The Succession Rehearsal: Testing Readiness Before the Moment Arrives

Welcome to Legacy Builders strategies for building successful family enterprises. Brought to you by Beacon Family Office at CI Assante Wealth Management Limited. I’m your host, Cory Gagnon, Senior Wealth Advisor. On this show, we explore global ideas, concepts, and models that help family enterprises better navigate the complexities of family wealth.

This episode continues our panel-style conversations on Legacy Builders, where we bring together multiple perspectives to explore the decisions that shape family enterprises across generations.

Joining me today are Gavin Brauer, Certified EOS Implementer and entrepreneur, and Gerry Meyer, Founder and CEO of Meyer Advisory Group. Gavin works with leadership teams to create greater clarity around vision, accountability, and execution, while Gerry brings decades of experience helping family enterprises navigate governance, leadership transitions, and the dynamics that shape continuity across generations.

In this conversation, we explore where friction tends to surface during succession, how families can better prepare the rising generation for leadership, and why clarity around roles, accountability, and ownership matters. We also look at what helps leaders let go well, and how non-family executives can be better supported through transition.

Whether you are part of a family enterprise, supporting the rising generation, or advising families through moments of transition, this conversation offers a closer look at the roles, expectations, and relationships that shape succession and influence how families move forward across generations.

Now let’s dive in!

Cory: Let me dive into our first question. What causes the most friction between generations during succession, and how can families address it early? 

In my experience, the biggest source of friction in succession isn’t disagreement, but assumptions and assumed timelines, assumed readiness, even assumed interest. And silence allows those assumptions to harden into conflict, where families often wait too long to talk about the future, hoping things will just fall into place. But what I’ve seen is that if those conversations start early, not with answers, but with curiosity, it tends to move us forward. 

Now, Gerry, coming to you first, what are common misalignments that you’ve seen the leading and rising generation have, and how have you helped families surface and address them? 

Gerry: Well, I think you basically answered the question with some of your opening comments. 

The typical issues that I see arise when families are beginning to see a need for transition, depending on the generational transition, you know, the founder is getting to the point where he wants to spend time doing something else, etcetera, and what doesn’t take place, and doesn’t take place early enough, is conversations within the family side of the equation to say, okay, what does that transition look like? Where are you going? Dad, what is your role going to be as you continue the transition? What is my role going to be? Do I even want a role in the business?

Quite frequently, I get into a conversation about the difference between running the business and being an owner. And in many cases, families put those two things together. In order to run the business, you need to be an owner. And in order to be an owner, you need to run the business. And with the rising generations these days, many see those as very separate pieces. They want to be stewards of the wealth and steward and manage the wealth, but they’re not necessarily interested in being operators of the business. So what does that bring into the equation? 

So really, at the end of all of this, the main thing is to start having conversations, open, respectful conversations, around where the business is going, where the ownership is going, what do I expect out of this, what do you expect out of this, and not to sort of sell my own services here, but frequently, those conversations are best done in a facilitated situation. 

I’ll kind of wrap up my comments with an anecdote. And, Cory, I think I shared this with you before, but there was a panel group that was talking about this very subject a number of years ago at a conference, and they had the active generation or leading generation and the rising generation sitting there. And the question was, how difficult is it to start having these conversations? The father said, ” It really is quite difficult to start having these conversations. And the son immediately piped up and said, ” No. It’s not. It’s not difficult at all. Now in the room, there was great laughter, but the point being, it’s better to start the conversation than not, and to start it early. 

Cory: And then, I’m sure the people in that audience, they left because they knew how those two perspectives can come in their own situations. 

Now, Gavin, coming to you, from your experience, how does misalignment show up in organizations as a whole, and what role does vision play in correcting that? 

Gavin: Good question. So I think you can boil it down to three specific areas in terms of where misalignment shows up. We’ve got what we in EOS would call Vision, Traction, and Healthy. 

So Vision, it’s going to show up in terms of misalignment. Are we all on the same page? Oftentimes, we’re not. How do we get everybody to share our vision with us and get everybody to know the role they play in executing that vision? So that’s what we would call Vision.

