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Owner Development

Develop yourself, your organization, and your family

The Challenge

Engaged ownership and effective leadership rarely exist in a vacuum — they require a lifetime of learning and development. Not only do young owners need to build a general awareness of their family enterprise and the challenges of continuity, but leaders of all ages need to invest in expanding their knowledge base to keep pace with a rapidly changing environment. When families get this right, their owners and leaders can create significant long-term value for all of their stakeholders.

Our Solution

Wherever you are in your learning journey, LGA offers a range of workshops, seminars, and experiential opportunities — from one-off sessions to comprehensive multi-year owner development programs. Each offering is tailored to the unique developmental needs of the family, its owners, and its leadership teams.

Our focus is on building the key competencies necessary to sustain the success of your family enterprise across generations, with unique programming for each of the four types of owners:

Engaged Owners – Stewarding the Family Enterprise:

Owners who are neither in governance or management roles but care about the family business (e.g., participate, prepare, stay informed)

Governing Owners – Representing the Owners:

Owners who serve exclusively in governance roles (e.g., boards, councils, committees above CEO or in family governance)

Leading Owners – Leading the Enterprise:

Leaders of the governance structures (boards, councils, committees, etc.) ensuring they function properly

Operating Owners – Running the Business:

Owners who serve in management roles and are deeply connected to the enterprise (e.g. including CEO or below)

How does it work?

Within each of these ownership groups, your LGA advisor can help you design a strategic curriculum to develop five core competencies:

  1. Contextual Intelligence: Knowing and understanding the past, present, and future plans for the family and the business
  2. Business Acumen: Ability to understand and interact with business data and situations effectively
  3. Practicing Governance: Understanding and navigating the roles, processes, and rules for decision-making throughout the enterprise
  4. Interpersonal Skills: Communicating, collaborating, and managing conflict effectively
  5. Values & Ethics: Aligning personal actions with shared norms of appropriate behavior

How does your family benefit?

Our experience as educators has taught us that family members each have unique learning profiles and preferences. Consequently, our owner development programs draw on a variety of conventional and experiential formats, including keynote presentations, curated site visits, fireside chats with enterprise leaders, peer sessions with other leading families, and hands-on simulations and exercises facilitated by LGA advisors.

We work with family leaders to assess your family’s readiness for educational programming, key topics of interest, preferred formats of learning, and the ideal frequency and location of these activities. This data will help us ensure the greatest participation and impact of these investments in your family’s human capital. Once built, these programs are often institutionalized in the form of a Family Academy, which is available on an ongoing basis and serves as the first point of exposure for young family members to the family enterprise.

For those families who aren’t yet ready to build and deploy a multi-year program, we also offer a variety of stand-alone programs.

Leveraging decades of experience both on-campus and working closely with families like yours, LGA can help you build your own development program that will lay the foundations for sustaining success across generations.







Case Study

on campus learning

Case Study: Sustaining Engagement in a Cousins Consortium

Three third-generation Family Directors of a large enterprising family were attending a global conference focused on innovation and growth. Their 90-year old family had deep pride and gratitude for the success and leadership of previous generations. However, there were no family members currently working actively in the business, and the family’s only connection to their vast operations — which spanned eight industries and three continents — was limited to these three members of the Board.

-Podcasts

The Succession Conspiracy – Moving Beyond the Struggle of Letting Go

In this episode of the LGA Lighthouse podcast, host Tim Yeung continues his two-part conversation with LGA co-founders Kelin Gersick and Ivan Lansberg. Building on their previous discussion about family systems, they dive into one of the most persistent and emotionally charged challenges in family enterprise: the Succession Conspiracy. They explore why succession is so frequently avoided and how to transform it from an individual struggle into a shared institutional process.

-Podcasts

The Power of Models – Navigating the Network of Families

In this episode of the LGA Lighthouse podcast, host Tim Yeung kicks off a two-part conversation with family enterprise pioneers and LGA co-founders Ivan Lansberg and Kelin Gersick. They explore the practical power of conceptual models—not as academic concepts, but as essential tools for helping families make sense of the deep complexity inherent in multi-generational businesses.

Newsletter

LGA Insights – April 2026

Welcome to the April edition of LGA Insights for 2026!
In this Edition, our colleague Neus Feliu explores the transition of independent directors from a mere “governance milestone” to a source of true strategic impact.
We also share a reflective piece by Mika Mazor, who challenges the common perception of conflict within the family enterprise. While many families view tension as a threat to be avoided or suppressed, Mika argues that silence is often the more dangerous signal, one that masks deeper systemic vulnerabilities.

-Podcasts

From Transaction to Continuity – Rethinking Executive Search in the Family Enterprise

In this episode of the LGA Lighthouse podcast, host Tim Yeung sits down with Bill Strandberg, Managing Partner of Strandberg, to discuss the critical nuances of executive search within family-owned businesses. Bill explores why hiring a leader in a family system is not merely a recruitment task, but a vital decision for long-term leadership continuity.

-Podcasts

How Coaching Unlocks Family Enterprise Potential

In this episode of the LGA Lighthouse podcast, host Tim Yeung sits down with Wendy Ulaszek, a Partner at LGA and Head of Leadership Coaching. With a PhD in clinical psychology and extensive experience coaching leaders within family enterprise systems, Wendy explores the intersection of human behavior and enterprise governance.
The discussion focuses on how individual growth serves as a catalyst for healthier family systems and provides a roadmap for leaders looking to transition from their current state to their aspirational potential.

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