Making time and space for collective work.
Bringing people together is not enough. A seminar or a training session makes sense when it starts from a real subject: the company’s strategy, when not all the shareholders grasp what is at stake, or the rights and duties of a shareholder, for the younger generation. It gives everyone their bearings, then leads to a decision, or to a way of working that will outlast the session.
The right format is the one that produces the expected change by the end.
Two related formats, but not interchangeable. The seminar takes a live issue and moves it forward. Training works on roles and equips each person to fulfil their own.
What matters is not the programme, but the change expected by the time the group leaves the room.
Seminar
Move a decision or a collective project forward.
The group works on its own subject: strategy, family project, shareholder alignment, roles, the board of directors, a generational handover.
Training
Make each participant stronger in their role.
Directors, shareholders, family members, executives, founders: each acquires the bearings, the practices and the stance their responsibility demands.
One session can combine the two: understand a framework, apply it to the real situation, then decide what the group has to do differently.
When it is time to step back
These are not programme topics but moments when the usual rhythm of governance bodies is no longer enough for what is at stake.
A useful session is prepared before the meeting and continues after it.
Before — identifying the real subject
We clarify what the session has to make possible, who should take part, what each person needs to understand, and the disagreements or decisions to be worked on. Depending on the context, preparation includes interviews, document review, a questionnaire or conversations with the people responsible for governance. It settles:
- The precise objectives of the session
- The scope and the participants
- The questions to address
- The real material to work from
- The level of decision expected
During — working, not only listening
Short inputs, always tied to real experience. Participants compare their readings, work on real cases, test scenarios, formulate decisions and practise playing their role. We watch over the quality of the debate and the place given to each person, and make sure the discussion leads to conclusions that can be used. Depending on the objective:
- Targeted input
- Sub-group workshops
- Role play or simulation
- Work on existing documents
- Collective debate and decision
After — making the work last
A session must not be forgotten once day-to-day business resumes. We record the conclusions, the open points, the responsibilities and the next steps. Where it is useful, the work continues: a longer engagement, the drafting of a document, a roadmap or follow-up with the people concerned. Possible next steps:
- A summary of decisions
- A roadmap
- An operating charter
- A further session
- Individual or collective support
These lists are not a programme. The format follows the objective and the relationship to be built: duration, place, number of sessions, in person or remote. Never the other way round.
Seminar
Stepping back from the everyday to deal with what it leaves aside.
A seminar opens a space sheltered from the ordinary rhythm of governance bodies. It makes it possible to share a reading of the situation, to open a debate that has no place on the current agenda, and to prepare choices that take more than a presentation followed by a vote.
There is no standard programme. The sequence is built around the decision, the project or the change the group has to be able to work on.
Family or shareholder project
Clarifying what deserves to be built together, the commitments expected of each person and the room left for autonomy.
Board strategy seminar
A session held apart from ordinary meetings, given over entirely to strategy, risk and trade-offs.
Changing roles and bodies
Working on a new distribution of power, a board composition or how several bodies fit together.
Founders and investors
Before the next stage of growth: aligning expectations, spelling out responsibilities and preparing changes in the capital.
Training
Knowing the rules is not enough to hold a role.
Training provides bearings on responsibilities, practices, behaviour and the relationships between those involved: what the role demands in a real situation.
It starts from the participants’ level and the questions their own governance raises.
Directors
Knowing what the role requires: the board’s duties, collective responsibility, the art of challenging management and working with it, each member’s contribution.
The next generation
Understanding what becoming a shareholder means, finding one’s place and preparing one’s contribution, without confusing ownership with an operational role.
Family council and family shareholders
Knowing which body decides what, knowing one’s rights and duties, preparing a collective debate that makes a difference.
Founders and executives
Moving from power held in a single pair of hands to a system built on delegation, the board of directors and accountability, suited to the company’s growth.
A different path for each context.
Family
Shared project, family council, succession, the place of the next generation and the group’s capacity to work through its differences.
See family governanceShareholders
Shareholder project, rights and duties, entry and exit, representation and the relationship with the board.
See shareholder governanceCompany
Strategy, the board’s role, committees, management, ethics, risk and directors’ development.
See corporate governanceFounders & start-ups
Roles between co-founders, investors, advisory board, delegation and the move to a real board.
See how we work with founders
The pair
Two people to carry the substance, the group and the trade-offs.
The pair shares its attention between the content and the group. One runs the sequence; the other watches for gaps, rephrases, brings out what is left unsaid and prepares the decision.
- Cross-preparation: the running order and the points to watch are reviewed by both before the session.
- Reading the group: two sets of eyes on positions, silences and effects of power.
- Continuity: the team that prepares the session can support the drafting of texts, the decisions and the steps that follow.
Related engagements.
Bespoke support
To extend the session with interviews, group sessions, work on the governance bodies or the drafting of decisions.
See how we workBoard evaluation
The seminar builds on a review of where things stand: how the board works, what its committees do, what each member brings, and who it works with.
Explore board evaluation