Traction is what we would call accountability and discipline. So misalignment is going to show up there in people aren’t getting done what’s expected of them. Sometimes they’re focused on different priorities, so they’re not behaving with real accountability. So they’re not taking real accountability for their actions, and they are not disciplined. They are not staying focused, and they’re not getting what needs to get done done. 

The last part, Healthy, is a failure to work together as a healthy cohesive team. I always use the example of the Toronto Maple Leafs. I live in Toronto. I am a die-hard Leafs fan, and I can’t figure out for the life of me how you can have four all-stars on one shift, and they can’t put the puck in the net during the playoffs. They don’t, in my opinion. I love the Leafs, but they don’t play together as a healthy, cohesive, functional team. And the same thing happens in families and organizations. We’ve all got to be on the same team, having healthy conflict, working together towards the same objective. 

So I think if you look at those three areas, that’s where it shows up.

The second part of the question in terms of vision: what role does it play? In EOS, we have something we call the Vision Traction Organizer, which is eight questions that help us get alignment with where we’re going. 

So some of those questions are, what are our core values? What are the expected behaviors for anybody who’s playing in these organizations? What is our core focus? What is the passion we have for our business and our organization, combined with what is our niche? So what is the actual product or service we do? We want to know our core target. Where are we going over the long term? What is the one unifying goal we’re all working towards? 

We keep going on with this two-page document, but there are eight very simple questions that are very difficult to answer, which once you get alignment on that, at least we know where we’re going. 

The next step is to get everybody to buy into that vision and to understand their role in executing that vision. 

Gerry: It’s interesting, because for your audience, Gavin and I had no prework in terms of coordinating our responses, so I’m hearing Gavin’s responses for the first time. I just wanted to layer on to a couple of points that Gavin made, because I think that they’re important to emphasize. 

Certainly, Gavin, you mentioned healthy tension, I think is the term you used. And all too often, families are trying to avoid any and all conflict, any and all tension. And that’s a disservice. You need that healthy debate. You need that difference of perspective around the table to ultimately end up in the right place. So don’t avoid it, but just be respectful, be diplomatic, be transparent, and be open to the conversation. 

The other thing that I found quite interesting: you talked about your three points, and I use something similar when I’m working with families, but I call it Clarity: the three elements of Clarity, Clarity of Direction, Clarity of Role, and Clarity of Measurement. So where are we going? What’s my part in getting there? And how am I being held accountable for getting that, for being part of that process? 

So I just thought it was from my perspective, my side of the table, I thought it was interesting just to draw that parallel. 

Gavin: Thanks! I love the stuff you talk about on Clarity. Very much aligned.

Cory: I saw you nodding as Gavin was saying, accountability. So, I was coming to you for that, Gerry, which, I think you’ve you’ve explained well. 

Moving on to our next question. How can families ensure that successors are truly prepared, not just entitled for leadership? 

What I’ve learned over the years is that preparation isn’t just skill development. Although that’s very important and essential, there are many different aspects around timing and mechanisms for feedback along the way and earning that trust. 

So, Gavin, one of the concepts that we talked about when we recorded our podcast together, previously was in EOS, the GWC, and how that helps determine whether someone is truly right for the role. How do you use that when you’re working with clients? 

Gavin: So in EOS, we have this very simple tool called the People Analyzer, which is a one page document to be able to analyze all your people and see if they fit. It starts with core values. So our core values are an agreed-upon set of values in how we behave when we work in this organization. 

So first, we have to make sure that the family members align with the organization’s core values. You may have a set of core values that are particular to your family, but the business itself is going to have a set of core values. Sometimes those are in alignment; sometimes they’re slightly different. So you’ve got to be a fit for the organization in terms of sharing the organization’s core values. That is absolutely fundamental, non-negotiable. Once that’s established, we can get into, is this individual a fit for the seat or the role? 

