How Family Offices are navigating a more complex future
Navigating succession, growth, and governance in a complex world.
Sophisticated business families and family offices are reaching critical inflection points. As generational shifts accelerate and markets grow more volatile, families are seeking ways to ensure not just financial performance, but long-term continuity, cohesion, and purpose.
Lineage works exclusively with business families, family offices and founder-led businesses and many of our discussions with clients are focused on aligning people, structures, and values to prepare for a more dynamic future.
This article reflects the key themes, tensions, and priorities we are hearing across our client base – insights drawn directly from our ongoing work with families navigating complexity, change, and opportunity.
Complexity, urgency, and emotional dynamics
Despite successful businesses and capable family members, many clients face underlying challenges:
Next-generation readiness is uneven. Many heirs are globally dispersed, professionally engaged, or emotionally unprepared.
Succession planning feels abstract, and in some cases, unviable, especially where there is no clear "business" to hand over.
Execution fatigue is real. Families know what needs to be done, but translating strategy into results is hard.
Governance structures are in flux. New family councils, advisory boards, and charters need traction and buy-in.
Market conditions are tough. families are under pressure to grow while cutting costs and managing uncertainty.
This emotional, operational, and strategic complexity has surfaced across a wide range of Lineage client engagements in the past 12 months.
What do families need most right now?
How can families manage succession and scale in a way that protects their legacy, empowers the next generation, and supports sustainable business growth?
An integrated agenda for legacy-minded families
From emerging founders to fourth-generation enterprises, we are seeing the following priorities across our clients:
1. Succession & Intergenerational Transition
Families are actively working on transition plans, from onboarding teenage children to redefining roles for adult heirs. Education, emotional engagement, and clarity on who leads what are top concerns.
2. Strategic planning & execution
Clients want help turning known priorities into tangible progress. They seek support with pacing, accountability, and ensuring that decision-makers remain focused amid operational noise.
3. Governance & Organisational maturity
Families are formalising structures, like Family Councils and Shareholder Agreements, to strengthen cohesion and clarity. Some are evolving their Family Charters to reflect new realities and expectations.
4. Business growth in challenging markets
Growth remains a core ambition, but is tempered by cost constraints, retailer pressure, and shifting consumer behaviours. New market expansion (e.g., US and NZ) is a key strategic lever.
5. Family alignment & communication
Open dialogue is essential. Families are learning to wear different "hats" (owner, operator, director) and navigate emotionally charged conversations with structure and empathy.
6. Education & capability building
The next generation is starting to be included in governance and financial planning discussions. Families are investing in education and awareness to build G2 and G3 readiness.
7. Operational & administrative confidence
Clients are looking for reliability and transparency in back-office functions – from tax and accounting to legal structuring – so they can focus on strategic decisions with peace of mind.
The bottom line
Today, it’s about more than performance – it’s about preparedness.
For many of our business family, founder and family office clients, legacy is no longer just what you leave behind; it’s what you build in real time, through clear governance, intergenerational alignment, and the confidence to adapt.
Australia’s first and only business family specialists, Lineage Group creates tailored advisory and accounting solutions for business families and family office groups, providing guidance through generational, strategic, and operational change. Lineage works closely with a portfolio of some of Australia’s most successful business families and family offices, with services designed to directly address strategy, structure and operational challenges and opportunities. To learn more, visit www.lineage.group