Category Archives: Outside Advisors

Choosing a Family-Friendly Compensation Consultant

Compensation Policy, Outside Advisors • Tags: ,

Choosing a Family-Friendly Compensation ConsultantDelaware Valley

Does your Adviser have a Backgroun in Consulting to Busienss Families as well as Managing Compensation

Programs in a Variety of Industries?
by Henry D. Lanes and Karl J. Buehler

A family company’s first “compensation consultants” are often other business owners or perhaps business advisers (a trusted CPA or attorney) who try to help but know little more than the business owner about the matter. The founder in effect serves as the first “personnel director,” and hourly wages, salaries, benefits and bonuses (if any) are adopted quickly by “the seat of the pants.”

Most business families can benefit from the deep professional knowledge and the individualized guidance of a compensation professional. The overarching goal is a compensation program that reflects internal equity between jobs as well as external competitiveness with other companies (see box). A compensation consultant ideally should have a broad background both in consulting and in managing compensation programs in a variety of industries including manufacturing, service and financial organizations. More…

Mentors Aid Successor Development

Career Issues, General Business, Outside Advisors, Succession • Tags: , ,

Mentors Aid Successor Development

by Craig E. Aronoff, Ph.D., and John L. Ward, Ph.D.
Co-Founders and Principles of the Family Business Consulting Group

Pairing up with a personal mentor for three to five years can be invaluable to a successor.

A mentor’s job, in part, is to help the successor learn to exercise judgment, take risks, accept a philosophical commitment to sharing and relate to people in an empathetic and intuitive way. The mentor also may confer specific business knowledge, particularly if he or she is skilled in areas the successor wants to develop.

A primary qualification of a mentor is a keen regard for the successor’s best interests and a desire to help the successor become even more successful than the mentor. The mentor must be someone who would never feel threatened by even the wildest success on the part of the successor. More…