And so GWC stands for: gets it, wants it, capacity to do the job well. And so what we’re doing is we’re asking, does this person get what they are being asked to do? Do they just have the instinct for it? Were they born this way? We can think like, my brother is an amazing sales guy. He can sell anything to anybody. I am not a born salesperson. So, like, my brother, Dean, he just gets sales. Me, not so much.

“Wants it” is do you actually want the role that you’re being asked to fill? If you don’t want it, it isn’t going to happen, and that comes from within. So it’s almost impossible to get somebody to want a role. And they may be skilled. They may get it. But if they don’t want it, it isn’t going to work. 

C, capacity is can you actually do the function that you’re being asked to do? So capacity shows up in terms of skills, experience, training, certification, time. Time, both internal to the organization as well as external.

So, internal, if you have a manager who’s asking you to do 101 things and you can only get 20 done, you do not have the internal time to get the job done.

External to the organization is, let’s say, here’s an example. I have a very close family to me who have a kid that’s severely disabled. And so they’re required to as a parent, to care for this kid a lot. They have a ton of demands on their plate. As the parent caring for that kid, you don’t necessarily have the capacity to work in the business because you have something else on your plate that takes priority. So that’s the external to the business which affects it.

So gets it, wants, a capacity to do it. You need all three. You have to be a yes. If you’re not, it just doesn’t work, and we’ve got to solve that issue and figure out how to solve that. 

Cory: Awesome! And, Gerry, I saw you nodding, so I think you’ll have some comments there. From your experience, what frameworks or conversations have you found to help teams move from hope to actually having a development plan for their successors? 

Gerry: Well, I’m going to sound very much like a broken record here. The real need, and I quite like, Gavin, the model that you walked through, because I would preface the work that I do with, with families, in transitions, you know, succession, by having conversations with them individually. And looking using that conversation to understand, okay, you know, depending on whether I’m talking to the leading generation, the rising generation, etcetera, where do you see the company in five years? Where do you see the family in five years? Where do you see yourself in five years? If Dad is not running the company, then who do you think should be running the company? If that individual puts their name forward, why do you think you should be the one to be running the company? What are you bringing to the table? 

Frequently, when I’m working with families, how the family business got from where they started to where they are today and the skill sets, the structure, the roles, may not be what they need to go to continue going forward and to continue to grow the business. 

And so sometimes with the leading generation, it’s helping them come to that understanding; I think the term is “what got us here won’t get us there,” and helping them understand that what they went through, how they developed, and how they became experts in the aspect of their role isn’t necessarily what the next gen or rising gen may need to get there. 

And then the third part of the conversation that I’ll have individually again is, and this goes to the “wants it” category, I think, Gavin, under your model, do you even want to be part of this? If you do want to be part of this, how do you want to be part of this? And, again, I draw that I’ll be openly transparent about a bias that I have. I mentioned it earlier: running the business and owning the business are two very different roles, and one should not preclude the other. 

So if you’ve got three siblings, and two of them want to run the business, and the third doesn’t want to run the business, that doesn’t mean the three of them can’t still be equal owners of the business. And, you know, Gavin, you mentioned the family with the, the, unfortunately, severely disabled child. Well, okay. That person may not be able to step up to run the business, but they may be able to step up to be part of the governance that oversees the business. 

Once I’ve had those individual conversations, then I bring everybody together, and it’s like I’m holding up a mirror. Because, basically, I play back to them what I’ve heard from them individually, and the key themes that are coming out of it collectively. And then we continue the conversation as a group to say what we are comfortable with, or what we are not comfortable with. And again, Gavin, taking your model, making sure people are getting it and wanting it. And if they don’t have the capacity, then, figuring out how that gets fixed. 

Not frequently, but periodically, we do get into a situation where the next gen or rising gen, an individual in the next gen or rising gen, has aspirations much beyond what the family feels comfortable they can play in the family. And that necessitates a pretty hard, heartfelt conversation to help them understand, and I’m paraphrasing. You will never be the CEO of this company, so let’s take that off the table right now. But let’s figure out where you can add the greatest value, and what will drive your greatest energy in this. 

