Enette Pauzé, Ph.D., a third-generation family member of a business-owning family, is CEO of the World Leader Institute, an organization dedicated to inspiring world leaders who leave global legacies. She also serves as a private family facilitator and business advisor. She discusses the role of the chief learning officer in family offices:
How do you view the role of the chief learning officer?
I have watched the role of the chief learning officer for families evolve over the last decade, and I would say it’s still an underdeveloped function within family offices.
The role is conceptualized differently depending on if I’m talking to somebody that has a family business consciousness, a family enterprise consciousness or a family office consciousness. But the core is still the same: The role of the chief learning officer is to facilitate the well-being of family members in the ecosystems that families exist in.
I see the role as going far beyond just the education and learning plan for the family members that a family office is responsible for, but actually expanding that perspective and connecting family offices to the purpose of the family: ‘Why is your family here on planet Earth? How might you individually and collectively improve life on Earth?’
I might be pushing it further than my peers would. Most of my peers would say the job of the chief learning officer is to help family members identify the learning needs of family members for the purpose of transcending the ‘shirt-sleeves-to-shirt-sleeves’ proverb (generally, an emphasis on fiduciary responsibilities). This proverb is shortsighted in that it focuses on only one form of wealth – financial. However, we know that holistic wealth, which is necessary for the longevity of families, comes in many different forms, including social, vocational, physical, mental, spiritual and family.
How could the role of the chief learning officer evolve?
I think we have an incredible opportunity to expand this role. We’re just starting to understand what family wealth and family enterprise means. We’re starting to professionalize that industry as a whole, and we will fall really short if we just continue to focus on how we get better returns. Otherwise, we risk the perception that we greenwash investments and impact investing to make it look like we’re doing something altruistic beyond our family. There must be an authentic alignment and consideration of people, planet and profits.
I think we really need to tap into the meaning and purpose behind who you are as a human being, what your family is here to accomplish in the world — and then how do the structures, like family offices, amplify and augment that? Wealthy families are stewards of humanity and life in general. It is a great responsibility.
What causes a family office to consider hiring a chief learning officer?
Once there’s a family enterprise consciousness, that usually means somebody in the family is having a vision beyond themselves and beyond their lifetime. Now they want to structure things, to look more objectively at how they communicate and make decisions.
When I do coaching with individuals, we talk about the three-legged stool: self-awareness, self-reflection and self-governance. Those are the core three ingredients. The same kind of thing happens in family enterprise. When the family enterprise as a whole starts to become self-aware, reflective as a whole and self-governing as a whole, they start to more effectively move from more novice, family business-level thinking and decision making to a more family enterprise-level of decision making. They start to set goals beyond their own life. That starts the next level of order and organization. They start thinking and planning with more of a long-term vision.
Then they start to look — instead of just at urgent issues — at important but nonurgent family dynamic issues. Now we’re talking about things like governance and succession planning.
The chief learning officer comes in when a family is looking beyond their lifetime – a generational mindset. They’ve gone through the pains of starting to organize meetings, retreats, family values, family mission. They’re starting to think more about the self-awareness of the family, self-reflection as a family, self-governance as a family. Having a chief learning officer is like having a chief human resource officer in a company, where you actually have somebody who’s dedicated to and focused on the people side of the family system.
