June 2016

Cambridge

This month I was invited to run a workshop for the East Anglian IFB Chapter focused on developing responsible owners in your family business.

During this interactive afternoon, we spent time exploring what the term ‘responsible ownership’ means to different families and how to start to build a ‘responsible ownership’ framework to support the individual needs of your family business and next generation.

As each family’s interpretation of ‘responsible ownership’ was slightly different, everyone agreed that there is no ‘one size fits all’ framework for developing the next generation and, hence, the importance of each family working things out for themselves.  Some of the ideas included:

• being well informed and educated
• having well developed and understood governance, including a clear vision and roles
• being a holder of values through your behaviour, communicating well and building trust with all stakeholders
• having the ability to adapt and embrace change.

Family members are not born just knowing how to be an owner.  What does a responsible owner look like to you? How will you start to prepare your next generation?