So, again, like I said, broken record. It’s about the dialogue. It’s about the conversation, and then that facilitation piece at the end where I bring everyone together. 

Cory: Awesome! And, Gavin, I asked you about more of the right people for the seats, but I love how Gerry talked about that we might not actually have the right seats for where we’re at and where we’re going, which I think is another component where we could go much further into, if we had the time. And we might get there. 

Now how can families integrate family members into the business in a way that strengthens, not strains, trust with long-standing employees? I think that there’s a lot of these unset expectations, and we’ve talked about this.

Gerry, you just mentioned that maybe somebody does have aspirations, where the greater group is saying, it’s not possible. And, you know, so often, there can be decisions that destabilize that culture or morale of the organization. So, Gerry, what are those key components of an effective family employment strategy, and how do these policies help balance that opportunity with merit? 

Gerry: Well, I spend a significant amount of my time working with families and having discussions within families about the employment of family members. So I’ll lay out some basic tenets that I suggest families consider when they’re putting together their family employment strategy or policy. 

One of the first is that formality is actually your friend here. And you want to make a policy-based decision. You don’t want to get into people-based decisions. So they’re making a different decision for cousin A over cousin B. When it comes to the hardcore aspects of a family employment strategy, my perspective is that family members coming into the company are employees first, family members second. That means they’re treated like employees. They’re paid market rate. They’re assessed like any other employee through a performance review and performance management process. If they are not performing to standards, then they’re held accountable. They’ll go through a progressive discipline approach.

The reality is, yes, you actually can fire a family member from their job in the business. And I will admit, far too often, I see families that don’t do that when they actually should. So that’s kind of the negative side of that. But you treat them like an employee. They’re paid market rate. They’re expected to have the appropriate skill sets. If they pass all of those and you still see them as development opportunities for greater roles, then put together a formal development plan. And that plan is around developing the skills necessary for them to take on senior management or executive-level roles in the organization. And so that could be on-the-job training. That could be a course or class, or post-secondary education. It could be job rotation. 

Interestingly, one of the other things that I see, and I think works quite well, is that many families ask family members wishing to work in their business to actually go work somewhere else for a period of time. I’ve seen two years. I’ve seen five years, and pretty much everything in between. And it doesn’t have to be a related business. It can be something completely different. And sometimes it’s even better if it’s geographically separated. 

So, you know, Gavin, if you’re based in Ontario and you have a child, you send them out to BC to work so that there’s no competition. There’s no conflict. And that just helps them see how other businesses work, how other operations work. But, again, I go back to an earlier point. Formality is your friend. Don’t make this up as you go along. Put together the development plan, put together the employment plan, and hold them accountable for their role. The term is “the last name is no guarantee of success.”

Employees will not respond well if there’s a family member who’s employed and not carrying their weight in the organization. Those employees will have far more respect for the family if that issue is dealt with than if that issue is not dealt with, and the individual continues to be employed. 

Cory: And, Gavin, Gerry mentioned market compensation and incentivizing the family the same way that you would non-family. In the management teams that you work with, how do you find that they can support alignment and long-term motivation in the organization, building that trust between family members and non-family members? 

Gavin: I think we can go back to what Gerry stated earlier about the separation between ownership and employees. I think that’s the fundamental piece here. As an employee, you’re entitled to a certain level of compensation which should be tied to the job. What is the market rate? What are your skills? The same way you would pay anybody, whether you’re an owner, a family member, not an owner, not a family member. There is a market rate for that position, and anybody in that position should be paid equally, the same, based on the skills and all that kind of stuff. You then have an ownership role where, as an owner, you have certain rights and responsibilities, and you include compensation as an owner. So just separate the two.

As a family member, there’s a family charter or something, because sometimes you have family members who are not actually technically owners, but they might get compensation from as if they were an owner. Deal with that as the owner’s block, and then employees get paid as employees. And it’s all transparent, it’s all fair, and it becomes quite simple. Formality, as Gerry said, is your friend. 

