EisnerAmper Establishes Center For Family Business Excellence

On Sep 8, 2017

As an estimated eight million privately owned businesses in the United States face the prospect of founder retirement with no leadership transition plan in place, EisnerAmper has announced the establishment of its Center for Family Business Excellence. The Center will provide clients with leading-edge tools, training, coaching and support to ensure the successful transition from one generation of business leadership to the next.

Located at the firm’s Metropark, New Jersey office, the Center will be led by  Lise Stewart, director in the Private Business Service Group.  “The Center for Family Business Excellence will be a safe harbor for families and business owners who are dealing, often for the first time in their lives, with extraordinarily complex and emotionally charged challenges of transition, succession and personal fulfilment,” said Stewart. Here they find a team of highly trained professionals who can guide them toward successful resolutions to conflicts that are both financial and personal in nature.”

Toward that end, the Center provides succession planning, leadership development and human performance management services to family-owned and closely held businesses through coaching, conferences, and digital resources. The Center takes a three-dimensional approach to transition problem solving for its clients:

Leadership Transition – As owners plan to exit their businesses at an unprecedented rate, whether family-owned or closely-held, the need for Estate and Succession Planning is rapidly growing. This is a foundational service that includes personal and business planning.

Business Transition – Regardless of the path that the transitioning founder decides to follow, all businesses can benefit from having a clear and agreed strategic plan to guide growth and build business value.  In addition, most businesses struggle to build the skills and talents necessary for the next generation, family or not, to successfully take over and run a successful organization.

Family Transition – In family-owned businesses, governance can become a significant source of conflict and frustration.  Those businesses that survive the transition through the generations will have a decisive plan for governance that leads to family harmony.

This is also an opportunity to capture the history and legacy of the founder generation, ensuring that institutional knowledge can be passed from generation to generation.

The Center will address a range of challenges for family-owned businesses typically addressed by multiple partners, including interpersonal relationships among partners, building an experienced second tier of managers, communicating with family members and organizing family meetings, planning for long-term business growth, viability, stability and personal fulfillment.

Stewart has consulted on a broad range of complex business matters for a wide variety of families owning great wealth in several ventures during a 25-year career consulting in this field. Her firm, Galliard Inc., one of the largest providers of transition services for closely held and family owned businesses in the U.S. joined EisnerAmper’s platform in April 2017.

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