Services
Consulting to Family Enterprises
For 35 years, as an organizational consultant and family therapist, I have helped families who own a family business, or who share family investments, to manage the personal and organizational issues that lead to successful and fulfilling transfer of businesses, wealth, values, commitments and legacies between generations.
I work at the intersection of family relationships, business, financial and philanthropic enterprises, and personal development. My goal is to help families develop…
- Positive and supportive relationships
- Clear agreements and understandings about the future
- Effective and profitable businesses and enterprises
- Clarity of roles and relationships in management and governance
- New leadership and the passing of responsibility, ownership and capability
- Individual development of responsibility, competence and fulfillment
I believe these are largely
human, not financial or legal challenges. They are best addressed by creating clear agreements, effective structures and clear communication and collaboration within a family, and with its employees and other stakeholders.
The Four Dimensions of Family Business Consulting
My professional consulting takes place in the four key dimensions of family business and wealth management success:
The challenges facing families who share a business or financial inter-relationship are not confined to any one dimension, but span all four. I help families to address issues and achieve results in all these areas.
My work with families spans these four dimensions:
Convening Family Learning Sessions
As they deal with complex issues of family wealth, philanthropy, inheritance and succession, many families want to begin to talk about these issues as a family. They want to hold a family meeting or workshop, and they want an outside person who can help them hold a conversation in an environment that is safe, open, honest and does not dissolve into destructive conflict. Other families want to help in convening the board or family team to oversee and manage their various family enterprises.
I help families design and hold such meetings, by helping them to plan, design an agenda, create a safe and productive environment, focus on the issues that are most important to them, and follow them up with productive action. My special focus is to help the family understand the complex and multiple roles family members have together, and to help them create effective working relations and agreements. After the meeting, the family may decide to go further in working together to create effective family teamwork to tackle complex challenges across generations.
