How a Family Council and Ownership Council Can Work Together

Lena Jungell describes the difference between the owners council and the family council in her enterprising family.

We had the owners’ council for almost 20 years before we again kind of realized that now we need another kind of forum, because we were again in a new situation where new generations were getting in or getting interested and wanted to participate and new questions came up. Or also, old questions came up from people who hadn’t been there 20 years ago. So we felt the need to kind of separate owners’ issues like when it comes to taxation, nomination of board members, dividend policy discussions, owners’ vision and that was, that became the task of the owners’ council. So the family council is still has its own agenda and the family council is also a good start for new members who haven’t been involved in the governance structure before so the family council has a rotating system of members, so but it’s easier to jump in for one meeting if your sister or brother or cousin can’t go, so you can ask somebody else to go instead of you because the issues are usually quite easy to get, so you can come into a discussion where you haven’t been to the last meeting. But when it comes to the owners’ council, the issues are usually more complex and you need to really know what’s going on, what’s been discussed.