Family Business Best Practices & Insights

Navigating Family Dynamics in Business: Brothers, Allies, or Monsters?

Business Families Every family business has a business family sitting behind it, BUT: family business makes no sense – because what makes for a great business generally conflicts with what makes families happy. This fundamental dichotomy can produce all-conquering family teams, conflict-infused relationships, and everything in-between. Business Family relationship dynamics can get very muddy, because […]

My Family Business: Is Dad a Monster?

Every family business has a business family sitting behind it, BUT: family business makes no sense – because what makes for a great business generally conflicts with what makes families happy. This fundamental dichotomy can produce an all-conquering family team, conflict-infused relationships, or something in-between. Families get very confused – families are supposed to be […]

My Family Business: is Mum a Mum, Matriarch, or Monster?

Every family business has a business family sitting behind it, and because family business makes no sense each and every one of them is a vibrant and complicated mix of colliding commercial, financial, relational, and emotional systems. Sometimes this results in an all-conquering family team, sometimes in a conflict-infused misery and, at all times: an […]

Significant Advice for Significant Clients

“There are certain things that are fundamental to human fulfillment. The essence of these needs is captured in the phrase;to live, to love, to learn, to leave a legacy.The need to live is our physical need for such things as food, clothing, shelter, economical well-being, health. The need to love is our social need to […]

Why Business Families, and Family Businesses, need Boards

Background Family Businesses are the engine room of the Australian economy. They employ over 50% of the Australian workforce and generate over 50% of GDP. Family Business is not small business, although many Family Businesses are small. They also comprise approximately 100 of the 500 largest companies in Australia. Many are large corporations. However, and […]

Family Business Conflict Video No 12: Emotional Resilience 1 – Broken Wing Syndrome. By Jon Kenfield

Common Causes of Family Conflict & How to Deal with Them. Video 12. Emotional Resilience and “broken wing” syndrome – Parents & Family. Emotional Resilience = coping with stress and minimising anxiety. Epidemic. Broken Wing Syndrome = parent(s) protecting weaker children. Contributed to by genetics, home, school & social evironments, birth order, parenting skills, domineering […]

Strategy Plan – Aligning the Team Around Big Picture Visions for the Future

Strategy refers to big picture objectives and desired directions of travel for a family, business or organisation. “Strategy is for generals, organising an army for battle”. Contrast this with “Tactics” which are for captains, “leading troops into battle”. Strategy is cerebral (thinking), tactics are operational (doing). Strategy Plans provide the framework for the whole planning […]

Family Structures – Professionalising Business Families

Best Practice recommends creating family structures that are appropriate to the style, needs and resources of each individual family. The bodies that make up the family structure provide leadership and strategic decision-making on issues that affect the family, as a family. We use separate structures in the family and in the business to raise a […]

Family Systems – A Systems Approach to Understanding How Families Work

A “system” describes any collection of component parts that inter-connect and inter-act. The traditional 3 Circle Model of Family Business describes family business systems, and locates each participant’s place in it, in a formal, legal sense. This neat way of classifying things, which works well for lawyers and accountants, is subject to the following observations: […]

Family Plan – The Plan for the Family

“When you fail to plan you are planning to fail” Benjamin Franklin. Plan: a set of decisions about things to be done in the future to achieve an identified goal. Family Plan: what the family wants to achieve for its members, and for the family as a whole, over at least the next 25 years. […]

Family Business Best Practice and the Best Practice Process Model

One of the primary goals of any business family is to achieve long term peace and prosperity – for the family and the business. This requires excellence, or the application of “best practice”, in both the family and the business. But, there’s a problem: almost everything that makes a family successful conflicts with business success […]

Family Alignment – Building Consensus to Enjoy a Shared Future

In some ways, obtaining family alignment is like pulling teeth …. into alignment. It takes time, effort, due process and some (or lots) of pain. But the end result makes everything worthwhile – all the “bits” look better, and work better, over the long term. Family alignment should be a primary goal for any family […]

Advisory Boards – The “Great Leap Forward” for Business Families

Establishing an Advisory Board (or “Advisory Committee”) is one of the easiest, quickest, cheapest and most effective measures any family business can take to improve the quality of its thinking, planning, problem solving and general decision-making. The concept is simple: an Advisory Board is an identifiable body, established by a family to help it make […]

Business Family Alignment – the Family Plan

Throughout the Western world, less than 5% of all family businesses survive the third generation curse: “from shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations”. The 5% that do make it through often proceed for many generations – in clear evidence that they’ve worked out and applied something really important to their family about sustainability […]

