The Single Family Office

Maximizing Performance in a Complex Environment

How can you align the goals of the family office with the goals of the family and stakeholders? How can your office develop and promote trust in the family office? What is the best approach to challenging conversations with family stakeholders around wealth management, governance and education?

Challenging, often subtle family dynamics, sensitive communications and interlinked governance structures all contribute to the complexity of family offices. This program focuses squarely on the management, planning and governance skills family-office leaders must master and manage.

Guided by a renowned faculty of experts and advisors in family organizations, teamwork and communication, you will learn to navigate complex family office dynamics to more fully align stakeholders. You will develop skills to plan strategy, promote trust and communication, and address challenging issues around governance and continuity. These skills will help promote family harmony and maximize family office performance.

Applications for the program will be screened to ensure participants meet the requirements of employment at a single family office.

Kellogg Executive
Leadership Institute

 

VIDEO: Academic Director Matt Allen discusses The Single Family Office.

Who Should Attend

Participation is limited to senior executive leaders of single family offices. Typically, these executives are non-family members. These executives will lead multi-disciplinary family office teams that serve the needs of sophisticated multi-generational single family offices.


Download Past Participant Profile

Key Benefits

  • Understand and address family dynamics that affect and impede family office functions and processes
  • Gain skills to promote trust-building positive interactions among family office stakeholders
  • Learn practical insights about family, family business and family office governance
  • Develop strategic planning skills related to continuity, succession, outsourcing and other areas
  • Share insights with other family office leaders, while learning from their experience

Program Content

Family Office History and Future

This session will cover the history and evolution of family offices since the 1980s, including key characteristics of a successful family office. We will discuss challenges confronting single family office executives and factors that will likely need to be addressed in the future.

Purpose and Strategy Across Generations for the Family Office

Are you clear on family office purpose? How does it evolve—from founder generation and beyond? How do you get the family to engage in clarifying purpose? You will learn to define, execute, and measure family office success, including metrics aligned with purpose and strategy, compensation/rewards, and reporting.

Governance and the Family Office

Gain a better understanding of the unique position of the family office in governance of the family enterprise and its impact on the drivers of effective governance. You will learn important governance lessons for family office leadership to support direction, accountability and control in the enterprise AND unity and commitment from owners.

Earning Trust

Building trust with family clients is key to success for any family office. Trust is developed at both the institutional, office level as well as the interpersonal level. You will explore key factors crucial for achieving trust amongst clients and staff.

Brave Voices: How Leaders Build Cultures of Courageous Conversations

For our relationships, teams, and communities to thrive, we need everyone's voice in the conversation. In the family office context, the ability to address challenging topics with clients, team members and other stakeholders is crucial to a productive culture and trust. You will 1) gain insights on how to build confidence and courage to speak bravely and say what needs to be said, and 2) learn practical steps for leaders to "encourage courage" in others, building cultures of brave voices to maximize organizational performance.

Faculty

Matt Allen - Co-Academic Director; John L. Ward Clinical Professor in Family Enterprise and Executive Director of the John L. Ward Center for Family Enterprises

Jennifer Pendergast - Co-Academic Director; Adjunct Professor of John L. Ward Center for Family Enterprises and Adjunct Professor of Kellogg Executive Education

Michelle L. Buck - Clinical Professor of Executive Education

Richard Jolly - Clinical Associate Professor of Management & Organizations

Tim Kelly - Adjunct Lecturer of Family Enterprises

Family Enterprise Suite

Address the unique challenges of running a family business

Featured Videos

Academic Director Matt Allen discusses who should attend.

Academic Director Matt Allen discusses why you should choose Kellogg.

2025 Session

June 10-12, 2025

Start: June 10 at 8:30 AM

End: June 12 at 2:30 PM


Format: In-Person in Miami

Download the Topic Overview


Click here for Executive Education's COVID-19 health and safety protocols

$6,500

Program Fee does not include accommodations

Kellogg School of Management

James L. Allen Center
2169 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208
Directions
847.467.6018