Lecture examines building family business boards of directors

John Ward, a pioneer of family business research and education and co-author of “Building a Successful Family Business Board,” will speak as part of the UW Family Business Center Lecture Series at the Fluno Center for Executive Education, on Wednesday, Jan. 25 from 8-11 a.m.

The session, which will be preceded by a breakfast from 7-8 a.m., will explore best practices for building an independent family business board of directors. The lecture is free for prospective and current UW Family Business Center members and sponsors, otherwise the cost is $500 per company.

Ward will provide insights to help family businesses understand how to go about putting a board together, leveraging it to strategic advantage and using it as a structure to strengthen the family and business by aligning family governance with business governance.

As part of his talk, Ward will examine these questions:

• When is the right time to build a board?
• How do family businesses engage the family in the board process?
• What essential elements make up a prospectus?
• How do you find the right independent directors for your family business board?
• How do you evaluate board performance? How do you use your board for strategic advantage?
• How does the board interact with family, with management and the family governance system?

Ward is author of leading books on family business, including “Perpetuating the Family Business: 50 Lessons Learned from Long-Lasting Successful Families in Business,” and “Keeping the Family Business Healthy.”

He teaches and studies strategic management, business leadership, and family enterprise continuity.

Ward is clinical professor of family enterprises at Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, as well as a regular visiting lecturer at IMD (Lausanne, Switzerland), Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Indian School of Business, and IESE (Barcelona, Spain).