Gerry: And and if I may, Cory, just a couple of other thoughts and comments around compensation and incentive. As Gavin has indicated, if I’m hiring my son to do a role as a digital marketer, then I’m going to pay him what I would pay for someone coming off the street to do that role. Where I have some really interesting conversations is when we’re looking at non-family executives, and how do families compensate non-family executives to manage the performance of the business in a way that carries the long-term investment perspective that the family is looking for. And so an additional component is base pay and annual incentives. 

The other component that I like to see families put in, especially at the non-family executive level, is a long-term incentive program, which is something measured over three plus years. We can all point to different publicly traded companies that have incentive plans that incentivize excellent financial performance, but at the long term detriment of the organization. Having a long-term incentive component to the overall compensation plan ensures that their motivation, their drive, their engagement, is tied to the family’s long-term capital preservation and growth perspective. 

Cory: I love that one, Gerry. How do you make them feel like they’re being rewarded as ownership wins, that they win as well? That’s a good point.

Now let’s talk a little bit about letting go and transitioning. So what gets in the way of letting go, and how can we work with or or how can the active generation of leaders transition well? And so often I hear, we’ll do that in three to five years, or I’ve got three to five more years in until I retire, or until that transition will happen. And so that continuing to be said for a decade or however long, can really put a drain on trust. And so, I tend to find that it’s a symptom of fear, and there are other kinds of individual components to that. 

So, Gavin, you previously shared with me, when we recorded our podcast together, about how your father reframed retirement, and how, from the learnings from him, leaders can reshape their roles without fully stepping away. 

Gavin: So in my dad’s case, here’s an interesting story. We’re working together, and I’m helping him to craft his vision, or help him articulate what he truly wanted. I think he knew what he wanted. It was just hard to articulate. And I was having this block that I could not remember the date on which he wanted to retire. And every time we talk, I’m like, dad, I know it’s like, you’ve said it like this, but I can’t remember the date. And he goes, why? And something I think I said to him was, if I remember correctly, I said because I don’t think you really want to retire. And so my brain won’t remember the date. And after a conversation, he’s like, I don’t want to retire. My dad loves working. He’s great at what he does. It provides him relationships and fulfillment. I’m the same way. I love what I do. I don’t ever want to retire. I want to have lots of time to go skiing, but I just want time for vacation. 

And so what I’ve learned in working with my dad through this process is that, for people like my dad and myself, I see retirement related to a tool we use in EOS called Delegate and Elevate. And I think this was based on the Eisenhower Matrix or one of these matrix cities where it’s four quadrants.

Imagine we’ve got things that you love doing and are great at, where you provide your value and it just fills you with joy and you’re adding the most amount of value to the organization.

We’ve got things we’d like doing and are good at. You have to be cautious of that because it’s going to suck your time, but you’re going to enjoy it, so you’re going to keep going.

We’ve got the “don’t like and are good.” This is the quadrant where, unfortunately, most human beings in the modern world are forced to spend their time, because there are lots of tasks that people don’t like, but they’re good at it, and so somebody will pay them. And that is where your soul goes to die, as you’ll get sucked in there.

And then finally, we have this quadrant, which is you’re not good and you really don’t like it. So we want to get rid of that stuff first because we’re not helping anybody there. 

So bringing this back to the idea of retirement and for people, like I said, my dad and myself, is for me, my goal for retirement is how quickly can I get 100% of my time into “love-great”, where I am spending all of my working hours, however many hours I want in that quadrant. That to me is retirement. The only step next is how many hours do I want to give a week to my work. 

And so I’m seeing this reframing of retirement of being in this “love-great” category, which then allows us to let go of certain things that create space. All the things that are not “love-great,” the next generation’s going to have to take over some of that slack. 

And how we train, you have to get the right people in the right seats in order to be able to delegate and then let go of the vine. So get into this quadrant of things that you spend as much of your time as possible on, things that you love doing and are truly great at. When I say great, I mean “best in the world at.” I’m not talking “good.” There’s a difference. And then we want to start to delegate to the right people who are in the right seats for everything else. And to me, that would be the ideal retirement for me. 

