Filter By:
29 Nov 2022, Tuesday
Founder & Managing Director at Exaudi Family- Business Consulting
Founder and Family Business Advisor, Human Endeavour Associates
Strategy and Entrepreneurship Practice & Executive Director, Thomas Schmidheiny Centre for Family Enterprise at Indian School of Business, Thomas Schmidheiny Chair Professor
In this session, the speakers will discuss the establishment of game's rules for a professional relationship among family members.
The topic would cover aspects such as:
Improving communication
Definition of business purpose
Family charter norms
Solving specially selected cases
Some of the key learnings would be:
At the conclusion of the session, we hope everyone here will be in a better position to work with situations that we can't foresee today and will undoubtedly appear as challenges in an exciting and inspiring future.
Mr. Guillermo Salazar has advised multigenerational family-owned enterprises of diverse sizes, generations and industries throughout North America, Latin America, and Europe. He is a family business member and an expert on family governance and legacy succession. His advisory work primarily focuses on Family Charters, generational transition, family vision and values for decision-making, siblings’ partnership and cousin consortium development, and conflict resolution.
He is also an author of several specialized articles, and the books A Road to Triumph in Family Business (Legeris, 2021), La Sucesión (Legeris 2021), Genogramas en la Empresa Familiar (Legeris, 2022), among others. He contributes to research with EDHEC (Paris, France) on Family Business storytelling and leadership legacy.
In 2009 he founded Exaudi Family Business Consulting, with clients all around the Americas and Spain. He had served as board member in family held private companies and non-profit organizations. He is also an associate senior advisor at Cambridge Advisors to Family Enterprise, a highly specialized international advisory firm serving family enterprises.
Prof Sougata Ray is Thomas Schmidheiny Chair, Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship Practice, and Executive Director of the Thomas Schmidheiny Centre for Family Enterprise at Indian School of Business. Earlier he served Indian Institute of Management Calcutta for over two decades as a Professor of Strategic Management, a member of the Board of Governors and Dean. He also served as senior level executive in Infosys Technologies Limited in a strategic role as General Manager & Head of Innovation Lab. He blends over three decades of experiences in diverse roles – international quality academic, research and institution building practices with hands on corporate managerial and governance experiences as an executive, member of the Board of Directors, co-founder of start ups, corporate advisor, trainer, mentor and coach. He has two decades of board level experiences and served as member of the boards of multiple Indian Oil and Tata Group companies and chaired nearly all statutory board committees such as audit committee, nomination and remuneration committee, stakeholders relationship committee, and CSR committee.
Sougata has developed deep insight into strategy, innovations, entrepreneurship, international business, global competitiveness, digital transformation, corporate governance of firms and business groups in high growth economies through intense academic research, consulting and varied corporate and start up experiences. Given the ubiquity of family firms in India and observing how family owners and leaders play a pivotal role in shaping the future of enterprises, he was drawn into family business research. Since the past few years, under the aegis of the Thomas Schmidheiny Centre for Family Enterprise, he has been spearheading a mega program involving multiple research projects towards developing a solid research based understanding of business families, family firms and business groups in India.
Sougata helps ambitious entrepreneurs, family firms and business groups in crafting their business and growth strategies following sustainability principles. He regularly conducts visioning, strategy crafting, strategy review and innovation workshops for companies in India and abroad. He has advised national and state governments on attracting investments, promoting exports of goods and services, forming industry clusters and start up ecosystems, and improving competitiveness of local industries and firms. Sougata has taught in scores of executive education programs; designed and conducted many workshops exclusively for Owner-managers, Entrepreneurs and CXOs of companies in India, Asia, Middle East, Nordic and Scandinavian countries.
Sougata has delivered key note addresses and participated in panel discussions on wide ranging contemporary topics at regional and global events of leading global corporations and industry and trade bodies. He has led over thirty senior level executive delegations to multiple countries in every continent for high-level meetings with the Ministers and high ranking officials, multilateral agencies such as WTO and ILO, Chambers of Commerce, MNCs, Industrial Organizations, Research Labs and Institutions. Sougata is perhaps the most prolific and cited home-grown strategy scholars in India with over 150 research papers, monographs, book chapters, case studies and teaching notes. He has been publishing regularly in top-tier international journals and presenting in prestigious peer-reviewed international conferences. He has received many research, teaching, case writing and service awards and award nominations. He is an alumnus of Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and Indian Institute of Engineering, Science and Technology, Shibpur.
