Family Business

Atlantic Consultants will help your family business:

• Improve family business relationships and communications
• Increase sibling cooperation and decrease sibling rivalry
• Increase family teamwork & collaboration
• Decrease inter-family conflict
• Focus on maximizing the strengths and opportunities to move your company from “Good to Great”

We can do the following:

• Facilitate Succession Planning
  • Select and develop successors
  • Coach founders and successors through the succession process
  • Develop leaders
• Facilitate family business Strategic Planning
  • Focus firm on vision, mission, values and goals
  • Develop family business strategy
• Facilitate family business meetings
• Facilitate and coach sibling and cousin consortium teams
• Define clear job roles and professional expectations for family members
• Facilitate decisions on wealth and philanthropy

Family Businesses are unique enterprises. While more than 93% of businesses are family owned. Only 30% of family businesses survive to the second generation and 10% to the third.

The strength of family businesses are that the usually unique cultures that tend to attract loyal employees and customers. They create a family connection to both that keep both internal and external customers a long time. Much of the time they tend to be boot strap companies that enjoy little debt.

While many businesses have trouble with communication, conflict management, clarity of roles and responsibilities, what makes family firms more challenging is the overlay of family dynamics in the business.

Issues of sibling rivalry, accountability, entitlement, fairness, roles, rules, responsibilities, control, circular communication and choosing a successor loom at large. This is where Atlantic Consultants can help. Our unique background in both psychology, management and family business as well as our experience as a family firm enable us to address the unique challenges of family businesses. Whether it is a small 25 person firm or a global company with thousands of employees on several continents, Atlantic Consultants can help.

Our System

1. Assessment
   1. What is working; What is not
   2. Who is effective; Who is not
   3. Where are the conflicts and confusions
2. Planning: Family Business Retreats
   1. Strategic Planning Retreats
   2. Succession Planning Retreats
   3. Team Building Retreats
3. Intervention: Options include:
   1. Retreat
   2. Communication & Management Training
   3. Coaching
   4. Professional Development
4. Reassessment:
   1. What has improved; What can improve

Family Business Articles

• Succession in Family Firms: Opportunities and Challenges (January 2004 – Success Strategies)
• Succession Planning in the Family-Owned or Closely Held Business (February 2003 – Success Strategies)
• Seven Pillars or Pitfalls of Family Business (December 2003 – Success Strategies)

Succession Planning

Recommended Reading

1. Generation to Generation: Life Cycles of the Family Business by Kelen E. Gersick, et al
2. Keep the Family Baggage Out of the Family Business: Avoiding the Seven Deadly Sins that Destroy Family Businesses by Quentin J. Fleming
3. Strategic Planning for the Family Business: Parallel Planning to Unify the Family and Business by Randel S. Carlock and John L. Ward
4. Keeping the Family Business Healthy: How to Plan for Continuing Growth, Profitability, and Family Leadership by John L. Ward
5. Wars of Succession: The Blessings, Curses and Lessons That Family-Owned Firms Offer Anyone in Business by Roger Fritz

Workshops & Presentations for Your Family-Owned Business

• Managing Change and Transitions
• Using Values and Vision to Forward the Business
• Leadership Development
• Strategic Planning and Succession Planning
• Keeping Employees in a Booming Economy
• The Role of Coaching and Mentoring in Leadership Development
• Communication Challenges in Business
• Partnerships and Co-Leadership
• Relationship Management in Partnership Businesses
• Managing the Merger and Creating a We Culture
• Ways to Run More Effective Business Meetings
• Creating Team Culture in Your Business
• Life Balance—Is Your Business the Only Flame in Your Life?
• Making Your Company a Learning Organization
• Managing Conflicts in Business
• Leaving a Legacy—Beyond the Business
• Running Effective Meetings
• How to Reward Employees and Keep Them Productive
• Team Building
• Management Skills for the New Manager
• Creating and Managing Change
• Implementing the Strategic Plan
• Coaching Communication and People Skills
• Managing Relationships
• Communication Challenges
• From Entrepreneur to CEO—Leading vs. Doing
• What's Next? Exit Strategies and Next Stage Possibilities
• Succession Planning—Key to Growing Your Business to the Next Stage