Fire Drills: Tools for taking advantage of change
Change = challenges and opportunities
We believe the ability to take advantage of change is the most powerful asset entrepreneurial families can possess.
During the intense, reactive period following a pivotal trigger event (death, illness, marriage, divorce, birth, sale of a business, etc.), change requires families to deal with significant challenges while presenting them with even greater opportunities. Without forethought, preparation and planning for pivotal trigger events, families may leave their ability to take advantage of change largely to chance.
What are Fire Drills?
Heeding the old-school wisdom of “practice makes perfect”, we created Fire Drills for addressing the pivotal trigger events most commonly experienced by entrepreneurial families.
By exploring how participants react to these events, Fire Drills act as a conflict-mapping tool. The assumptions, fears, tension, family dynamics, and taboos that surface when significant change occurs are exposed, clarified and addressed.
Within this context, Fire Drills empower participants to seek out missing information, improve existing change management skills, and acquire new skills as needed. We then provide the strategic framework to help families and their advisors develop and implement strategically integrated change management and contingency plans.
How do Fire Drills work?
Fire Drills expose participants to the challenges and opportunities change presents in a creative, constructive and conscientious environment. This enables them to ask – and find the answers to – vital questions often deemed too intrusive and inappropriate when pivotal trigger events actually occur.
Like the fire drills we all remember from grade school, TDI Fire Drills are repeated on a regular basis. Reviewing required actions and exploring options in advance of pivotal trigger events, verifies key people understand and are preparing adequately for their respective roles in helping the family take advantage of change.
What do Fire Drills cause?
Our many years of research and fieldwork has proven true confidence comes from knowing you do not always have to be in control; it comes from knowing you have the transferable skills you need to manage any situation.
Fire Drills empower family members and their advisors, individually and collectively, to manage the unknown. By learning how to break what happens when a trigger event occurs into manageable pieces, participants build “mental muscles” and develop a personal toolkit of change management skills.
With their mental muscles engaged, participants experience a dramatic improvement in their ability to analyze risk and make effective decisions in all areas of their personal, professional, family, and public lives. As a consequence, they find themselves enjoying significantly greater self-confidence and self-esteem while making an even greater contribution to the success of others.
Fire Drills help participants control their attitude, assess risk, recognize and accept where they are powerless, and take positive action come what may. Fire Drills help family members become change entrepreneurs.
Your next steps
Our options are diminished or reduced to a choice between two evils (fight or flight) when circumstances force us to take action.
Today, you most likely have the luxury of choosing to take action or do nothing. To help make it easier for you to choose action, we offer the following choices:
Informal Chat
1. We invite you to contact us with your questions and to explore the issues you wish to address and the opportunities you wish to realize. Click here to arrange an informal chat.
DYI Fire Drills
2. Visit Cultivating Change to purchase a complete set of Do-It-Yourself Fire Drills for aging families.
Test Drive
3. If you would like to test-drive a small piece of our process, try our Basic Questions Self-assessment. This interactive form is an easy yet effective tool for more fully understanding how prepared to leverage change you and your family may or may not be. To access this form, simply create a personal (and completely confidential) Question Central account. It only takes 30 seconds and gives you immediate access to the Basic Questions module as well as other modules we will be offering from time to time.
(Note: Your personal information is not stored or used in any manner beyond providing the results of the self-assessment.)
Transformative Discovery
4. If you would like to experience what it is like working with us while at the same time receiving some substantial value, consider investing a little of your time in our complimentary discovery process.
The process begins with a discovery session during which we assess your current situation and bring greater clarity to your vision for the future. We identify where you may be stuck and why it is difficult to overcome persistent obstacles and issues. We also help you articulate and record the most important goals you wish to achieve for yourself, your family and your enterprise. And, we examine and provide preliminary ideas for addressing the obstacles you face and taking advantage of the opportunities ahead.
The discovery session takes approximately 90 minutes and enables us to deliver a Personal Blueprint for leveraging change. The blueprint provides the information you need to make an informed and confident decision about the appropriateness of engaging our services.
Regardless of the path you choose, the blueprint is yours to keep without further obligation.
Click here to schedule your discovery session.