Engaged Ownership

Chapter 15Policies

Policies encourage consistency in decision making and promote investment by groups in long-range thinking and planning.

Once the foundational work of creating the forums has been done, once members of the forums develop a working level of consensus and become more comfortable with their roles and responsibilities, and once intergroup efforts begin to bear fruit in the form of more effective communication and collaboration, engagement will increase steadily throughout in the family-business system.

Over time, the forums may wish to articulate policies to guide decision making, particularly around issues that can be expected to arise more than once. A policy sets forth a decision agreed upon by two or more of the forums or provides the parameters within which a decision will be made, thereby providing guidance and helping to manage expectations of the groups vis-a-vis each other. Policies encourage consistency in decision making and promote investment by groups in long-range thinking and planning. They also make inter-forum decision making more efficient and reduce the likelihood that a given topic will crowd out other topics; once the policy is set it can be expected to remain in place unless and until there is a substantial change in circumstances.

Common topics for policies are:

Topics	Participating Forums
Distribution and reinvestment policy	Owners Council and Board of Directors
Share transfer policy	Owners Council and Family Assembly
Family ...