Cory: Gerry, I saw some smiles and nods there and, you know, I think pretty close to home of where you’re at right now. Let’s talk about, taking what Gavin said, of we’ve got that leading gen, finding those great tasks, and feeling very rewarded for what they’re doing. How do we support the rising gen to have space in the organization without being a clear departure? How can we have that leading gen stay in that position, still providing value, being rewarded psychologically for that, and still have room in the organization? 

Gerry: I think the way I’m going to answer that question is actually walk through an exercise that I frequently do with families when I’m facilitating family meetings or ownership council meetings, etcetera. And I’ve got all of the generations at the table. And I’m going to preface it with a couple of comments. We have all of these documents within family enterprise governance. We have the shareholder agreement. We may have the family charter. We may have business rules. We have the visions and values. We have our code of conduct. We have all these wonderful documents, and I’m not being dismissive to them in any way, shape, or form. But do we really know what they are? Do we really understand what they’re saying? 

And so one of the exercises that I do with the family, and trust me, there’s a fair amount of prep that goes in advance of this, and you’ll understand why when I describe the exercise, is I’ll have a meeting in the morning with all the players at the table, including, let’s say, dad, the founder or the current leader of the business, or the mother, whoever is leading the business. And I will have had a conversation with him to say, when we break for coffee, I don’t want you to come back. And so whatever we’re talking about in the morning, we’ve had that discussion. We have our coffee. Everybody comes back, but the CEO, family member CEO, is not in the room. And I open it by saying, they’ve just passed away. What do you do? What do you guys do next to keep the business going? What happens in the shareholder agreement? What happens in the family charter? What happens here? Who’s doing what role? And this kind of feeds into what you were talking about, Gavin, and it’s a bit of a wake-up call for people to realize these documents actually are important. You really need to understand what the documents are saying. 

And two things come out of that exercise. The first is everybody realizes, yes, I need to know what this document is, and I need to understand it. And so I need to, and we’ll go through that exercise. The other thing that came, or three things actually, that come out of it. The second thing that comes out of it is, okay, what I thought was going to happen isn’t actually happening based on the way that the documents have been put together. We need to rethink that because this is what we actually want to have happen. And then the third piece is really so where do I fit in on this? What role do I have to step up to? What roles do we need to fill? And if we’re not ready for those now, what do we need to start doing to be ready for that in that eventuality? Hopefully, an eventuality, quite frankly. 

So that’s the exercise that I frequently take families through. It’s always fun. My family says, well, they didn’t die. They won the lottery and decided to go live over in Costa Rica. They have some fun with that, but there is some real learning that comes out of that. First of all, it helps to build that cohesiveness within the family, because they suddenly realize, for lack of a better description, dad did everything, and none of us around the table can be dad. So how do we handle that?

I’ll close with one other thing, because I said there’s a fair amount of prework that I do with the individual family members. One of the things that I do is I sit down with the founder or the leading generation, and I actually ask them to have their partner in the room with us at the same time. And I’m having a conversation with them about, so what’s next for you? Where do you want to go? What do you want us to be spending your time on? And they may have the most wonderful idea, but not always for the case that the spouse may be on board or not on board. They may have their own expectations about what retirement looks like for the two of them going forward. And so having that discussion with the two with the leader and and and their partner. 

Gavin: Cory, if I can just layer on something quickly, a lot of conversation and what we’re talking today reminds me of the concept of trust that I learned from Patrick Lencioni, and I think he articulates it really well in with any time I talk to a client that’s a family business, my own family included, and we talk about trust. We’re like, I trust you implicitly, like, completely. And families have a lot of trust where we trust each other with something that Patrick Lencioni calls predictive trust. Meaning, like, here are the keys to my house. I’m not going to be home. Make yourself at home. I trust you that you’re not going to steal from my bank. Here are all my passwords. That’s predictive trust. 