Mr. Prasad Kumar is a leading Family Business Advisor focusing on small and emerging family business in India and abroad. He also specializes in Strategic Facilitation and Organization Development. Over four and a half decades, he has worked in senior roles incorporates and with many leading companies in their growth and transformation.
20 Feb 2021, Saturday
World-renowned Business Advsior
In the seventh session of the series, we shift our focus to the "Business part" of the family company and understand what it takes for perpetuity of the Business. In the previous sessions, we have focused on the "Family part" of a family company. We made the point that strong family values and relationships, paves the way for sustainable family governance, which in turn, informs robust corporate governance. When all these three come together, alongside a fair succession process, the foundations for perpetuity begin to take shape.
Dr. Ram Charan blends business imperatives and principles for perpetuity with family owners' long term mission and talent pipeline. He covered a wide range of variables that may affect business perpetuity such as adaptability to change, portfolio relevance in a fast changing context, technology, innovation and productivity.
Dr. Ram Charan: Dr. Ram Charan is a world-renowned business advisor, author and speaker who has spent the past 35 years working with many top companies, CEOs, and boards. In his work with companies including Bank of America, Key Bank, ICICI Bank, Aditya Birla Group, Novartis, Verizon, Aditya Birla Group, Max Group, Yildiz Holdings, UST Global, Fast Retailing (Uniqlo), Longfor and two of the four largest digital companies in China, Dr. Ram Charan is known for cutting through the complexity of running a business in today's fast changing environment to uncover the core business problem. His real-world solutions, shared with millions through his books and articles in top business publications, have been praised for being practical, relevant and highly actionable.
Professor Charan's energetic, interactive teaching style has won him several awards, including the Bell Ringer award at GE's famous Crotonville Institute and best teacher award at Northwestern. He was among Business Week's top ten resources for in-house executive development programs. Ram has authored or coauthored more than 30 books that have sold over 2 million copies in more than a dozen languages.
Prasad Kumar: Mr. Prasad Kumar is a leading Family Business Advisor focusing on small and emerging family business in India and abroad. He also specializes in Strategic Facilitation and Organization Development. Over four and a half decades, he has worked in senior roles incorporates and with many leading companies in their growth and transformation.
17 OCT 2020, SATURDAY
Chairman of CreAdev, Board Member of Association Familiale Mulliez
Founder and Chairman Peter Leach Associates Ltd.
The session featured Mr. Antoine Mayaud (a 3rd generation member of the Mulliez family that owns the successful French retail company- Auchan Hypermarkets) and was moderated by Mr. Peter Leach (Founder and Chairman, Peter Leach Associates Ltd.) The speaker and moderator discussed various issues related to keeping all family members together in the business by identifying entrepreneurial opportunities for all members to participate and benefit.
On the importance of developing entrepreneurship in the family, the speaker highlighted that it not just keeps the risk-taking ability in the younger generations alive, but also helps the family build a diverse portfolio of investments in the most natural and organic way. This way, the younger generation are motivated to contribute, because their own businesses are part of the family businesses and will help them grow as Confident Active Successors instead of being Fearful Passive Heirs.
On the difficulties faced in convincing and keeping the whole family together in business, including the spouses, Mr. Mayaud believes that it is very difficult, but in the long run it is beneficial to all concerned. According to him, Spouses bring in new ideas and fresh perspective to the family business. He also shared that in Mulliez family, company-stocks are shared with in-laws instead of giving out cash and how this has helped to keep the cash in the business and helped it to grow over the period of time.
Mr. Peter Leach pointed out that culture is a very important component of managing a family business - more so than structure or strategy. On this Mr. Antoine shared that the culture of the Mulliez family is to work hard to keep the family together. Their seniors had written down "We want to stay together - all family members in all businesses, so we can all do better." They believe that alone, they can go far and together they can go further.
