Best Practices

An experienced family-business advisor, Francine Carlin utilizes proven practices to support you in achieving family and business harmony::

Communication and Conflict Management

Having respectful conversations, appropriately expressing honest thoughts and feelings, being willing to receive and offer constructive feedback, and providing timely information, are among the key components of effective communication.

Through pro-active dialogue and group meeting facilitation we help business-family members identify the barriers to effective family-business communication, address the source of family-business conflict and recommend realistic tools and structures for sustaining effective communication and minimizing conflict.

Succession Readiness

Business and ownership transition planning is the foundation of a successful family-business succession process. For succession is just that, a process, a journey, a strategic decision made by enterprising business families who want to ensure the on-going viability of the business, and to sustain a harmonious family community.

Whether it be decisions related to successor grooming, addressing retirement; protecting family wealth or formulating a fair ownership agreement, we guide you through these transitions by recommending timelines, structures, and consultation that support the particular decision-making needs of your family-business succession journey.

Governance and Policy Development

Effective governance is the cornerstone of family-business decision-making accountability and sustainability. Structures such as a Family-Business Council, Shareholder Board, Family Employee Forum, Next Generation Assembly and Independent Advisory Council can serve as safe environments for pro-active, on-going dialogue, feedback, decision-making and harmonious business-family relationship building.

Through these governance structures family members work together to formulate policies that will guide the family’s relationship to the business and to each other, such as: family employment, conflict management, decision-making, code of conduct, ownership rights and responsibilities, financial accountability, family goals for the business and more.

Serving as facilitators, guides and advisors we support you through the stages of developing and sustaining these structures so that they continue to add value.

Strategic Business Planning

By integrating years of proven business experience with solid knowledge about the workings of the family-business system, we facilitate a family-business strategic planning process that aligns your near and long-term business strategy with business-family goals.

We conduct a ‘size-up’ of your business, jointly determine your strategic platform, develop a business and operational plan and align these findings and recommendations with the family’s shared goals and expectations for the business.

Next Generation Leadership

The future of the family enterprise most often rests on the quality of management skills and leadership competencies of those family members who have chosen or are being groomed to be lead the family and the business into the next generation.

As you know a family enterprise has leadership challenges that go beyond the requirements of other business organizations – additionally this includes the need to balance sensitive family needs with business goals and insuring that the generational business transition is seamless for stakeholders, industry sectors, customers, and employees.

With extensive experience in leadership assessment and leadership coaching, we help future leaders perfect their management skills: by providing for learning to do things right (time, tasks, projects, people) and to strengthen their leadership competencies: by providing learning to do the right things (direction, alignment, meaning, change).

Family-Business Meetings and Retreats

Facilitation of family meetings and the development of meaningful and educational retreat programs are the hallmark of our work with business-families. Regular and facilitated meetings serve as settings for on-going, pro-active, productive, harmonious dialogue and are the foundation for the development of business-family governance structures, policy development, and collaborative cross generation relations.

We serve as independent facilitators, engaging family members and serving first and foremost in the best interests of the entire business-family.