Succession is inevitable in a family business, and most mainstream approaches to navigating succession often begin far too late. It’s one of the first things that gets kicked down the road, as the daily operations of your business take precedent. 

Yet, as a family business leader your business continuity, the protection of your family, each individual, your employees, and your stakeholders is important to you. It may even be a fear that keeps you up at night. When you think about any pending transition, whether quickly approaching or farther down the road, there are often many of these unspoken fears.

Our approach to family business continuity tackles these fears early on and head on, with a pre-succession mindset that begins long before an actual transition is upon you. Our process blends psychology and strategy. By navigating important decisions around leadership, individual and collective desires of the family, governance, structure, family dynamics, relationships and more, we take a holistic approach that doesn’t skirt around the real issues.  Not all families are the same and every approach is different. We part the clouds to help you see what is best for your situation and we traverse it together.

As a result of this work, families are able to find their center and make critical decisions based on outcomes of peace and fulfillment. They can protect core values, key personnel, customers, and family while setting the business up for success for future generations. By doing this work early, we create a foundation for a seamless passing of the torch when the eventual time comes.

Continuing the legacy of a family is heart-centered work. Looking at succession from financial and logistical perspectives only covers up where the real issues–and real healing–of a family lie.

We do the work of pre-succession on a deep level. We create an experience that allows everyone involved to come out on the other side in an even better place than they were before.

The avoidance of conflict (or even hostility) tends to be the biggest deterrent to healthy, thriving family businesses and, yet, many consultants avoid this type of work. Family dynamics can be messy. Along with creating tension within the family relationships and negatively affecting mental health, conflict also has a tendency to lead to animosity in other players in the company.

At The Center for Conscious Living and Fulfillment®, we work with each family member as well as the team as a whole to uncover the patterns, beliefs, and dysfunctions that are holding families back from healthy conflict.  

Chris Yonker has been labeled a “Family Business Chaos Manager" by his clients and has helped many families navigate their worst family conflict. He brings family dynamics to light in safe, impactful ways that allow families to experience long needed healing of relationships, which in turn impact the business and the personal lives of each family member. 

Some of the outcomes of resolving family conflict include deeper relationships, clearer visions, aligned values, improved company morale and engagement, having the right people in the right seats, and more. 

Strong, lasting family businesses need structured Family Governance. Determining the right structure for your family is dependent on many different factors, including how many generations are involved in the business, number of owners, business size, decision-makers, and interfamily relationships and dynamics. Most importantly, family governance needs to stand on the foundation of open communication and healthy conflict. 

Effective Family Governance can solve the problems of who, what and when you make decisions. It can eliminate much of the unhealthy conflict that often arises with differing opinions between family members and encourages the open dialogue of a broad spectrum of viewpoints and generations. This is achieved by implementing structures and systems designed to meet the family and the business’s needs.

The Assess Next Gen Survey is a 360-degree survey custom-designed by expert family office consultants with 70+ years of practical expertise and research to help your family business enterprise identify the strongest likely path to success in your succession strategy.

‍The survey relies on anonymous feedback gathered directly from manager, peers, mentors, consultants, and direct reports in your organization to paint a complete and accurate picture of strengths, weaknesses and areas of potential improvement for potential successors.

The Assess Next Gen Survey provides family business owners with a toolset to gather intelligence on the core competencies of their team, as well as a framework (including guidance and worksheets for instructions) to develop and improve on those competencies with 1:1 coaching.

Learn more about Assess Next Gen

• Overcoming long running dysfunctional patterns in the family
• Healing for individual family members
• Higher senses of joy, peace, happiness and ease
• Less sleepless nights
• A continuation of a long-held legacies started by previous generations
• Finding purpose outside of the business after transition
• Exploration and identification of the best avenues for transition
• Retention of key personnel and customers
• Strategies and Process to get the right people in the right seats to drive the outcomes you are after

• Residential construction
• Commercial construction
• Brokerage firms
• Manufacturers
• Service companies
• Franchises
• Financial services
• Electrical companies
• Medical companies
• Automotive
• IT companies