Family Business General Interest Articles Archives - Page 2 of 3

Family Business Plans – The Plan for the Business

“When you don’t know where you’re going, any path will take you there”. Lewis Carroll (ish) Family Plans, and Family Business Plans, are short, medium and long range plans for: (a) the family (10 to 100 years) and (b) the family business (1 to 10 years). They should be developed independently – to emphasise and […]

Family Office – Agile Family Offices Build Family Success

Family Offices play an important role in both the daily operations, and in the future sustainability plans, of many individuals and business families. Traditional Family Office For hundreds of years traditional Family Offices have been used by ultra-wealthy family dynasties ($100M+) to help build, manage and preserve their wealth, and to protect the family’s reputation. […]

Family Meetings – A Critical Lubricant and Glue for Family Sustainability

Families that thrive over multiple generations almost invariably ascribe a large part of their success to their ability to have friendly and constructive family meetings. They frequently contrast the work they’ve put into being able to do this with efforts expended by other families that haven’t fared so well. Rather surprisingly, many business families don’t […]

Family Governance – The Family’s System of Rules for Good Behaviour

Business families, and families with wealth, eventually need to develop and apply some rules by which to operate, so everybody can get a fix and a reality check on their personal and collective expectations and obligations, as core guidelines to help avoid conflict. Governance is a system of processes that combine philosophy, practical intent, ethics, […]

Family Councils – Sophisticated Leadership for Family Groups

Every sentient organism needs some sort of control centre to direct and manage its functions and to help ensure its survival. The more complex the organism, the more capable (intelligent) the control centre needs to be. A business family is a complex sentient system, which makes it a very complicated organism. As such, it needs […]

Family Constitutions – Family Rules of Engagement

Family Constitutions support the workings of Family Councils and regulate relationships and interactions between individuals, the family and the business. They capture and define the values, beliefs and objectives of the family, as a family, and contain rules for the conduct of family members in relation to their dealings with the Family Business. A Family […]

Family Boards – Strategic Leadership, Governance, Supervision and Risk Management

A Company Board is a legally constituted Board of Directors under the Corporations Act 2001. Its role may be anything from: (a) being there because, at law, you have to have one in a company (compliance requirement), to: (b) being there to support and supervise business operations (governance). A Family Board is a term used […]

Arbitrator – Like having Solomon on Steroids for Commercial Disputes

Arbitration is an excellent private dispute resolution option for individuals and businesses in dispute. The parties agree to appoint an independent person – the Arbitrator (who should be an expert in the subject matter of the dispute) to make a binding decision on the issues in dispute. The Arbitrator gathers information, using documents and/or in […]

Alternative Dispute Resolution – The ADR Story

Alternative Dispute Resolution (“ADR”) describes any process used to settle or resolve disputes that is not court-based litigation (ie: it’s an “alternative”). Alternative Dispute Resolution has a long history however, ADR was not widely adopted in Australia until the early 1990s – when politicians and judges acknowledged that our court systems had become so slow, […]

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 […]