Emily Bouchard is a fractional chief learning officer for family offices. She talks about the role of a chief learning officer and how it’s evolved:
Why might a family office engage a chief learning officer, and what does it mean to be a fractional one?
A lot of family offices are looking for the best resources for the families they serve. Having someone that has that background in developing engaging and developmentally relevant
learning roadmaps for the family members is a valuable additional resource to have.
As a fractional chief learning officer, I’m able to do that in multiple ways based on different needs: if it’s a single family office, for just one family, or if it’s a multifamily office, for general programming for their families and training for their advisors.
What do advisors need to know about family education?
One of my recent roles is to train advisors who are using the framework based on the book The 10 x 10 Learning Roadmap to create developmentally appropriate education plans for their clients. It divides people into 10 stages of human development from age 5 to 100, with 10 competencies for each of those stages. It helps advisors understand the arc of people’s lives. If you’re working with a 20-something, what are their particular challenges? How are they different from the challenges of someone who is looking at leaving a longtime leadership position in the family business? This also gives advisors a way of getting in front of all the family members, not just the wealth creator or inheritor who may be making a lot of the financial decisions.
How has family offices’ approach to learning changed during the years you have been working in the field?
A lot has happened over the last 20 years in terms of understanding generational differences and understanding cultural differences. There is also a new lens: a developmental educational focus. As human beings, we’re all very different. At different stages of our development, there are different areas of life that we’re really needing to address, such as identity formation or social responsibilities or relationship development.
