You are an external Business Consultant (perhaps from KPMG or McKinsey) brought in by

Referencing Styles : Harvard

You are an external Business Consultant (perhaps from KPMG or McKinsey) brought in by the Board of Directors of the Family Business to review the current strategy/strategic plan and to put forward a ‘Health of the Family Business’ Consultant’s Report on the basis of your independent, objective and professional opinion about how the Family Business is performing right now, i.e., what is working well; what requires a change in strategy and, possibly, what now needs to be abandoned because it’s not working.

Therefore, you are required to;

Identify and discuss the criteria that academics and others use to assess the relative success of a family business.
Discuss and justify how well your family business, or one with which you are familiar, matches up to two of these criteria.

In completing this individual written assignment;

In the first part you need to demonstrate that you have researched this topic and can substantiate your discussion through reference to identified sources. A family business can be reviewed by using three circle model, business canvas model, 12S model (see your core text book Poza, 2013 chapter 5 for a detail account of 12S Model of family business) and various other models suggested by different researchers in this field. Review the performance of your family business in terms of any of these models and explain the strategy, structure, shareholders and succession planning of your family business.

In the second part you need to demonstrate a critically analytical approach when relating these criteria to your own business, or one with which you are familiar with. For example, you may find that the structure of governance and succession process of your family business do not match with the standard practice suggested in 12S model. Now discuss why it does not match and recommend how to improve them and what will be the outcome of such changes.

It is up to you how you go about reviewing your own Family Business (or one you know well) by including your own particular views based on what you know about how the business has been running for the past few years, what you anticipate for its future and also what you have learnt in the past three years of studying the diverse range International Business and Marketing Modules during your time at Regent’s. The combination of these 3 perspectives will provide you with plenty of knowledge and experience to do well in this last assignment.

STRUCTURE:

Write a Consultant’s Report including:

Title page (Family Business name, your name, submission date etc.)
Executive Summary (250-300 words on the highlights of your report – something that would be read by a CEO of CFO)
Contents Page
Introduction (what is your Family Business and its context?)
Describe the key criteria of family business (12S model for example) and Review only what is relevant to your Family Business.
Organisational Strategy (Critically review the current strategy for the firm and for the family members and identify gaps if any and make recommendations)
Organisational Structure (Critically review current organisational structure, shareholder structure and family-business relationship governance structure of your firm and identify gaps if any and make recommendations)
Shareholders (Critically review current plan for Shareholder Wealth Management, Stewardship and Family Leadership of the firm and identify gaps if any and make recommendations)
Succession (Critically review current succession, staff, skills, and social capital of the firm and identify gaps if any and make recommendations)
Conclusion (your summary of findings)
Recommendations (your independent, objective and professional opinion about what needs to happen next to make the Family Business and ongoing success)
Appendices (use the Appendices to include any models, charts or lists that help explain your review approach)
References (use the Core Text and/or any other texts, journals or articles that have assisted you in the analysis)