Mr. Antoine Mayaud:
Mr. Antoine Mayaud, 68, father of four, with 8 grandchildren is trained as an agricultural engineer.
He is a member of Mulliez family and was also appointed to the family council during the last 16 years
In Association Familiale Mulliez (AFM), a 100- year old holding company of Mulliez family- He is in-charge of family cohesion and entrepreneurship development
Mr. Antoine is also the chairman of the family Equity fund, "CreAdev", which would assist family or non- family young entrepreneurs, hence promoting the entrepreneurial spirit and helping to develop the AFM portfolio
Mr. Peter Leach:
Widely regarded as one of the founding fathers of family business thinking in the UK, Peter has been a leader in his field for over 30 years, consulting with diverse families all over the world.
He is an Adjunct Professor of family business at Imperial College Business School and has written a number of books including Family Business The Essentials published in the UK by Profile Books and is co-author of Indian Family Business Mantras, published by Rupa publishing.
1 AUG 2020, SATURDAY
Sociologist, Psychotherapist & Social Worker
The third session of the series, held on August 1 was deftly anchored by Mr. Prasad Kumar with his incisive questions about the contributions of Dr. Ross Ellenhorn in understanding how people change, from a well-grounded understanding of the Indian and global mindsets. Based on Ross Ellenhorn's recently published book of the same title - "How We Change (And 10 reasons why we don't)", the session gets to the core of our insecurities and fears about ourselves, with humor and kindness. It also helps us understand how to turn our insecurities and fears into agents of change.
The author points out that 'Hope' and 'Faith' are the two levers we have to enable change. He states "two things happen when we hope - agency thinking and faith in themselves and the world around them". These two are central to all collaboration - "hope is the kernel of humanity - it is what makes us human." For family businesses, the author suggests that there must be dialogue between the older and younger generations. The younger generation today have faith in themselves and find creative ways of doing things which is 'hope' and 'agency thinking' - they live in times where there is little hope - but they are a very hopeful group. It is important for the older generation to recognise the negative value of fear and dialogue with the ones that have fear of hope by assuring them that they understand their need to remain safe and help them to think about why change may help them advance.
Ross Ellenhorn: Dr. Ross Ellenhorn is a trained sociologist, psychotherapist and social worker. He has spent the last two decades across U.S. and Europe, helping individuals suffering psychiatric symptoms find the psychological and social means for remaining outside institutional settings. Drawing on decades of clinical experience and his own scientific research, Dr. Ellenhorn has authored two books on human behavior namely, Parasuicidality and Paradox: Breaking Through the Medical Model (published by Springer Publishing) and How We Change (published by Harper Collins).
18 JULY 2020, SATURDAY
Author & Research Associate at Wise Counsel Research
International family business experts Mr. Dennis Jaffe and Mr. Peter Leach from UK along with Mr. Prasad Kumar from India anchored the talks during the first session, "The Wisdom of 100-year Family Enterprise" of the series, held on July 18. The panelists talked about differences between the founder generation, the second generation and the third generation members of family businesses. Cultural issues, familiness, role of matriarchy in maintaining culture, unavoidable splitting of families and coping with different types of crisis was discussed seamlessly.
Answering a series of questions from Mr. Peter Leach and Mr. Prasad Kumar, Mr. Jaffe shared insights on truly generative family business that smartly manage longevity through intergenerational transitions. The researcher and author pointed out that resilient business families come from all kinds of cultures - from Individualistic, patriarchal 'honour' cultures and harmony cultures.
Dennis Jaffe: For over 40 years, Denis Jaffe has been one of the leading architects of the field of family enterprise consulting. He is a clinical psychologist and an organizational consultant and helps multi-generational families to develop governance practices that build the capability of next generation leadership. He is also the author and researcher of the book - "Borrowed from your grandchildren: The evolution of 100-year family enterprises".
Peter Leach: Mr. Peter Leach is a family business expert who focuses on working with multi-generational family businesses on governance issues. He is regarded as one of the founding fathers of family business thinking and has been a leader in this field for over 30 years.
