Governance & Board Structure
Family Governance That Protects the Family and the Enterprise
Independent governance frameworks that bring clarity to decision-making, ownership and family involvement — before informal habits become costly disagreements.
What is family governance?
Family governance is the set of structures — a family constitution, family council and agreed decision-making rules — that define how a business-owning family makes decisions together, separate from how the company itself is run. It reduces ambiguity and conflict as families and ownership groups grow across generations.
How We Advise on Family Governance
01 — Governance Diagnostic
An honest assessment of how decisions are actually made today, where authority is undefined, and where the family and the business are exposed. This is rarely what the family expects. Most describe a structure that exists on paper while decisions run through a single person and a set of unwritten habits.
02 — Framework Design
A governance architecture — family charter, councils, policies — sized to the family's stage, not a generic template. A family of six in its second generation does not need the apparatus of a family of sixty in its fourth. Designing beyond the family's capacity guarantees the structure is abandoned.
03 — Facilitated Implementation
Structured family sessions that build genuine agreement, not a document signed under pressure. Consent obtained in the room but not held afterwards is the most common reason governance fails within two years of being introduced.
Who this is for
- Multi-generational business families
- Families entering a second or third generation transition
- Families operating on informal or undocumented governance
Our Process
Diagnostic Conversation
Understanding how decisions are made today, and by whom.
Framework Design
Drafting the structures the family will actually run.
Facilitated Family Sessions
Building agreement in the room, across generations.
Ratification & Review
Adoption, then scheduled review as the family changes.
Have a question?
Answers to what business-owning families most often ask before their first conversation with us.
Family governance is the framework — typically a family constitution, a family council, and agreed decision rules — through which a business-owning family makes collective decisions. Families need it because informal arrangements that work with three people fail with thirty, and the failure usually surfaces at the worst possible moment: a death, an exit, or a succession.
Most begin with a diagnostic of how authority currently operates, then design a charter and council sized to the family's generation and number. Structures must account for Saudi-specific realities — Sharia inheritance principles, Companies Law requirements, and the family's own decision-making customs — rather than importing an international template unchanged.
Corporate governance regulates the company: the board, management, shareholder rights, statutory duties. Family governance regulates the family: who may work in the business, how ownership transfers, how disagreements are resolved, how the next generation is prepared. A business-owning family needs both, and confusion between them is itself a common source of conflict.
Request a Family Governance Consultation
Every conversation is confidential. Nothing discussed leaves the room.