Family Business Strategies
With seemingly opposing forces of love and business, family businesses are perhaps the most complex to lead well.
When everything’s on track, they can be unstoppable, with team members feeling a sense of devotion and ownership simply not seen in mainstream business. If things get turbulent, those same feelings can put everything at risk. Hard-headed business decisions or resolving disputes can feel almost impossible when they involve loved ones, passionately held beliefs, and your family legacy.
Rosemarie is an expert in family businesses, including those involving primary industries. Using family business global best practice, she’ll help you navigate the needs of your business, your family members, and the family as a whole. This mix of head and heart is the key to a family business and a family, that survives and thrives through the generations.
Make your family business, and your family, the best it can be. Talk to Rosemarie today about what your family and business needs to succeed.
Succession Planning
While things are going well and you’re focussed on growing your family business, it can often feel difficult to consider what will happen when you’re ready to step back. Your succession may involve handing the reins over to the next generation or preparing your business for sale. Either way, planning for your succession early is incredibly difficult. Ideally you’ll begin this process just after you’ve started your business, but at least five years before you plan to take a step back.
This is even more important for a family business. It allows your family (including your existing business leaders) time to get used to the idea, and gives the successor a chance to prepare – both emotionally and practically – for the new role.
Succession is a natural and inevitable part of every family and business lifecycle, but can be one of the biggest sources of tension. Rosemarie’s expertise in family businesses can help you plan for and manage both the practical and emotional sides of succession planning. She’ll help you and your family members agree on objectives, set major tasks, allocate resources, and define milestones and timeframes. While this can look like an unpleasant must-do process, it can often be the catalyst for renewal and positive change, in both your business and family.
Rosemarie works with lawyers, accountants, finance experts and financial advisors to manage the many technical issues – either your existing advisors, or from Rosemarie’s network of trusted professionals.
Start your succession planning sooner rather than later. Call Rosemarie for expert help now.
Family Business Strategies
A strong business and a happy family – that’s the goal. Achieving that is very possible, but it takes work, honesty and dedication. Family business best practise looks at practical business concerns in the context of your family dynamic:
Family legacy
Most family business owners hope their descendants will be good people – not just wealthy ones. Your family’s legacy – the people, the business, all its tangible and intangible assets, plus the ongoing care for your descendants happiness – is the key to a successful, multi-generational business. It must begin with gaining family alignment and then continuing the process of stewardship into the future.
Family alignment
When your family dynamic is misaligned, nothing goes well in your business or private life. Everything you do seems to make things worse, and eventually you stop trying.
For a successful family business, you must first have a successful family dynamic. This doesn’t mean everyone has to get along all the time – it simply means people must be pulling in the same direction. With a series of constructive discussions, Rosemarie will help family members commit to a way forward – a plan – that considers everyone’s needs. The journey towards family alignment can be a long one, and involves education, communication and negotiation, building trust, teamwork, repairing relationships and sometimes therapy.
Family stewardship
Stewardship is about nurture and care for the long term. In essence, this is about turning your current, family-owned business into one that more consciously is lead as the caretaker, rather than the owner, for future generations.
This involves educating all stakeholders on a business’s must-haves, and establishing structures for the family and the business. Rosemarie also helps you put systems and processes in place so you have a strong foundation for growth, while helping you learn how to prevent and resolve conflict and have difficult conversations. You’ll have support to establish governance structures for the family and business, create high performance teams and culture, assign roles and responsibilities, and develop your leaders.
For a successful multi-generational family business, whatever that may morph into through the generations.. Talk to Rosemarie about these today.