30 July 2022, Saturday
Family Advisor & Business Strategist
Chairman - Family Business Research International Centre (FABRIC)
In this session, Mr. David Werdiger and Shri Tatwamasi Dixit ji will jointly explore the fundamental importance of communication in family business. Some of the key themes include communication complexities and challenges emerging from the three overlapping circles; cultural nuances, differences and inter-generational communication; barriers to effective communication; and risk of avoiding communication esp. difficult conversations. The session will conclude with practical benefits of defining the communication code of conduct.
Mr. David Werdiger is a family enterprise advisor, providing practical and appropriate solutions specifically for high net worth (HNW) families to navigate the complexities of succession planning, intergenerational wealth transition, and family governance.
As a published best-selling author of Transition, he has 30+ years as a tech entrepreneur, together with a confidential and empathetic relational approach to the challenges of family related business issues, has allowed him to facilitate unique solutions for clients by tapping into his personal knowledge and strategic thinking.
David is also an Adjunct Industry Fellow (entrepreneurship) at Swinburne University and regular speaker at HNW conferences and events around the world. He presents case studies and is able to distil complex issues and present them simply and succinctly.
He's deeply engaged with his local community through a number of non-profits. He’s writing his second book – about the challenges of the modern always-connected digital world. In between all that, he is passionate about sport - particularly AFL, cricket and NFL.
Shri Tatwamasi Dixit Ji is a well-known family business advisor and spiritual leader who works with family businesses across the world. He is internationally recognized for his knowledge and application of the wisdom of the Vedas. Sri Dixit draws on his extensive experience in commercial and management practices to help family businesses work on balancing and blending family and business priorities.
12 Dec 2020, Saturday
Partner and Co-Founder of BanyanGlobal
Chairman, Family Business Research International Centre (FABRIC)
The session featured Dr. Josh Baron (Partner and Co-Founder of Banyan Global, a Family Business Advisory) as expert speaker, and was moderated by Peter Leach (Founder and Chairman, Peter Leach Associates Ltd.), and Tatwamasi Dixit (Founder, FABRIC). Family businesses are famous for power plays, backstabbing, and dramatic implosions. Yet they are also among the most enduring companies in existence, central to economies and communities around the world. In this session, the discussion was about how harnessing the power of ownership effectively, can make the difference between long-term success and failure.
Dr. Baron discussed the 5 rights framework - Design, Decide, Value, Inform and Transfer. According to him, there are three important questions - 1. What do we want to own together? 2. Who are all the Owners? Should all of them share everything at the same level and what should be their scope? 3. How do they share control?
The panelists discussed the popular notion of separation of ownership and management. It was noticed that in Indian context, the custodian mindset is prevalent. Ownership and Management is inter-twined. Often, the power of ownership hardly goes to the entire family owners group and decisions are made among the working members of the family on behalf of all the owners. On this a 4 room model for governance was described such that members take on different roles in each of the rooms - manager, board member, family member or owner. This may help them in making decisions as it would help to sort out their roles in various capacities.
Dr. Baron pointed out that there is a difference between relationship among family members based on the legal structure of shareholding versus the cultural model of ownership. Ultimately what keep a family working together successfully depends on the cultural model. On an overall, the panelists highlighted that several of the issues faced with regard to ownership rights in family businesses are cultural in nature. This must be managed well in building relationships and good communication practices.
Mr. Dr. Josh Baron:
Dr. Josh Baron is a co-founder and Partner at BanyanGlobal. For the last decade, he has worked closely with families who own assets together, such as operating companies, family foundations, and family offices. He helps these families to define their purpose as owners and to establish the structures, strategies, and skills they need to accomplish their goals. Josh is also an Adjunct Professor at Columbia Business School, where he teaches MBA courses on Family Business Management and Managing Conflict in Family Business. He also teaches in the Enterprising Families Executive Education Program.
Mr. Peter Leach is widely regarded as one of the founding fathers of family business thinking in the UK, Peter has been a leader in his field for over 30 years, consulting with diverse families all over the world. He is an Adjunct Professor of family business at Imperial College Business School and has written a number of books including Family Business The Essentials published in the UK by Profile Books and is co-author of Indian Family Business Mantras, published by Rupa publishing.