The harder thing, and I think what comes back to what we’re doing today, is, what we call vulnerability-based trust, which is the ability to be vulnerable with the people around us even when it’s hard. And it’s that skill set that we cannot spend enough time working on. And going back to the father or child you were talking about earlier, where the father said this is going to be really hard, I suspect that’s vulnerability-based trust, which is hard. And the more time and more practice we get with vulnerability-based trust, the healthier our families and our businesses become. 

Gerry: That’s an excellent way of looking at it.

There’s something I don’t think we really touched on, Cory, and I’d like to cover that off quickly. 

When we talk about transition, we talk about succession. And, Gavin, you talked about your dad, and, you know, he doesn’t necessarily want to stop. I spend a good chunk of time talking to that leadership group, or that leader, to explore with them, first of all, what does retirement really mean to them? What’s that picture? If they can’t draw a picture of what retirement means to them, then you have to take the time to help them develop that picture because, we talk about letting go, they will not let go until they have a very strong sense of what they’re moving to. Because for thirty, forty, fifty years, their life has been defined; their whole person has been defined by their role in the business. 

Cory: Now our last question, and we touched a little bit on non-family executives. And so our last question, what role do non-family executives play in succession, and how can families support them better? We talked a little bit about that hidden weight that family executives carry, and they don’t have that same influence or legacy status as somebody with the same last name. 

Gerry, your story of the exercise that you take families through, I think, is fascinating. And I think what would a non-family executive be thinking if they were in that room as the leader passes away? And so, if we think about all of the ways that we can support that executive and have that great experience through transition, how do we retain them? What do we do, Gerry? 

Gerry: Well, I’m actually in the midst of working with a family who are, they’re in this process of transition. One of the things that we’re working on is bringing in an almost entirely new non-family executive team. The CEO position will still be a family member, but the C-level positions underneath will all now be non-family. 

There are a couple of things that we’re focusing on, both in the selection process, but then also in the onboarding and setting them up for success. The first is, and I have difficulty putting this way, but it is a hard reality. Not every executive that has worked in business can work in a family business. Far too often, I see non-family executives that are coming from publicly traded companies, or even potentially private equity companies, don’t understand the dynamics, the value system, and the relationships within a family business to their detriment. So in the recruitment process and the selection process, I make sure that we are asking questions about, you know, what do they understand about family businesses? Have they worked in a family business before? Are they coming from a family business, and what do they potentially see as the differences, the challenges, or the opportunities? 

Assuming you’ve selected someone, setting them up for success is making sure that they’re having regular conversations with family; if it’s a family CEO, that there are regular conversations taking place, regular points of feedback, that they understand if, you know, they’ve got a job to do, but at the same time, they have to live within what the family is comfortable with. And I sometimes use the story. I kind of make it a little bit extreme. But, you know, taking someone from the high-tech sector that is used to generating 20% quarterly returns and putting them into a family enterprise business that probably doesn’t even look at quarterly statements is two very different dynamics. And so, helping them understand, families have a different way of looking at things. They have a concept of patient capital. They may be more resistant to change, or they may be very innovative. They can be on both ends of that spectrum. 

And then we talked a little bit earlier about compensation, and the point that I made there is helping the non-family executive understand that the family is in this for the long-term, so they need to be in there for the long-term. And their performance needs to be focused on, yes, they need to generate annual returns. They need to maintain some percentage return on equity or total shareholder return, whatever the benchmark measure might be. But at the same time, they need to keep an eye on the long-term, the three- to five year timeline, and that they will benefit from that financially. 

Just as an aside, when I talk about long-term incentive, some people may be thinking, well, that’s just, you’re giving them equity. In family businesses, you’re not giving them equity. You’re simply giving them cash. There are a couple of different names that may be floated about: phantom equity, restricted stock units, etcetera, etcetera. But at the end of the day, really, what you’re doing is you’re giving them cash. But you’re measuring them over a three- to five-year timeline. So I think that gets to the point of the question. And, Gavin, certainly, from your experience, please add anything else in that that thoughts you may have on 

Gavin: The one thing I was thinking about while you were talking was an experience I had when I was a kid working in my dad’s factory, and some of the different benefits that you get in family enterprises. I remember I was a teenager, and we were in the parking lot of my dad’s factory. And my dad goes, look around this parking lot. What do you see? I go, cars. He goes, what I see is a parking lot full of new cars. When I bought this business, it was a parking lot full of old, rusted, broken-down cars. 

