Family governance
Keep a family project alive for the long term, preserve unity, give each person their rightful place.
Sharing a family history is not enough to share a project. Expectations often differ, and so does each person’s relationship to the business. Family governance provides a framework for working through those differences before they block the collective project.
Family means relationships
Family governance questions begin before the bodies and before anything is written down.
They begin with subjects that are harder to formalise: Who feels legitimate? Who wants to contribute? What does each person owe the family? What do they expect from it? And what place does the business take in the family ecosystem?
A family charter, a family council or a succession arrangement only makes sense if it allows these questions to be addressed.
The aim is not a family where everyone always agrees. It is to let the family make decisions even when it disagrees — without breaking the ties that bind it.
Have you ever asked yourselves one of these questions?
Where does your family stand?
Ten questions, two minutes, no sign-up.
Four areas of work.
Building or renewing the shared project: the “Shared Vision” approach
A family can remain owners together out of habit, loyalty or constraint, without ever having restated what it still wants to build. We help the members concerned compare their expectations, identify the common ground that remains and distinguish what can be left to individual choice.
What is sought is not artificial unanimity, but an agreement clear enough to guide the decisions ahead.
Organising the spaces for dialogue and decision
Not every conversation belongs in the same forum. The family council, the family shareholders’ meeting and the information forums have neither the same purpose nor the same authority.
For each body, we help define its role, its composition, how it meets and how it connects with the shareholder bodies and those of the company.
Preparing transitions and each person’s place
A legal transfer can be planned without settling either the handover of roles or the legitimacy of those taking over. Our work is to help the generation handing over, the one taking over and those who will remain outside operational roles each find their rightful place.
The preparation concerns the people as much as the rules meant to connect them.
Making agreements explicit and usable
A charter is not the starting point of the work. It becomes useful when it records agreements that have genuinely been worked through: principles of belonging, rules of participation, rights and duties, the flow of information, the preparation of the generations and the link with the shareholding.
We make sure the documents serve as a reference over time, rather than freezing one moment of consensus.
A family question sometimes becomes a shareholder or a business question.
Shareholders
When the subject concerns rights, capital, liquidity, coming in, going out or representation, it also falls under the ownership contract.
See shareholder governanceCompany
When family relationships affect executive roles, how the board of directors works or the quality of decisions, the company’s own system has to be adjusted as well.
See corporate governanceBespoke support
When someone cannot yet voice their view in front of the group, the engagement combines individual interviews, collective work and formalisation.
See how we work
Why Associés en Gouvernance?
People above all. Nothing replaces lived experience.
The situations we handle always remain confidential, in individual work and in group discussions alike.