Mr. Sri Tatwamasi Dixit:
Sri Tatwamasi Dixit is a well-known family business advisor and spiritual leader who works with family businesses across the world. He is internationally recognized for his knowledge and application of the wisdom of the Vedas. Sri Dixit draws on his extensive experience in commercial and management practices to help family businesses work on balancing and blending family and business priorities.
8 AUG 2020, SATURDAY
Organizational Psychologist
The fourth session of the series held on August 8, featured international family business expert, Dr. Ivan Lansberg along with Mr. Peter Leach and Mr. Tatwamasi Dixit. Considering several factors such as the size and nature of business, business inclination and motivation of younger generation as well as the expectations of senior generations, the speakers discussed ideal mantras for the family businesses to thrive and transition through generations.
On the topic of identifying entrepreneurs from the next generation for succession, the speakers pointed out that not every generation may have entrepreneurial talent, but it is possible to balance talents of multiple siblings who can contribute to the business.
While talking about the leadership continuity in family business, the speakers highlighted the fact that founding family has the need of developing a governing platform. The governance function will not only provide direction, accountability and value system but will also keep the business and family together. The panel also pointed out when considering continuity, it is important to have a vision of what lies in future. Articulating the aspirations as an enterprise, as owners and as family is important for clarity.
On the topic of Parenting and Nurturing the next generation the expert speaker said, "Some parents are sculptors - they have an idea of who the child has to become and hope to chisel away to make then in that image. But the more you are a sculptor - the more resistance you will get from the sculpture. It is better is to be a gardener - let the children discover if they are an apple tree or orange tree and be the best tree they can be. It is better to share the platform with them and provide them roles where they can contribute positively." Further, as an advice to senior family members, the expert speaker pointed out that they must have humility and lower the dependency of the company on themselves. He said, "That's the greatest test of greatness - Not to reinforce dependency but to lower it".
Dr. Ivan Lansberg: He is an organizational psychologist who grew up in an entrepreneurial family in Venezuela. He has consulted with complex family businesses in the USA, Canada, Asia, Europe and Latin America, and has made significant contributions to the understanding of family business governance and succession.
Sri Tatwamasi Dixit: Sri Tatwamasi Dixit is a well-known family business advisor and spiritual leader who works with family businesses across the world. He is internationally recognized for his knowledge and application of the wisdom of the Vedas. Sri Dixit draws on his extensive experience in commercial and management practices to help family businesses work on balancing and blending family and business priorities.
25 JULY 2020, SATURDAY
Founder of Schillings
International family business experts Ms. Rachel Atkins and Mr. David Imison along with Mr. Tatwamasi Dixit anchored the talks during the second session, "Reputation - You can't manage what you don't know" of the series, held on July 25.
The 60-minute of highly interactive session was addressed by all the three experts where they shared insights from their research and practice on the importance of reputation management, the risks and potential of the online space, including social media to bring perspectives to think about and incorporate in our own lives. The panelists talked about the importance of fundamental rights to reputation and privacy. While the law protects the privacy of a family, it is up to the individual to manage exposure on the virtual platforms.
Talking on the various areas of reputation management, the experts highlighted the fact that it is best to be ready and prepared with knowledge about the consequences of various online activities. Managing personal profiles properly, working with privacy features of social media settings and other such precautionary measures canl prevent areputation crisis. The experts also touched upon the idea of educating the younger generation of the business families on this subject. It is important for young people to understand that their information is private and should be kept safe, as for every legitimate proponent of transparency, there is a hacker out there ready to use them to serve their purpose.
Rachel Atkins: Rachel Atkins is a specialist in safeguarding the reputations of prominent individuals and businesses. She couples her experience in media law with a detailed knowledge of reputation threats that emanate from non-media sources.
David Imison: David Imison is a reputation and privacy risk advisor whose role is to help clients navigate the risks stemming from disputes, controversies and crisis. He is a certified member of the institute of Risk Managers and a certified Information Security Systems Professionals.
Upcoming Symposiums
The PFBI Story
Authors Directory
Get the latest news, resources for startups, discounts, and more.