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A. Institutional "family offices" goals are 1) to make a profit from other people's wealth , 2) to attract more and wealthier clients and 3) to retain existing clients.  These conflict with the goals of families to 1) maintain long term control of family wealth, 2) to have access to expertise and experience on their own terms and 3) to provide security to the Family without placing the family wealth at risk. 

B. The conflicts of interests are the spur to developing an independent Family Office as an organization

C.  For the Family to succeed, the family and the family office need to 1) learn from their own and others past mistakes, 2) anticipate future risks and opportunities and 3) adapt to unforeseeable and surprising risk and opportunities. 

D.  Learning from the past is, in part, embodied in processes and procedures.

E.  Anticipation of the future is, in part, embodied in wealth, financial and strategic planning,

F. Adaptability is, in part, embodied by Scenario Planning,

In this context, I see the Bill of Rights as a tool to learn from past mistakes - the touchstone upon which investment procedures and processes should be tested against.  My contribution to this discussion is to give some additional background on the history of investment planning and a tool to describe processes in a basic, graphic way. History is based on my Investment Planning Handbook Investment Planning.doc This is a long document, but is meant as a reference tool,  The other is a summary of Business Process Management Notation (BPMN) BPMN HandsOn Modeling one page per shape core set.doc that gives a common frame of reference for describing a process or procedure.

The result is that the investment planning process can be laid out as a single graphic flow chart Investment BPMN flowchart.pdfand the elements of the Bill of Rights can be inserted or referenced.

I hope this is helpful, and will move this cooperative effort forward

Matt Erskine

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