Difficult Family Conversations – 10 Key Issues

Security: physical, emotional and financial, sit at the top of Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs. Situations that challenge your sense of personal security are therefore likely to create feelings of insecurity and discomfort, which is why many of us are reluctant to initiate conversations likely to start, or to become, difficult. The expectation that a […]

Successful Successions in Family Business

Business Succession involves the transfer of Ownership, Leadership, Management and (sometimes) Employment, from one generation to another. The succeeding generation can be within the family, or not. The objective is to transition the business from one generation to the next, so it can survive and be renewed. Family Succession is another thing entirely, although the […]

Family Conflict and Mediation – looking for “Uncle Bob”

Conflict (noun) = a form of protracted discord between individuals or groups. Conflict (verb) = to clash emotionally, intellectually, materially or physically. Conflict is a form of energy that can be focussed, or unfocussed, on its inbound and outbound course. Active families constantly generate relationship conflict through their interactions. Active businesses constantly engage in competitive […]

Best Practice in Family Business

“Best practice is a technique or methodology proven by experience and research to lead reliably to an optimal result”. So, if we implement and support Best Practice in our family business we should enjoy success – whatever that means for our business family and for our family’s business. In an “ordinary” business the key measures […]

Difficult Older People & Behaviour Change

We’re seeing increasing numbers of older business owners struggling with the fundamental concept (let alone the required actions!) of family and business succession, and with the challenges of “refiring, not retiring” – as they contemplate living for many years after “finishing” their main work. That work has often been at the centre of their lives, […]

Do “fossilised” owner/parents threaten the survival of their own family businesses?

An increasing number of family business owners are now past their best decision-making days. With many over 70 years of age they are fossilising on the job, risking the survival of their businesses and families, and the jobs and families of the employees who depend on them. This is not a criticism of what they’ve […]

Governance and the Role of Non-Executive Director

Essentially the non-executive director’s role is to provide a creative contribution to the board by providing objective criticism. they: “should bring an independent judgement to bear on issues of strategy, performance and resources including key appointments and standards of conduct.” There is no legal distinction between executive and non- executive directors. As a consequence, non-executive […]

Governance Functions and Boards for Family Businesses

Governance Corporate governance refers to the structures, strategies, principles, policies and processes by which businesses, and the senior executives thereof are led, managed, supervised, measured and controlled. Governance style defines the attitude, culture and integrity of an organisation. It therefore forms a major component of risk management. In many family business environments, executives involved in […]

Family Business Best Practice – A Magic Toolbox?

What is Family Business “Best Practice”? One of the primary goals of any family business adviser is to increase the effectiveness and success of Australian families in business – helping them attain greater peace and prosperity. Such an outcome suggests that a family has achieved a level of excellence, or “best practice”, but here’s the […]

The Family Business “Magic Pudding”

How to achieve peace and prosperity in your family business … in your lifetime! Situation: The Family-in-Business – an energy-laden and explosive mix of passion and potential, capable of doing both wonderful things and woeful things. Challenges: Every Family-in-Business faces some or all of the following challenges: Balance – individual, family and business needs and […]

12 Simple Secrets of Family-in-Business Success

When we look at family businesses around the world that have proactively maintained and enhanced their collective business interests over many generations, we find that they have usually employed a number of consistent strategies. I call these their “12 simple secrets for success”. Note that these measures apply to families that have worked hard to […]

9 Golden Rules for Preventing Conflict in a Family Business

Conflict = Family Tragedy Newspapers and magazines revel in a constant diet of spectacular family disasters. The wealthier the family, and/or the greater their celebrity status, the better. Neither the riches of Croesus, nor the paid wisdom of their enormously expensive advisers, seem able to stop these families from spiralling towards meltdown. Trashing the family’s […]

7 Reasons why every Business Family needs a Family Office

Leading a successful business is hard; keeping a family happy is harder; doing both at the same time is a challenge fit for heroes, especially when several generations are involved. A modern Family Office is a facility, or collection of resources, that highly pro-active families establish to directly support their members, and to indirectly support […]

The 7 Key Elements of Organisational Success

Organisations that achieve long term, sustainable success invariably have: “a harmonious workplace AND a strong organisation.” Their high trust cultures encourage everyone to help everyone to do a great job – so the organisation’s goals are consistently achieved. Such cultures are the holy grails of every genuine leader and, just like the grail legend, the […]

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