🏛️ Governance Readiness Assessment Tool

Assess your family business governance readiness

Welcome to the Governance Readiness Assessment

This comprehensive assessment will help you evaluate the strength of governance structures in your family business across six critical pillars. Your results will provide actionable insights for strengthening governance and preparing for sustainable growth.

12 min

Estimated Time

30

Questions

6 Pillars

Governance Areas

Assessment Guidelines

  • Answer honestly based on current practices, not aspirations
  • Consider the past 12 months of operations
  • There are no right or wrong answers - only accurate reflections
  • Your responses are confidential and used only for your assessment

Select Your Business Stage

Startup / Early Stage

Family business in initial growth phase, typically first generation

Founder-led, establishing processes

Growth Stage

Expanding business with increasing complexity

Multiple family members involved, scaling operations

Mature / Multi-Generational

Established business transitioning across generations

Second generation or beyond, established governance needs

What this tool does

Built for family businesses working out how to govern themselves as they grow. It covers the questions that get postponed until they become urgent: who decides what, how family and management roles are separated, whether a board exists in practice as well as on paper, and what happens at succession.

What is governance in a family business?

It is the agreed answer to who decides what, and how. That covers separating ownership from management, defining which decisions need whose agreement, and having a forum where disagreements get settled rather than avoided.

When should a family business start formalising governance?

Before it is needed. Governance put in place calmly, while everyone agrees, is what holds during a succession or a dispute. Written during the dispute, it rarely holds at all.

Question 1 of 30