Australia and New Zealand’s Leading Family Business Advisers
Align the family and the business will follow
We’ve taken to the skies early in 2020 with a trip to Los Angeles for some very interesting meetings. Family Business Central’s CEO, Philip Pryor, met with two distinguished family business specialists to discuss collaboration and what lies ahead for family businesses around the world.
Phil discusses the meetings in detail…
“I had two incredible meetings while recently in Los Angeles (LA).
The first was with Jenny Durroch who is the Henry Y. Hwang Dean of the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management at Claremont Graduate University, just outside of LA.
Jenny is one of those talented Kiwis who is doing amazing things in the family business and academic world. What we’re both interested in is how to work with family owned businesses to provide education and insight around best practice in family business.
At the same time, we want to look at ways to develop a strong network of family businesses so that they can share information and ideas with each other in true community style.
We both agreed family business is one of the most important segments of the economy and needs to be supported. While there are some differences between the US and Australia and New Zealand—mainly in the area of tax— it was clear there are huge similarities. Jenny has done a lot of research into Japanese family businesses and that is a quantum leap in some ways when talking about succession—some businesses having started in 900 AD!
We’re both committed to collaborating and exploring ideas on how we can best support and engage with family businesses… our Family Business 101 workshop was of particular interest to them to start having initial conversations with family businesses.”
“The second meeting was with Dana Telford from The Family Business Consulting Group. What an amazing man!
Dana and I spent seven and a half hours together talking about our work and our approach to family business.
Dana is based in Hawaii but travels even more than I do around the US and into Asia.
He has worked with some of the highest profile families in the world and the Family Business Consulting Group has a treasure trove of ideas and writing they have put together over the years.
Despite our different backgrounds (Dana has an MBA from Harvard, mine is a Masters from Adelphi) we were amazed at the similarity of how we work and how we approach family businesses.
The core thing is the deep respect for founders of a family business and the extraordinary effort they put into juggling the demands of family and business – the challenge of getting the next generation ready while building a long-lasting, sustainable business. We will continue our conversations and will be starting to collaborate on a number of articles and explore a number of consulting projects.
It was an amazing time meeting such talented people who share a very similar approach and philosophy to working with family business.”
We will keep you updated with developments from these meetings and more in the year to come. It’s going to be a great year for family business!
