Giving While There's Still Time to Multiply
What several voices reveal about sharing wealth while the next generation still has time to build with it.
This Note draws primarily on a conversation with Ferran Fisas, second-generation owner of La Farga and Partner at Exaudi Family Business Consulting. His observations are placed in dialogue with those of Fernanda Jaramillo, Partner at Lansberg Gersick Advisors, and Cristina Carvajal, G4 owner and advisor.
Ferran Fisas does the arithmetic the way he does everything else, out loud, mid-conversation, without softening it.
“La esperanza de vida crece cuatro meses por año, eso significa que tu hijo tiene muchas posibilidades de vivir más de 105 años, y sus hijos 115 más o menos. Entonces, ¿a qué edad van a heredar tus nietos?”
(Life expectancy grows four months every year, which means your child has a good chance of living past 105, and their children past 115. So at what age will your grandchildren inherit?)
Not a complaint about mortality. A question about timing, asked of a system that was never built to answer it.
Weeks earlier, in a different conversation, Fernanda Jaramillo had already named where that unanswered question tends to land.
“No esperar a que las personas mueran para que los beneficios económicos se transfieran a la siguiente generación.”
(Not waiting for people to die for economic benefits to be transferred to the next generation.)
Fernanda Jaramillo, Partner, Lansberg Gersick Advisors
Not a suggestion made lightly. A correction to something she watches happen again and again.
When transfer waits for death, what arrives is no longer inheritance. It is compensation for having waited.
The model most families inherited wasn't built by anyone trying to withhold anything. It was built when people simply didn't live as long, when receiving something in your thirties or forties still left decades to do something with it. Ferran's arithmetic makes visible what has quietly stopped working. If a child can expect to live past 105, and a grandchild past 115, waiting for a natural transfer means receiving capital exactly when there is no longer the time, or the energy, to build anything meaningful with it.
What Ferran names as a demographic problem, Fernanda has been naming for years as a relational one.
“Los padres con frecuencia terminan usando el dinero como mecanismo de control... los lleva a infantilizar a los hijos.”
(Parents frequently end up using money as a mechanism of control... it leads them to infantilise their children.)
Fernanda Jaramillo, Partner, Lansberg Gersick Advisors
Read together, these aren't two separate critiques. Inheritance is not only the transfer of assets. It is the transfer of developmental opportunity. A system that waits to transfer wealth also, without meaning to, waits to transfer trust. In the meantime, money stops being something that frees a person and becomes something used to manage them instead, sometimes for decades, long after anyone would call that person young.
Waiting to transfer wealth rarely only delays money. It delays becoming someone who no longer has to ask.
Presence
“Hay vida más allá de la empresa familiar.”
(And the world, there's life beyond the family business.)
Ferran Fisas, Second-Generation Owner, La Farga · Partner, Exaudi Family Business Consulting
“Hay vida después del liderazgo.”
(There is life after leadership.)
Fernanda Jaramillo, Partner, Lansberg Gersick Advisors
Two voices, from two different conversations, name the same recognition from different distances. A self exists that continues after the role ends, whether the role was ownership or leadership, business or family, whether or not anyone hands anything over on time. Once that's visible, waiting stops looking like patience. It starts looking like a habit that has quietly stopped serving anyone.
Love
What holds a family together across a transfer this large was never the money itself. Ferran mentioned my seven-year-old daughter only briefly, in passing, during the small talk near the end of our conversation. Then, without offering any strategy, he pointed back to her directly.
“Si tú quieres ver el futuro, sólo tienes que mirarla a ella.”
(If you want to see the future, you only have to look at her.)
Ferran Fisas, Second-Generation Owner, La Farga · Partner, Exaudi Family Business Consulting
Cristina names the same anchor from a different distance: a family can change almost everything about how it operates and still find its way back to each other in the values underneath.
“Podemos cambiar mucho, pero nos encontramos en nuestros valores.”
(We can change a great deal, and still find each other again in our values.)
Cristina Carvajal, G4 Owner and Advisor
Held together that way, giving early doesn't feel like losing the future. It feels like investing in someone already, visibly, standing in it, whoever's child that happens to be.
Safety
“La capacidad de desprenderse de algo que fue exitoso es fundamental.”
(The ability to let go of something that was successful is fundamental.)
