Jeff Faulkner

Who Should Be Invited to a Family Meeting?
November 1, 2007

Who should you include in the family meetings? My standard, ambiguous answer is, “it depends.” It depends on things such as what stage your family business is in and how well your family gets along. 

First let’s address the stage of your family business.

• If you are a founding owner:

Family meetings should include your immediate family, providing a forum for your children to learn about the business and the opportunities for their future careers. Tragically, we have found that many next generation family members opt against the family business without a thorough understanding of what they’re choosing against. All they have seen is the stress and pressures of the business that their parents experienced with little to no exposure to all the good that the family business offers. 

•  If you’re at the sibling partnership stage:

We highly encourage having all 2nd generation family members, including the in-laws. There may be items of discussion that would require a meeting without them, but for the most part they should be included. The reasons are simple – it keeps in-laws from becoming out-laws; and because in the relatively near future it will be their children who are becoming involved in the business.

•  If your business is in the third generation or beyond:

Consider including all cousins, nieces, nephews and in-laws, whether they are active or not. Typically, when a business reaches this size, the lives of all family members are impacted by the business whether they are involved in it or not.

Depending on the agenda you may at different times invite your family’s advisors or key executives to contribute to the family’s understanding of the family business environment. Now, with that being said, allow me to state that these are not hard and fast rules. A little bit of common sense goes a long way. 

Now, how well does your family gets along? I’ve worked with some families that didn’t exactly have pleasant Thanksgiving dinners together; it was more like negotiating the Cold War. If this is your family, you must give strong consideration to resolving age-old family conflict before inviting them to a family meeting, especially if business issues are going to be brought up. 

For example, one family I worked with had a business being run by a sister, with two brothers who maintained offices, but had no idea what was going on in the business.    However, they both owned a third of the business and they loved to provide input. Because of the circumstances, we opted to not include them in a family meeting atmosphere because it did more damage to the business and family relationships than good.

Obviously, the earlier you begin family meetings the better. Maybe you could avoid some of the necessity to preclude certain family members. Then again, it depends.

Posted by Jeff Faulkner on November 1, 2007 | Comments (0)