Family talent development & deployment
Preparing future generations as stewards of the legacy
The future of a family’s collective wealth and family harmony depend on several fundamental building blocks – the development and growth of family members, how they behave together and what roles they might play in the business and governance.
We help clients develop a vision and a strategy for family talent. Overarching questions include “What do we want to achieve?” And “How are we going to allocate resources to achieve this?”
Defining key roles
We start by helping you define what roles you want family to play in your jointly owned enterprise. We consider what you want them to bring to the table. We consider what your aspirations are for how the family will behave as co-owners.
This foundational work sets the purpose for everything that follows as we help you develop strategies for your family’s talent and how to deploy that talent.
Talent strategies that span generations
The solution must work for both the current and future generations. We view this as a critical topic for the Owners’ Board, with meaningful involvement from the Next Generation.
We typically set up a working group with balanced representation and clear objectives, scope, deliverables, and timelines. This group reports directly back to the Owners’ Board.
Benchmarks are crucial. No families are the same, but there are some lessons to be learnt by looking at different families’ employment philosophies and their execution – and how they impact the family business and family unity over long periods.
Developing the family talent strategy
A Family Employment Policy is the starting point for many business-owning families. This strategy lays out the objectives for family employment, how family members can enter the business, how they progress and how to address concerns linked to poor performance or values breaches.
These initial questions often lead to broader debates around the role of family talent. For example:
Should the family support and accelerate the development path of those with an aspiration to future leadership roles in the business, (whether working in the businesses or outside)? If so, how?
If family members bring that ‘special something’ that only family can bring to the culture of the firm, how can we define this, identify it and support its development?
Not all family will be in the business; how do we ensure that the family will remain a cohesive group? A united family?
How should the family think about the development of all family members – even those who do not aspire to being in the business or don’t meet the criteria for entry?
How do we support and develop family members to become good board members? How do we do this when they are entering a board a couple of decades younger than a typical NED?
As families and businesses grow, a family member may no longer be the most appropriate person to be in a specific role they have occupied for a long time (and which, in part, defines them). How do you try to avoid these situations? And how do you deal with them when they arise?
Governance structures for family talent
Creating transparent structures, processes & criteria
When you are making decisions about which family members’ structure, process and criteria are important.
We start by helping you to layout guidelines and policies for each:
Criteria: What are the demands of the role? How can we codify them? How should we balance off soft and hard skills, and how can we measure that?
Process: What needs to happen, in what order, over what time period?
Structure: Who is involved? Who decides? Who communicates?
Having agreed-upon, transparent decision-making processes is key to maintaining fairness, unity and cohesion. We help you clearly communicate what the expectations on family members in the business are. We support you both in the design phase and its execution.
Learning & enablement
We build learning into our approach to working with you. Families are guided to explore the right questions as owners, align around key priorities, and cascade a shared mandate across generations.
Who we are
Independent strategic advisors to Owners
Acanthite Partners is an independent, specialist advisory firm dedicated to addressing the unique situations faced by family-owned groups. Our mission is to help families make the right decisions for their business and investments and protect their legacies for future generations.
We create lasting solutions, enabled by decades of experience and an intimate understanding of family dynamics.
CLIENT STORY
Helping a family owner make the most of their own talent
A family in transition from fourth to fifth generation were seeking support in unlocking the potential of their own people. There was a sense that there were many capable next generation family members, but none were interested in helping the family business – and few had the knowledge and skills required to do so.
The situation stemmed from a decision taken by the previous generation to heavily restrict the opportunities for family members to work in operational roles. Over the course of a generation, the family had convinced its younger members to progress their careers elsewhere, leaving the impression that there was no pathway back to the family business.
With a critical leadership transition on the horizon, the family recognised the need for a new approach to re-engage the next generation and secure the long-term continuity of the business.