Fernanda Jaramillo, Partner, Lansberg Gersick Advisors
“En las empresas, cash is king. En la familia, data is king.”
(In business, cash is king. In the family, data is king.)
Cristina Carvajal, G4 Owner and Advisor
“I think we don't have to obsess on the continuity. Creo que tenemos que relativizar mucho la testosterona que hay respecto a todo esto.”
(...I think we have to put a lot of the testosterone around all this into perspective.)
Ferran Fisas, Second-Generation Owner, La Farga · Partner, Exaudi Family Business Consulting
Fernanda names the capacity to release what was successful, not because it failed, but because holding onto it costs more than it protects. Cristina points at what makes that release possible in the first place: a family that keeps information moving can see what's coming before it becomes urgent, and move on its own timing rather than waiting for a crisis to force the decision. Ferran's own release goes further still, loosening the grip on continuity itself, and naming plainly the kind of pride that turns holding on into a virtue it was never meant to be.
System Rhythm
Ferran describes founders whose rhythm has become inseparable from the role itself.
“No saben estar en casa, no saben, no sabrían qué hacer, nunca han tenido tiempo para el ocio.”
(They don't know how to be at home, they wouldn't know what to do, they've never had time for leisure.)
Ferran Fisas, Second-Generation Owner, La Farga · Partner, Exaudi Family Business Consulting
That rhythm doesn't disappear just because succession becomes necessary. What people seek from the family shifts across life, Ferran adds, and the mix never settles for long.
“Cualquier miembro de la familia tiene que percibir tres tipos de beneficios, funcional, de oportunidad, emocional. Son dinámicos, porque la persona los vive con distinta intensidad en función del momento de su vida.”
(Any family member has to perceive three types of benefits: functional, opportunity, emotional. They're dynamic, because a person experiences them with different intensity depending on their stage of life.)
Ferran Fisas, Second-Generation Owner, La Farga · Partner, Exaudi Family Business Consulting
Ferran extends the same logic to a generation usually described as impatient.
“Todo el mundo critica a los millennials, pero yo soy un gran defensor. En un mundo cambiante, la actitud adecuada es la de que quieras cosas de inmediato, y además, aunque sean efímeras, porque es la que se adapta, es adaptativa.”
(Everyone criticises millennials, but I'm a great defender of them. In a changing world, the right attitude is wanting things immediately, even if they're fleeting, because that's the attitude that adapts, it's adaptive.)
Ferran Fisas, Second-Generation Owner, La Farga · Partner, Exaudi Family Business Consulting
What looks like impatience up close is often just a different rhythm of adapting.
System Orientation
Ferran has a rule for the hardest conversations. Speak to the mothers first, not the leaders.
“Ellas son las que saben que sus hijos están frustrados, que el papá no se está enfrentando al problema, que huye de él, que se esconde.”
(They're the ones who know their children are frustrated, that the father isn't facing the problem, that he runs from it, that he hides.)
Ferran Fisas, Second-Generation Owner, La Farga · Partner, Exaudi Family Business Consulting
The mothers already know. The same watchfulness extends toward what's ahead.
“Tienen inseguridad respecto al futuro, no se fían de lo que hay.”
(They feel insecure about the future, they don't trust what's already there.)
Ferran Fisas, Second-Generation Owner, La Farga · Partner, Exaudi Family Business Consulting
Watching closely for what could go wrong. Watching less closely for what's already being lost.
System Co-regulation
For Ferran, trust is something a system practises, not something it simply decides.
“La confianza siempre es recíproca. No puedes confiar en alguien que desconfía de ti.”
(Trust is always reciprocal. You can't trust someone who distrusts you.)
Ferran Fisas, Second-Generation Owner, La Farga · Partner, Exaudi Family Business Consulting
Trust moves in both directions, or it doesn't move at all. Waiting until death removes the only stretch of time in which that reciprocity could have been practised.
What would it take for a family to share wealth while there's still time for everyone to do something with it?
About the Observatory
The PAS Family Enterprise Observatory explores the human dynamics that enable or prevent continuity across generations in family enterprise systems. Through conversations with owners, advisors, NextGen members and researchers, the Observatory investigates the human capacities and relational dynamics that governance structures alone cannot fully address.
What human dynamics enable or prevent continuity across generations in family enterprises?
Natalia Cacciari Garavito