one of the elements of understanding a group any group concerns the the membership of that group how is membership determined in our case how do you become an employee of the company how do you become an owner or what defines a family member the intent of the model was to first of all categorize members of the system in different parts of the three circles you could be a family only member of the system you could be a family owner you could be a family employee you could be a non family owner seven different sectors people fit into one of those one of the principles in my view of effective groups highly effective groups is that there is a strong commitment by the members to the group and yet membership is voluntary this is easiest to understand of course inside a business organization you want the employees to be very committed to the company but employment in the company is not a permanent Association you're not necessarily an employee for life you're an employee for as long as you're committed and you're adding value in ownership we start to question whether somebody should be forced to be an owner of a family company or whether ownership itself owning shares in a company should also be voluntary and we can start to see the vollentine as' of voluntary membership in the ownership group you can't be disruptively joining and leaving an ownership group but under regulated condition we can understand that voluntary membership and the ability to get rid of some owners or to invite in new owners is a healthy condition in an ownership group but what about the family does this voluntary principle apply also to families it's natural to think of families as permanent groups once you're born into a family you're in the group for the rest of your life we have become more accustomed more comfortable understanding that marrying into a group does not imply permanent membership in the group but being born into or even adopted into a family still implies permanence and yet we know that family groups over time can become disunited and fractured in a way so that a family a single family identity no longer holds for the group and it's healthier in a number of ways to divide the family and hence the ownership group into different subgroups and allow them to continue with more a more united base and more independent decision-making than trying to keep them together the same principle is true about any individual inside a family Western society especially has over the centuries come to identify family groups as largely blood related organizations while blood is a an important factor defining who is in or who is out of a family it's only one of three factors that I think are key to thinking about who's inside the family and I use blood sweat and tears as my helpful benchmarking to understand is somebody really a member of the family or not because do they have our blood doesn't account for the in-laws the spouses who join families even if we include the in-laws in that group we have to think about do people are people aligned with us are they working for the same things that's the sweat and do they celebrate and mourn with us as well that's the tears and if we had a a more comprehensive understanding of what builds an effective family group we would be able to think more broadly than just blood and also understand that families are more permanent than other groups that we join or in in our lives but they still can be in a very healthy way considered voluntary associations so that when a member of the family no longer fits he or she can leave and I would think if somebody else is some can be brought into a group maybe in a marriage relationship but I think in other ways as well they can be considered part of our family because they may not have our blood but they do have our goals and our our values and share our ups and downs