Dominik v. Eynern is a Founding Member at Family Hippocampus. Experience in international investment banking, family office and social system dynamics.

Dominik holds a BSc in Economics and a MSc in finance. After working in the international investment banking industry and co-founding a family office, he researches family dynamics in the context of business families. Dominik comes from a business family, now in its 5th generation and combines his own experience in family dynamics with insights from complexity theory, cognitive neuroscience and behavioural economics.

We met with Dominik to find out more about his current project and learn about his views on the leadership.

Dominik, thank you for this opportunity to learn more about your project, can you please tell us about it?

We are a peer group network of family members that care deeply about family dynamics.

Our mission is to empower families and help them utilise the advantages of their family effect.

Why did you choose to set up Family Hippocampus?

Based on own experiences, I became passionate about studying family dynamics and applying various academic disciplines to understand risk and performance drivers of business family systems. But that wasn’t enough for me. I have no knowledge illusion and believe in the power of distributed knowledge and experience. Family Hippocampus is a network of business family members who are interested in contributing to the pool of knowledge and experience with regards to family dynamics and share the passion for helping families in their organisation and social system integration for the effective and intentional use of their family effect.

Family Business are the oldest form of business organization and they have a significant share of ca. 70% of world GDP. They tend to outperform and to be more resilient than non-family businesses due to governance advantages which impact business performance (family effect). With our experience, we help business families to preserve the advantages of the family effect, while reducing the negative aspects it can have.

If you could do something differently about learning skills in your earlier career what would it be?

I would be honing Emotional and Social Intelligence.

Where do you see yourself and your company in 10 years’ time?

Family Hippocampus as international network of members engaged in generative collaboration where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

And talking about success, how does it look like to you?

Creating an Impact!

How important it is for you to have a trusted business network and access to continues learning?

It is key for success on all levels. The illusion of knowledge is dangerous to my mind.

Why did you decide to join Leaders First?

The dedication of the LF team and the focus on business performance in conjunction with soft skills, which are much harder to acquire than the description suggests, attracted me to Leaders First.

What advice do you have for any young entrepreneur looking to start their own business?

Develop and maintain psychological safety in your management team by social inclusion and by listening non-judgementally with compassion and empathy. This way you get the best of everyone and create a working environment for generative collaboration. Once you start it, it will have ripple effects and create a culture for productivity and general well-being at work, even during tough times. The positive relational feed-back loops will energise you to power through.

Please share with us what are your hobbies outside of work?

What advice do you have for any young entrepreneur looking to start their own business?

Thank you Dominik, it’s been a pleasure, and we hope to see you at our next educational and networking events where you are a regular speaker!