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Writing on governance, for people who have to decide.

Insights

We publish the method in full, and it is useful whether or not you ever speak to us.

No market commentary. No client stories. No statistic we cannot attribute.

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Why business-owning families govern better

Families that still own an operating company put formal governance in place more often than families that do not. The company is what taught them, and the lesson is available without one.

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The seventy percent statistic is not evidence

Where the figure came from, what it actually counted, and the three questions that would tell a family where it really stands.

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An investment policy statement is not governance

An IPS says what may be held. It does not say who may decide to hold it, on whose recommendation, or what happens when two owners disagree. Both documents are needed. Only one of them is governance.

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Eighty-six percent have no succession plan for the people who decide

The succession most families have thought about is the shares. The one J.P. Morgan found missing is the people who run the place, and it is the one that stops an office within a week.

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What a family council is for, and what it cannot do

Three bodies now sit around most family enterprises. Only one of them speaks for the family, and it is the one most often given a room, an agenda and no authority at all.

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The succession paradox: agreement is not a plan

Deloitte Private asked three hundred family businesses about chief executive succession. Eighty-five percent call planning for it critical. Twenty-three percent are implementing a plan. What sits between the two is governance.

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The Governance Maturity Curve

Five stages describing how much of an enterprise's governance would survive the absence of the person who built it, and how to tell honestly which one you are in.

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Succession is a governance problem before it is a tax problem

Ownership transfers on a date certain. The ability to govern does not transfer at all unless somebody built the architecture that carries it.

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Who decides what in a family office?

The decision rights matrix, what belongs in it, the four bodies authority usually sits with, and the test that reveals whether a family actually has one.

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What is family office governance?

A definition that can be acted on, the four things governance actually consists of, and the distinction between governance and the investment management it is constantly confused with.