduate education. Given the rise of jobs in the technology sectors, it would be very surprising if this figure does not surpass 30% when it is updated.

This is a ridiculous quantity of jobs, with invaluable real-world experiences to offer, which are now no longer accessible without a university degree. Some families may wish to heap scorn on the idea of the inaccessible, for they have the utmost faith that throwing enough money at the right people is a solution. To be fair, it is a solution in the short term. But the world of commerce is not run on the fuel of family connections like it used to be. The only metric that matters is individual productivity, and trying to do a graduate job without the necessary skills provided by a good university degree is a recipe for a bad time.

Perhaps for those people who are sceptical of the skills which can be taught by formal higher education, it is better to think about the problem

passes through a higher education institution by the time they are 30 is as high as 49%. Universities are contained environments where teenagers are able to become young men and women, learning the importance of independent research, selfsufficiency, genuine responsibility and what it means to take ownership of a particular task. University graduates might not work harder than the average person. But they do work smarter. That advantage alone is enough.

Fostering Passion

The realities of university education do a lot to inform the Allen and Jain academic philosophy. One of the core tenants of the business is to make sure that people have had the opportunities to discover a subject that they are passionate about, and find the right environment to foster that passion. Many education consultants want to impress the need to do costly extracurriculars as something that will boost chances of success. The reality is, a university like Oxford, Cambridge, or the top London institutions, will discount any reference to playing for a football team or the fact that you were a school prefect charged with the enforcement of uniform codes. There might be a bit more leeway for such activity in the United States. But the margins have never been good enough

Now we are in the age of the super curricular. Though this might sound like something I have just made up for a corny American Midwest TV commercial, the idea of a super curricular has been floating about in education circles for a while now. apply for Human, Social and Political Sciences at the University of Cambridge. What is likely to impress tutors more, house colours in a sport or a welldesigned placement in the House of Commons, shadowing the Parliamentary Assistant to an MP? The answer is obvious.

It is important to view the education of future family leaders as a very shrewd investment with a potentially massive payoff. As important as it is to see the intrinsic value of education, make no mistake as to how savvy a business decision it is to have a firm which is able to tailor an individual plan of action and provide the support necessary in order to make the best of secondary education away from home. It is important to make sure that proper plans are made to ensure family offices stay competitive as we delve deeper into the 4th Industrial Revolution. Hot air and an ability to mindlessly believe in whatever project you set your mind to is not the sort of smart management that fills people with confidence. Making sure the future does not repeat the mistakes of the past is going to be a critical battleground in the long-term future of high net worth families.

Ben Allen - Founding Partner Allen & Jain Consulting Ltd. b.allen@allenandjain.co.uk

future family leaders as a very shrewd investment with a potentially massive payoff. ”

© Iam Schneider/Unsplash