MANILA, Philippines — Family governance invites every member of the family to think beyond the walls of the family home. In much the same way as it can have a huge, beneficial influence across many generations, i.e. across time – good family governance can also spread its positive influence across space, i.e., into various sectors of society, and indeed into society itself.

This consideration should invite every member of the family engaged in the undertaking of observing good family governance to let their thoughts spread outward. The good achievements that they are able to post, in part through a dogged pursuit of the strategic priorities and objectives in the family road map and through the various elements in the family performance board, can be a feather on their caps; but they also have a leavening effect upon the broader community, and indeed on society as a whole.

Just consider the power of example that a well-governed family provides. One happy family, aiming to strike a proper balance between its many competing priorities, and delivering solid performance across its own performance board can provide an inspiration to many others in the community. Such exemplary benefit for many other families cannot and should not be under-rated.

Then, there is the positive impact the individual members of a well-governed family can have on their peers and friends. Since they are conscious of targets they must try to meet in their performance board, and since they can be seen as trying hard to live up to the family’s core values, these individual family members can help raise the cultural and professional temperature in their respective social circles and through their social network.

Furthermore, because of their strong impetus to deliver performance through their studies and in their work, they can add support and provide further strength to the more progressive elements in the community. By being good students, and later on by working honestly, competently and well, these family members become part of the force for progressive change in society.

There are other more direct ways by which members of a well-governed family can be as daring as to think that they can help make the world a better place. As a family, it can reach out to other families through mutual sharing of good experiences in facing up to the manifold challenges of family governance. Along with other families, they can form a strong advocacy for the strength, unity, and good governance of the family in society. Through such an advocacy, the family shines through as the basic social unit that helps shape and determine the social fabric. For instance, strong, happy and progressive families are the bedrock for any strong, happy, and progressive society.

It is for this reason that every family in its road map includes strategic priorities or objectives directly related to the social impact the family can have. Each family has to think through very carefully just what difference it can make in trying to create and shape a world that is good and great to live in; and it considers all the other strategic priorities and objectives in the family road map as contributory to, and as drivers of, those priorities and objectives with direct relevance on the social impact the family can have on society.

Again, this consideration of social impact broadens the horizons of every member of the family. No one can consider the demands of good family governance as of narrow significance limited to the four walls of the family home. Instead, everyone in the family should always think that whatever happens within those four walls would reverberate in terms of influence and impact across the community and society, far beyond those walls.