|
A world recognized leader in the field of family business consulting,
Dennis has helped families all over the world manage the personal and
organizational issues that lead to successful and fulfilling transfer
of businesses, wealth, values, commitments and legacies between generations.
He believes that these are largely human, not financial or legal, challenges.
They are best addressed by creating clear agreements, effective structures
and clear communication within a family, and with its employees and other
stakeholders. He strives to work with a family to find their own individual
solution to their unique challenges.
As both an organization consultant and clinical psychologist, Dennis works
with the business and personal aspects of family business and wealth:
- Working with family businesses and family offices, he helps create
effective boards, management teams, overcome conflict and set strategic
direction so that the family ventures can thrive.
- On a personal level, he works with families to heal past hurts,
overcome communication difficulties, and find common ground to support
each individual to pursue their passion.
Dennis is Professor of Organizational Systems at Saybrook Graduate School
in San Francisco, where he created their Organizational Systems doctoral
program. He received his B.A. in Philosophy, M.A. in Management, and Ph.D.
in Sociology, all from Yale University. He is a licensed psychologist.
He is a professional member of the Academy of Management, NTL Institute,
and the Society for Organizational Learning.
He has been honored this year by the Family Firm Institute, the leading
professional organization in this field, with their Richard Beckhard Award
for contribution to practice. He recently completed service on their Board
of Directors, and has presented his work at many of their annual conferences.
He has been a regular columnist to the magazine Families in Business since
it began, and has contributed several family profiles. He is co-author of
two of the foundational works about family business, Working With the Ones
You Love: Building a Successful Family Business; and Working With Family
Businesses: A Guide for Professional Advisors, as well as co-designer of
the Aspen Family Wealth Inventory. He was awarded the Editor's Choice Award
in 2005 for his article on family business strategic planning for the Journal
of Financial Planning. He has written several cover stories for Worth Magazine.
He recently conducted a research project on best practices for family wealth
management for JP Morgan Private Bank, and he is beginning a study of women and wealth.
In 1984 he founded ChangeworksGlobal, a consulting firm in San Francisco, where he worked
with organizations and family businesses about long-term change to build competitive
advantage by unleashing the power of their employees. At Changeworks, he create many
organizational learning programs, to help leaders to engage their teams and move the
organization in new directions, in times of great transition, including Leading Change,
and Managing Change. His video, Managing People through Change, was voted one of the
Best Products of 1991 by the magazine Human Resource Executive. His work has been featured
in Inc. Magazine, Entrepreneur, Nation's Business, Time, The Wall Street Journal, and he
has been profiled in People Magazine.
He has written 20 books, including Getting Your Organization to Change, Rekindling Commitment,
Take This Work and Love It, Managing Change at Work, Empowerment, Self-Renewal: High Performance
in a High Stress World, and Organizational Vision, Values and Mission, and more than 100 management
articles. This year, he co-authored Beyond the Term Sheet, a study of governance in venture capital
start-up firms, of which portions appeared in several journals and in an article in the Wall Street
Journal, and which is part of corporate governance courses at many business schools including Harvard
and Tuck. He is active in non-profit governance, serving on the boards of the World Business Academy,
Saybrook Graduate School, and the Center for Mind-Body Medicine.
|
Services
