How do we preserve wisdom for future generations?

By Hightower Great Lakes on June 26, 2012

My good friend and client Gary is an amazing fisherman.  Since retiring, he sends me pictures of great fish he hooks 10-15 miles from my home (picture below).  It doesn’t matter what time of year, he is out trolling and catching trophy fish.  I am often amazed at how Gary and others seem to know just where to go and what flies or lures to use. As a result of years of fishing and networking with other fishermen, he has gained the instinct and knowledge to be in the right spot with the right lure, and he has honed the necessary skills needed to bring the fish to his net.
How can we preserve and share the fishing wisdom that Gary carries around with him?  Anyone can go to a Bass Pro Shop today to buy the best and latest fishing gear, but how do you collect and circulate the accumulated knowledge that fisherman like Gary hoard in their brains?  How do we get Gary and others like him to give you the tools needed to catch the fish of your dreams?
As a wealth manager, our team of experts spends a lot of time focusing on managing, protecting and growing financial assets.  But financial assets can’t be protected long term without also collecting, protecting and disseminating the knowledge, skills, experience, rituals and other intellectual capital being held in entrepreneurs’ brains.  We would do a disservice to clients if we merely helped them with the orderly transfer of wealth to the next generation without also helping them pass a respect for and knowledge of how hard it was to accumulate the wealth.  We might as well be giving their heirs a Cabella’s card and sending them out to fish the rapids of the Colorado River in the spring.  What is the likelihood they will succeed?  Without identifying,  protecting and enhancing the human and intellectual capital within a family, how can a family possibly preserve its financial capital? Every client and family situation is different, so we develop custom procedures for each that will enable clients to define, preserve, and disseminate the combined family history, experiences, rituals and other knowledge that future generations will need to succeed.
I own two fishing rods that I have used to catch a lot of fish in Canada.  I bought them and other gear with my great friend Buzz before my first trip up north.  He didn’t just help me select the proper gear, though.  Before we left and while fishing in Canada, he and others taught me how to fish.  Those rods were useless until friends and mentors shared their experience and knowledge with me.  Years later before going on our first fly fishing trip in Colorado, we went through the same process. He knew that to get me set up with the best and latest gear, without the knowledge of how to use it, would do much more harm than good.  He also knew that to simply hand me his latest catch would offer me no benefit. The joy, fulfillment, and personal satisfaction come from the learning process, development of instinct, emerging skills, and eventual personal success.