Creating the Trusted Team of Advisers for a Family Business
Published: 2018
Pages: 88
eBook: 9781787422223
This special report describes how family businesses can benefit from a high-performing, inter-disciplinary advisory team for trusted advice, with members sourced from different organisations, and who have demonstrably effective processes for looking after an entire family and their business interests.
In an era where every adviser is a specialist, it is necessary to explore an alternative to the individual trusted adviser. This special report describes how family businesses can benefit from a high-performing, inter-disciplinary advisory team for trusted advice, with members sourced from different organisations, and who have demonstrably effective processes for looking after an entire family and their business interests. Members of such a team are committed to helping the family achieve success in terms of both family and business life and, like a true team, this success is dependent on all team members.
High performance advisory teams are used in many areas of commerce, sport, science and the arts and this report demonstrates how the same can be true for advisers who serve family businesses, regardless of their specialism.
Table of Contents
| Front cover | i | |
|---|---|---|
| Title | 1 | |
| Copyright | 2 | |
| Table of contents | 3 | |
| Introduction | 7 | |
| We need to talk about specialists | 13 | |
| 1. The sedative effect of specialist advice | 14 | |
| 2. The ambidextrous, T-shaped gatekeeper | 19 | |
| 3. Moving forwards by looking backwards | 20 | |
| Do not trust best practice | 23 | |
| 1. What is best, and worst? | 23 | |
| 2. The best practice fallacy | 25 | |
| 3. The risk of doing damage | 27 | |
| 4. Conventional wisdom | 28 | |
| 5. An alternative approach | 31 | |
| Soft skills are not enough | 33 | |
| 1. Emotional intelligence | 33 | |
| 2. Economic necessity | 35 | |
| 3. Competency and the effect of regulation | 36 | |
| 4. Trust in organisations | 39 | |
| 5. Marketing trust | 40 | |
| Who do you trust? | 43 | |
| 1. The in-group attitude | 43 | |
| 2. Limitations of the in-group attitude | 45 | |
| 3. The optimists | 46 | |
| 4. How attitudes affect relationships | 47 | |
| Trusting a shared purpose | 51 | |
| 1. The risk of assumptions | 51 | |
| 2. Working with a shared purpose | 54 | |
| 3. Who is the client? | 61 | |
| 4. What if there is no shared purpose? (The cult of continuity) | 65 | |
| Creating the trusted team | 69 | |
| 1. What type of team? | 70 | |
| 2. Creating an advisory team | 72 | |
| 3. The shared purpose | 73 | |
| 4. Appointment | 73 | |
| 5. Accountability | 78 | |
| 6. Reward | 80 | |
| 7. Leadership | 83 | |
| 8. Family advisers’ constitution | 83 | |
| 9. Do advisers want to work as a team? | 85 | |
| About the author | 88 | |
| Back cover | 90 |
Ken McCracken
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenmccracken62/
Ken McCracken is recognised as one of the leading family business consultants in Europe. His work focuses on helping family businesses and family offices to create the type of governance that will help them to achieve their version of success. He is also actively involved in advocacy to improve the overall awareness of the economic and social contribution made by enterprising families. He a fellow of the Family Firm Institute (FFI), the leading international organisation for family business professionals and academics, and is the author and teacher of the Advanced Certificate in Family Business Advising for the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (STEP). He is a past recipient of the FFI Award for Outstanding Interdisciplinary Achievement and the STEP Award for Family Business Adviser of the Year.