In Need of Unity

I have loved my time remotely working for (qp) global this summer. The people are great and I am learning a lot. However, I have noticed a flaw in the operations of the organization. The main root of this problem is lack of communication and collaboration. Each member of the firm manages the finances for different families, each member being a “family president” in their own right. The goal of the firm is to create an environment that collaborates on sourcing and executing investments that fits each family’s specific needs. Each family has different investment needs. For example, one family could want to focus on wealth protection and do not care about making huge returns on their investments and would rather invest in low-risk entities. Some families have more specific needs such as they want to generate enough income through their investments to pay for all of their kids’ tuitions through graduate school. This type of investment need would require more emphasis on high reward investments with strong track records. It is a more risky investment but the only way to fulfill the families needs. Last summer, I saw the importance of this collaboration. The team holds weekly Investor Meetings where they discuss the investments they are interested in and how it appeals to the needs of the families they manage. Other members of the firm can then look at the investment and decide if it also meets their families’ needs, collaboratively discuss how this investment fits in each portfolio, and then work together to perform a rigorous due diligence process.  Then COVID hit, and I think a major part of that collaborative spirit was left at the office. While they still have weekly Investor Meetings, I believe working from home has caused some of the team members to shift the collaboration aspect to the families they manage and away from their co-workers. I was doing some initial research on an investment for one of the members of the team and during the week I had a meeting with another member of the firm. I was telling him about the investment I had been researching and he had never heard of it before. While this new type of collaboration is not a necessarily bad thing as there whole business depends on their families being happy. More collaboration with the families sufficiently works towards this goal. However, I believe they need to remember why they started this collection of family offices. In order to utilize the minds of other intelligent and driven people in order to provide the most possible value for their families. I believe this is achieved through constant and extensive collaboration.