Areas of work

Thirty years of working with family businesses on the things that matter most — and that are hardest to talk about
 
Peter Roper | Private Adviser to Family Businesses | Author of six books | Fellow of the Professional Speaking Association
   

What family businesses bring to me

Family businesses face a particular kind of challenge that most advisers are not equipped to help with. The business and the family are inseparable — which means that when something goes wrong in the business, it is usually felt personally, and when something goes wrong in the family, it shows up in the business.
 
The questions that bring people to me are rarely about strategy or structure in the conventional sense. They are about the human dynamics that sit underneath those things: who is really in charge, what has not been said, who feels overlooked, and what happens next.
 
Over thirty years of private advisory work with family businesses — and more than 750,000 people reached through speaking, events and the Conversations with Family Business podcast — I have developed a clear view of where family businesses most commonly get stuck, and what it takes to move them forward.
 
The six areas below represent the territory I work in most. Each one links to a more detailed page explaining my approach, my experience, and what working with me in that area looks like.
   

The six areas

 
Succession planning
The question every family business faces — and most avoid until it becomes urgent. Who takes over, and when? What does the handover actually look like? And what does the founder do next? Succession is rarely a single event. It is a process, and how a family navigates it determines whether the business survives the transition.
→ Read more: Succession planning in family businesses 
  Family conflict
Conflict in a family business is unlike conflict anywhere else. The relationships predate the business and will continue after any disagreement is resolved. That makes it harder to address — and more costly to ignore. I work with families to get to what is actually driving the difficulty, and to create the conditions for a conversation that moves things forward rather than entrenching them.
→ Read more: Managing conflict in family businesses   
Leadership transition
The moment power transfers in a family business is one of the most sensitive — and consequential — moments a family will navigate together. Getting it right requires attention to the human dynamics involved, not just the legal and structural ones. I work with both the outgoing and incoming generation, helping each find clarity about what the transition means for them personally.
→ Read more: Leadership transition in family businesses 
  Governance
Good governance in a family business is not about bureaucracy. It is about having clear, agreed answers to the questions that cause the most friction: who decides what, how disagreements are resolved, and how the family stays aligned on the purpose and direction of the business. Structure introduced early is far less costly than conflict managed late.
→ Read more: Governance in family businesses   
Selling a family business
Selling a family business is unlike selling any other asset. The financial transaction is only part of what is happening. I work with families on the human dimension of the sale — reaching genuine alignment about the decision, managing the impact on family relationships during the process, and preparing for life on the other side of completion.
→ Read more: Selling a family business 
  Difficult conversations
In thirty years of working with family businesses, I have rarely found a situation where the root cause was lack of information. Almost always, it was a conversation that had not happened. I help families have the conversations they have been avoiding — about succession, performance, money, the future — before those conversations become crises.
→ Read more: Difficult conversations in family businesses   

How I work

I work privately with a small number of family businesses at any one time. Engagements range from a single facilitated conversation to longer-term advisory relationships spanning months or years. I do not run a large consultancy — the work is personal, and the relationships it is built on reflect that.
 
If something in the six areas above is relevant to your situation, the first step is always a conversation. There is no process or pitch — just a direct discussion about what you are dealing with and whether I am the right person to help.
 
→ Contact Peter directly: Fill in the form below or drop me an email peter@familybusinessman.com

→ Listen to Conversations with Family Business — every Thursday

→ Explore The Family Business Practice for practical resources