The couple discusses how much of the profits to keep in the company and how much to use for family purposes.

One says:

"We can't take money out of business now. There's expansion ahead, we'll need liquidity."

The second one answers:

“We have been postponing a house for four years. And all this time we live as if the family can wait, because business needs it more.”

After a few minutes, the conversation almost stops being about profit. One protects the company from a decision it considers dangerous. Another is trying to figure out how much longer family life will be pushed aside for the next stage of growth.

It seems to everyone that the interlocutor does not understand the obvious.

Only the obvious is different between them.

The first answers the question: what does business need now?

The second is trying to get an answer to another: how much longer should the family wait?

They think they are arguing about money. In fact, the conversation has quietly changed its device.

It began between spouses. Then one moved into a management position and began to explain the needs of the company. After that, he spoke as the owner: he is responsible for the safety of the asset and believes that the last word should remain with him.

When the partner objected, the answer again came from the family role:

"Why don't you trust me?"

In a few minutes, one person managed to be a spouse, a leader, an owner, and a spouse again. But the conversation did not have time to change with him.

The problem is not that a person has multiple roles. The problem begins when he changes roles within the conversation and continues to use the authority of the previous one.

Family business research uses the Three Circle Model, developed by Renato Tagiuri and John Davis at Harvard Business School, to distinguish between these positions.

It describes three intersecting circles: family, ownership and business.

The model is not a development of MN SAPIENS. In this article, it serves as a working lens: it helps to discern from which part of the system a person is speaking and on what basis he is claiming a solution.

Each circle has its own logic.

Family thinks about people, relationships, security and life together. Ownership is associated with asset value, control and a long horizon. Business requires competence, resources, speed and results.

These logics do not have to coincide.

A company may actually need liquidity. The owner is responsible for the risk taken. The family has the right to understand the cost to its life of the next business decision.

A glitch occurs when an argument that is valid in one circle is used as the final answer for the other two.

The phrase “the company needs a reserve” can be professionally accurate. But it does not yet answer the question of how many years a family will save for a house and how a decision is made, the consequences of which will change the lives of both spouses.

Managerial competence gives a person weight in an operational matter. She does not make him the sole author of the family future.

Ownership gives powers within the circle of owners. However, the person affected does not necessarily have the power to run the company or stop the owners' decision. The family creates a new risk if he learns the cost of the choice only after the decision has become irreversible.

Be informed, be heard, prepare a recommendation and make a final decision: different positions in one process. Their content depends on the law, corporate documents, family arrangements, competence and actual responsibility.

The same substitution occurs in decisions about investments, real estate, inheritance, relocation, and children's education, even when there is no operating business in the family.

Particular difficulty arises because roles change faster than the interlocutor has time to notice it.

In business, the founder is used to responding quickly. His decisions are based on experience, data and responsibility for results. At home, this speed does not disappear anywhere, although the question may be different.

The partner who is not involved in the management of the company finds himself in a conversation about family life constructed in the language of the CFO. He hears arguments about liquidity, working capital and risk, even as he struggles to understand where family fits in the priority order.

The founder may not notice the substitution. He speaks from an area where his competence is truly high, and he expects the weight of this competence to continue in any subsequent issue.

Thus, authority is transferred along with the person.

The leader brings home the speed of management. The owner brings a logic of control and responsibility for risk. The parent may continue to talk to the adult child as if the previous authority to decide for him remains unchanged.

Most often, no one builds such a system intentionally. One understood the numbers better, the other trusted, the business grew, the children were small, and difficult conversations could be tolerated.

Then reality changed. The business became a family asset, the children grew up, and decisions began to affect several generations. But authority and power continued to move according to the old pattern.

If this order is repeated, the child can also draw conclusions long before he understands the structure of capital. For example, that the last word belongs to the one who brings in the most money. That a business can cancel a family arrangement. That some questions are better left unasked.

Later, a share or property will not automatically correct this lesson. Ownership in itself does not explain to a person when he speaks as a family member, when as an owner and when as a leader.

Preparing the next generation begins with the fact that adults themselves are able to distinguish between their roles and do not use one of them to shut down a conversation that belongs to another.

Before an important decision, it is useful for the family to take a short break.

In the work of the Architect, this technique can be formulated as follows:

First, name the role. Then give your arguments.

A person indicates from which position he is speaking now, what issue he is trying to resolve, and where the powers of this position end.

For example:

"Now I speak as a leader. The company really needs reserves for expansion."

“Now I am responsible as a spouse. I see that we have been postponing an important goal for the family for several years.”

“Now I speak as an owner. I consider this risk acceptable, but I understand that its consequences will affect not only me.”

Naming the role is not enough. The phrase “I speak as an owner” does not prove the right to close any conversation.

A role does not give more power than is actually given to it.

Therefore, next you need to name the issue, the boundaries of authority and the people who will be affected by the decision. Before making a big choice, it is important for the family to distinguish whose competence is needed, who should be heard and who is authorized to put an end to it in this circuit.

If one of the participants cannot safely object, naming roles alone will not correct the structure of the conversation. Then the problem lies deeper than the communication technique.

The position may remain tough. The manager has the right to insist on maintaining liquidity. Your spouse may not be ready to put off a marital goal for a few more years.

But now it is clear why they say this and what issue each is trying to solve.

Reception does not guarantee agreement - it makes disagreement honest.

Let's return to the original replica:

“You can’t take money out of business now.”

After differentiating the roles, it might sound different:

“Now I speak as a manager: the company needs a reserve for expansion. But as a spouse, I see that our family has been putting off important things for several years now. Let’s not cover up the family issue with a management argument. First, let’s determine what the business really needs, and then decide what price the family is willing to pay for it.”

The content of the position has remained almost unchanged.

The anatomy of conversation has changed.

One role switch can be noticed right during the conversation. But sometimes the problem is deeper: decisions rest on one person for years, and the family does not distinguish between his competence, trust in him and real powers.

For such a situation, a system map and a live architectural analysis are needed.

The Family Capital Sustainability Index helps you see the state of the five capitals, resilience domains, couple profile, PAEI-role picture and family governance gaps. Live analysis is necessary to understand how the identified gaps manifest themselves in specific decisions.

If a family needs a systems map, the first door may be the Family Capital Resilience Index. If the issue still exists as a personal tension and the main gap is not yet clear, the first door may be an Architectural Diagnostic Session.

In doing so, they do not establish who is right, but help the family understand what conversation they are really trying to end.

Before making your next big decision, it's worth asking:

What role am I speaking from now and hasn’t it changed faster than the person next to me could notice it?

Sometimes the argument continues not because people do not hear each other.

They have been answering various questions for a long time.