Flourishing Tree Moments of Inspiration, Issue Two: How to Hold a Successful Family Annual Assembly

Over the National Day holiday, four partners from Flourishing Tree traveled to City B to hold the second family annual assembly together with nearly twenty members, across three generations, of our client the Z family.

The two-day assembly was like a symphony flowing without effort — now gentle, now intense, now moving us to tears, now filling us with laughter.

The first evening was the family peer-advisory council, letting the members share their thoughts with one another and open an atmosphere of candor and pragmatism. Its keyword was “communication.”

The second morning, the second generation shared the growth and gains of the past year, and the first generation offered feedback and additions — a joyful and moving time. Its keyword was “growth.” The family patriarch gave a review of the year and a look ahead, once again stressing the original intention and purpose of building a family succession architecture. Its keyword was “risk.” Afterward everyone broke into small groups to discuss and set family and personal goals for the coming year. Its keyword was “hope.”

The afternoon was for the whole family to study and confirm, clause by clause, the content of the family charter, understanding the duties, rights, and interests of each role in the family. Its keyword was “rules.”

The evening was the family banquet, with song and dance and the clinking of cups. Its keyword was “love.”

Families able to hold an annual assembly in this way, year after year, are rare today. This owes to the vision, leadership, and responsibility of the family’s head, and also to the unity, harmony, and joint effort of all the family’s members.

I believe that as China’s families shift their focus from creating wealth toward preserving and passing it on, more and more families will think about how to plan their succession well and how to hold a good family annual assembly.

After the assembly, we four partners also raised a question: what does it take to hold a truly high-quality family annual assembly? In this issue of “Flourishing Tree Moments of Inspiration,” we offer our reflections.

A Sense of Ceremony

China’s culture of family precepts and rules has a history of more than three thousand years, developing along roughly this line: it germinated in the age of the Five Emperors, arose in the Western Zhou, took form in the Han, matured in the Sui and Tang, flourished in the Song and Yuan, and reached its height in the Ming and Qing. In modern times, traditional family precepts entered a new period of overall decline with pockets of renewal.

The culture of family rules flourished as never before in the Song and Yuan. Compared with earlier periods, the family precepts of this era touched every domain of household life — managing the family and its finances, dealing with people, educating the children, and much more — all of it extremely detailed and concrete, giving family members systematic, comprehensive, and highly practical guidance. This period also built consensus around family rules and precepts through various means: establishing clan estates, compiling genealogies, building ancestral halls, or instituting regular family gatherings. Such gatherings were made up of ritual elements, with the family head leading the recitation of the precepts and rules, the veneration of ancestors, and the like.

So the practice of using ceremonial family gatherings to unite members, letting the family’s culture and values pass on more effectively, is ancient. One of the functions of ceremony is to unite: through ritual it awakens a sense of identity, gathering the wills of family members into one.

The family annual assembly is therefore different from a family meal or get-together. Above all it must possess a sense of ceremony, using fixed rituals at each assembly to review and renew the family’s vision, values, and culture. A sense of ceremony brings family pride and cohesion.

Truth

The family annual assembly is a gathering of family members, and in a cohesive, loving family, there is naturally a “truth” among them — true feeling, true sincerity, true reality. This is the most precious of emotions, one that stirs appreciation, moves, and inspires.

The flow and segments of the assembly should therefore arouse and amplify this “truth,” rather than let it be suppressed and weakened by a rigid, formalized program.

Sometimes segments such as family members’ remarks bring out many stories and spark much interaction. As the one keeping the meeting on track, do not worry too much about losing control of the schedule or the time. As long as the “truth” is drawn out and allowed to flow through the room, a brilliant and perfect occasion will emerge of its own accord.

Telling Stories Is Also a Kind of Value

Even among family members, no one enjoys the crude proclaiming of slogans.

We have found that in a family annual assembly, what moves people most, inspires them most, and makes them laugh most heartily is almost always the small stories — the family’s own, true, small stories.

Through these stories, family members feel how the family’s culture and values are passed on and inherited from one generation to the next. Getting the family to share the family’s stories, and their own stories, is one of the keys to whether an annual assembly succeeds.

You Must Grow in Public

A family can keep developing only if each member keeps growing and “evolving” — especially every younger generation.

Thus, arranging for the second generation to share their growth over the past year at this assembly lets each person take the chance to sort out and sum up for themselves, and, still more, lets their growth be seen.

For a family, every member must not only grow but grow in public. Seeing one another, inspiring one another, fulfilling one another — in the end letting more and more members become the family’s backbone — is how this great ocean-going vessel of the family can cross the wind and waves and sail toward the shore of happiness.

Systems and Frameworks

Only by building systems and frameworks can one grow with focus and speed. We sorted out a “Six Capitals” system for the family and, each year, accompany them in setting goals, reviewing progress, and summing up results.

Each year’s family annual assembly is a good moment to sum up results and set goals for the new year, because these goals are not any one person’s goals but the whole family’s goals. Only goals thoroughly discussed and communicated by everyone at the assembly are goals everyone recognizes and is willing to strive for — only then do they have value and meaning.

The above is part of the methodology we have summarized for holding a high-quality family annual assembly well. For us at Flourishing Tree, every client family’s annual assembly is an opportunity to learn and improve.

To create a “beautiful work,” and to grow alongside our client families for a lifetime, is also the value and meaning of our existence.