For family businessand governance consultants.

Family business consultants do the work most families avoid for years: the family council, the constitution, the board, the succession plan. You also see, more clearly than most, what happens when the plan is agreed and the successor still is not followed.

What do you see from the consultant’s seat?

The pattern is familiar from the inside of the process.

• The structure is ready before the person is. The family council meets, the board has an independent director, the timeline is agreed. In the first meetings under the new structure, people still look to the founder.
• Family meetings turn into negotiations. The successor presents a proposal and siblings reopen it, because they hear the parent’s authority behind it, not the successor’s.
• The founder agrees in principle and holds on in practice. The plan says decisions move. The founder’s behaviour in meetings says they have not.
• You are asked to coach the successor on the side. It is outside your mandate, and doing it well takes weekly time you do not have in the engagement.

The family needs both kinds of work, and they are different. Family business consultant vs successor coach sets out the line between them.

Where does Second Chair™ fit, and where does it not?

Second Chair™ works on the person. For six months, one to one, the successor prepares for the real events on their calendar: board meetings, the first company address, the conversations with long-serving executives, and the family meeting about the handover.

It does not do your work.

• No governance design: councils, constitutions, board composition, family employment policies.
• No succession planning, and no help choosing a successor.
• No mediation of family disputes about ownership or fairness.
• No legal, tax or investment advice.

Where the two meet is the handover session at the end of month six. Second Chair™ facilitates one session with the successor, the parent and anyone the family chooses, ending in a one-page Handover Charter. It covers one handover: which decisions move and when, how the two generations disagree, the founder’s new role, and the announcement. It should sit consistently with whatever governance you have helped the family agree. Family constitution vs handover charter explains how the two relate.

When is a referral a good fit?

It fits when:

• One successor, roughly 25 to 45, has decided to take the role.
• They will step into leadership or a board seat within one to three years.
• The governance work is done or under way, and the open question is whether the successor can carry the rooms it creates.
• The founder will take part in a handover session.

It does not fit when:

• The family has not chosen a successor, or the successor has not decided.
• The real issue is governance, ownership or family conflict that your work addresses.
• The family wants an assessment of readiness rather than preparation.

How Second Chair™ decides whether a family is a fit explains the same criteria for families.

How does a referral work?

1. Raise it as one option. Often the moment is a meeting where the gap was visible to everyone. Ask the founder what they would need to see.
2. Bring the successor in early. A program they did not choose rarely works.
3. Agree before naming anyone. Agree with the family what you will share before you mention them in a request, and follow any confidentiality terms in your own engagement.
4. Use the request form. It has an option for “an advisor to the family”. Only name and email are required.

Nikola reads every request himself. Where there is a fit, he replies within three business days with a personal email and a one-time link to arrange a private conversation. If you would like to understand the approach first, that conversation can be with you. How advisors refer a family to a coach covers the steps.

How is discretion handled?

• Every engagement begins under a mutual NDA.
• No case studies are published and no families are named.
• The parent receives a monthly briefing on progress and priorities. What the successor says in sessions stays between coach and successor.
• Stakeholder interviews in the private diagnostic are confidential.

Engagements begin at $50,000, paid in full by the family or the company. There is no guarantee and no refund.

To discuss a family or the approach, request a private conversation. The family meeting agenda and stakeholder map templates are designed to sit alongside governance work.