Family Business Strategy

Strategy for Family Business is a 5-day senior strategy course delivered by Mars Training Centre UK in London, Dubai, Jeddah, Istanbul, Milan and Amman — designed for family-business principals, next-generation owners and senior executives leading family-controlled enterprises.

Family businesses are the backbone of most economies. They are also the most under-supported by mainstream strategy training, which tends to assume a listed-company governance model and a single shareholder voice. The reality in a family enterprise is different — multiple generations, multiple owners, multiple time horizons, and a layer of governance and emotion that listed-company textbooks rarely address. This programme is built for senior leaders in family enterprises who want strategy training that takes the family system seriously rather than pretending it is not there.

Across five focused days, you will work through the major frameworks of corporate and competitive strategy alongside the disciplines specific to family enterprises — the three-circle model, the family constitution, succession planning, governance design, and the long-horizon capital allocation that family businesses can do better than anyone. The programme is delivered by senior practitioners with executive and family-business experience.

What You Will Learn

• Apply mainstream strategy frameworks — Porter, PESTLE, the resource-based view — to a family-controlled business.
• Diagnose the family-business system using the three-circle model.
• Distinguish the strategic time horizon of a family business from that of a listed company.
• Lead a portfolio review across multiple generations of owner expectation.
• Design and govern long-horizon capital allocation as a family enterprise.
• Build a credible succession strategy across ownership, governance and management.
• Draft or strengthen a family constitution and the related governance bodies.
• Communicate strategy to family, board and non-family executives in a single coherent story.
• Identify the strategic risks specific to family-controlled enterprises.

How You Will Benefit

You will leave with a working strategic plan for your family business and a Mars Certificate of Completion.

Your organisation will gain a senior leader equipped to hold strategy, family and ownership conversations in a single coherent frame — reducing the well-documented sources of value destruction in family enterprises and protecting the long-horizon advantages that family ownership uniquely offers.

Who This Programme Is For

This programme is designed for senior leaders in family enterprises, including:

• Principals and chair-owners of family businesses
• Next-generation family members preparing for leadership or ownership
• Chief Executive Officers and Managing Directors of family-controlled firms
• Senior non-family executives in family businesses
• Family-office heads and family-office investment leads
• Directors of governance, strategy and corporate development in family groups
• External advisers and non-executive directors of family enterprises

The seniority floor is senior manager and above, including next-generation members preparing for senior roles. The course is delivered in person over five consecutive days and carries a fee of £4,950.