Family Meetings
Family meetings can be a daunting task to plan, to organize, and to run.
Family meetings can be a daunting task to plan, to organize, and to run.
Will your family members even understand why they are being asked to come? Will they take it seriously?
If you want to create a professional family meeting experience, the best recommendation that I can make is to bring in an outside professional to help you plan the meeting, organize the invitations, and facilitate things at the meeting itself.
Did you ever notice how everyone behaves a bit better when there is someone from outside the family around? A family meeting is no different.
Using an independent, non-family facilitator will add so much to your family meeting. This is not the kind of meeting that you have very often, so you want to make sure everything goes right, to make the experience valuable for everyone.
These kinds of meetings are wonderful when done right, and if you understand how important they can be, you will want to make sure that everyone actually looks forward to attending future events too.
Some people work their butt off for their whole life trying to build a business for their family. They often dream about how great it will be for the family to work together with a common purpose. But the dream doesn’t always work out the way they imagined, because it is a LOT more complex than they ever imagined.
It isn’t usually the business part that trips them up, more often it is the family part. The roadblocks usually show up when it comes time to truly transition the business to the next generation, and this is where Steve comes in. He specializes in helping families turn their dream into a workable plan, using a step-by-step method to get everyone on the same page.
Once the family has completed his Business Family Continuity BluePrint, all family members will see the family’s goals, and they will understand their roles. Steve then helps them all figure out how they can move forward, working together.
Steve is a proud FEA Designate (IFEA) and holds ACBFA and ACFWA certifications (FFI), in addition to having an MBA (UWO-Ivey) He is also a CFA charterholder (CFA Institute), and the author of Shift your Family Business (Friesen Press, 2014)