The Family Enterprise Challenge

Addressing family firms' unique challenges

Family-owned enterprises face special challenges. Who will lead the family and/or the firm into the next generation? How to disentangle personal and business relationships? Should long-term investment take precedence over short-term dividends?

Get the answers wrong and the results can be disastrous – for family and firm alike. Get them right and you will have a high-performance business and a happy, wealthy family.

The Family Enterprise Challenge is designed to help you address the universal issues as they apply to your own business and family. It combines rigorous learning – based on the latest research – with practical workshops. Over four and a half intensive days, teams of two to eight representatives from each participating firm learn from each other and INSEAD’s expert professors by sharing, reflecting and above all applying new behaviours. Strict confidentiality is maintained throughout the course.

How you benefit

• Develop a concrete action plan for career planning, talent development, family meetings, family agreements and governance.
• Gain insights into the psychological dynamics of family leadership, business management, and family and business governance.
• Learn to manage conflict, complex family structures, diverse personalities and difficult relationships.
• Master a range of powerful family business tools, such as the Parallel Planning Process and Fair Process (both unique to INSEAD).

Participant profile

We recommend that participants attend the programme in teams of at least two to eight members from the same family enterprise. This may include non-family managers or directors. The more team members you bring, the more perspectives and issues you will address – and the more you will all learn. You will also be able to implement changes more effectively and efficiently, when you return to work and home.

This programme qualifies for the INSEAD Certificate in Global Management.