The value of family ownership in businesses when you have good, ethical, effective management in these businesses, there’s a level of this benefit that’s transferred to the employees. They take care of their employees in ways that you don’t get in a corporate job. Things my dad used to do for some of his people, I’ve never heard of something like that happening in the corporate world. And that is a benefit that a lot of our family business owners, the people working in these businesses get. And I think that is very important. 

Gerry: I’m going to actually use a concrete example that also illustrates that point, Gavin. We’re a few years out of COVID, but when COVID first hit, many businesses were on the verge of completely shutting down. This family was in automotive sales. They were a car dealership. And what they chose to do first was they laid off any family member currently working in the business. They made it very clear. We’re laying off our family. And though it’s not necessarily the right business decision, if I want to look at the balance sheet or the income statement, but we are going to pay you guys a minimum salary until we’re all back to work. And they had zero attrition. If there were people who were told, look, we’re going to continue to pay you, but there’s no point in coming in. They had 100% of their staff come back. And you would never see that in a publicly traded company. But that also illustrates the family values that this family had espoused. 

So just a concrete example of the ways that family businesses and family owners of businesses might think differently than any businesses in other economic sectors, if you will. 

Cory: Absolutely! Now, as we’re nearing the end, Gavin and I- if you have any last comments, I’ll give you the floor first, and then we’ll let Gerry speak as well. 

Gavin: Anybody who knows me knows that I believe very strongly in “start on time, end on time.” So I will zip my mouth and let you wrap this up. 

Cory: Okay, awesome! Gerry, anything else? 

Gerry: I’m not going to better that statement. I will let you close the session. It’s been a pleasure. It’s always wonderful to have these kinds of conversations with other individuals and particular people we’ve not met within our network. So, Gavin, it’s been a pleasure. 

Cory: Yeah, Gerry, I’ve very much enjoyed listening to you. You have a wealth of experience, and your clients are very lucky to have you. 

Gerry: Thank you. 

Cory: Absolutely. I echo that and appreciate both of you. You took the time to share your stories with us, and some great ones that I think will benefit those who joined us live and who take in our recording. 

As we hope this discussion demonstrates, successful transitions depend on more than having a plan in place. Families also need clarity around roles, expectations, readiness, and accountability, along with the willingness to have the conversations that help each generation understand where they fit and what comes next.

Throughout this discussion, Gavin and Gerry approached succession from complementary perspectives across vision, accountability, governance, leadership development, and family dynamics. Their perspectives came together around one clear message: transition works best when families create clarity early, prepare people for the roles they will take on, and build the trust needed to navigate change together.

I’d like to thank Gavin Brauer and Gerry Meyer for sharing their experience, perspective, and insights on what helps family enterprises prepare for transition with greater clarity and intention.

One of the reasons we created Legacy Builders was to bring together forward-thinking leaders and trusted frameworks that help families and their advisors gain the clarity and confidence to lead with purpose today and for generations to come. Today’s conversation was a great example of that mission in action.

If this discussion raised questions for your family, ownership group, or clients, you’ll find Gavin and Gerry’s contact information in the show notes.

Thank you for joining us for another episode of Legacy Builders. Take care, and keep building a legacy that lasts.

Disclaimer:

This program was prepared by Cory Gagnon, who is a Senior Wealth Advisor with Beacon Family Office at CI Assante Wealth Management Ltd. This is not an official program of CI Assante Wealth Management Ltd, and the statements and opinions expressed during this podcast are not necessarily those of CI Assante Wealth Management Ltd. This show is intended for general information only and may not apply to all listeners or investors; please obtain professional financial advice or contact us at BeaconFamilyOffice@Assante.com or visit BeaconFamilyOffice.com to discuss your particular circumstances before acting on the information presented