Ensuring Success
for
FAMILY BUSINESSES & LEGACY FAMILIES

Unresolved family issues can leave a legacy in ruins.
~ David Bork

A New Lens for Seeing Family Business

The Bork Process

The Bork Process is a consulting and training program that resolves conflict and builds collaboration, trust and resilience within families and family-owned businesses.

How It Works

The Bork Process was developed for your family and family-owned businesses with four distinctly different options… via an online course, a one-day seminar, a two-day workshop & personalized consultation.

Four Options. Design What Works For You!

The Results

The Bork Process delivers a distinct competitive advantage. It improves productivity and profitability, delivering lasting results at every level in the business.

Build Trust, Manage Conflict, Improve Communications, Create Harmony

David Bork

Driven by the positive possibilities.

Put My Experience To Work For You!

How Can The Bork Process Help You?

The Bork Process is a consulting and training program that resolves conflict and builds collaboration, trust and resilience within families and family-owned businesses. It is not a seminar. It is an inclusive process that involves everyone in the family business – from founders and CEOs to younger employees. The program is outcome-based, delivering lasting results at every level in a family or a business. The innovative theories and techniques of family business consulting pioneer David Bork provide the foundation for the program.

The Bork Process helps families develop unity of vision and improve organizational effectiveness. The program transforms challenging relationships into foundations for successful family and business alliances. Our team will help you to identify, confront, and work through the issues that are preventing you, your family, and your executive team from achieving what is possible in terms of human cooperation and business advancement.

The Bork Process is based on Four Pillars — Alignment, Boundaries, Communication, and Competency. To be successful, it is crucial for family businesses and legacy families to be grounded in these pillars. The consulting team teaches each participant how to build on these ideals. Participants in the process will learn why these principles are imperative for organizational health and how they are used to address wealth and money issues in a legacy family.

How It Works

The Bork Process has been developed to be delivered to your family, your family business, or your family business organization in four distinctly different ways.

Online Course

Re-Imagining Relationships for Families in Business is an online course which you complete in your own time frame. The online course will provide video and text training focusing on the Four Pillars. In addition to the training modules, surveys are incorporated throughout the program so that you will receive an analysis depicting areas of harmony and disharmony. Re-Imagining Relationships for Families in Business provides: concepts, methods, and techniques that work miracles.

One-Day Seminar

Our one-day training seminar is conducted by members of The Bork Process Team. The training seminar is a full day of lectures and exercises designed to provide participants with the knowledge necessary to develop unity of vision and improve organizational effectiveness. Click Here to receive additional information regarding One-Day Seminars.

Two-Day Workshop:

Our two-day workshop is conducted by members of The Bork Process Team. In this two-day format, time is allotted for participants to address each topic within the Four Pillars. The additional day and the workshop format allow problem solving techniques to be developed for the participants based on their individual circumstances. Click Here to receive additional information regarding Two-Day Seminars.

A Comprehensive, Personalized Consultation to Address the Unique Needs of Your Family:

The Bork Process is custom-tailored to work with every part of the family business system — family members, company owners, executives, managers and employees. The Bork Process teaches each person in the family to understand and use the same core skills and values for increasing organizational health and performance.

  1.  To start, the consulting team conducts a comprehensive, qualitative assessment of a company’s or a family’s organizational culture, relationship dynamics and internal issues.
  2. The team designs a program to address the issues inhibiting the company’s optimum performance.
  3. The Bork Process takes participants through an in-depth self-analysis of the issues faced in your family or business; and, where and why these issues exist. It requires an unflinching commitment to do the necessary work to accomplish deep and lasting change.

During the consultation, you will also

  • Gain a comprehensive understanding of each issue in your family or business
  • Identify the negative impact some issues have on the family and the business
  • Develop the necessary skills, strategies and processes to correct these issues
  • Create and execute a concrete plan of action to transform the issues into assets

The Results

Participating in The Bork Process provides businesses a distinct competitive advantage. It improves productivity and profitability, delivering lasting results at every level in the business.

For both legacy families and family businesses, The Bork Process provides the keys to unlock the family psychology and create harmony.

The Bork Process teaches participants how to build trust, address difficult conversations, manage conflicts, collaborate as a team and achieve personal and company goals. The end result is the development of a family- or organization-wide skill set that creates stability and agility, and allows the family and the business to thrive.

Have questions about how our workshops can help your family or business? Let’s talk!

The Four Pillars— Alignment, Boundaries, Communication, and Competency

“A New Lens for Seeing Family Business” (Download Presentation PDF Format)

Alignment in a family business means building coalitions and moving toward the same target. Family businesses are resilient when family members, owners, executives, managers, and employees are united toward the same goals. Family businesses face unique issues that expose them to internal risks. Without clear strategy and leadership alignment, family businesses are vulnerable. Misalignment creates discord, tension, and conflict. Alignment creates a parallel process that overcomes complacency, increases organizational harmony, and promotes profitability.

Unclear Boundaries are the root of many problems in family business. Family businesses have three components—the family, ownership, and enterprise—where boundaries must be clear and constantly maintained. Family business leaders must define roles, responsibilities, accountability, ownership, owner and operator prerogatives, and employee responsibilities, as well as rules for handling personal matters. When your business is large enough to have non-family professionals and a board, clear boundaries prevent conflicts of interest and authority complications. Also, clear boundaries will guide the ways family members interface with the business operations and governance.

Communication is a recurring issue that owners and executives identify as a major obstacle to productivity. Clear constructive communication must always be the goal. In a business with more than 200 employees, about 14 percent* of the workweek is wasted because of poor communication between staff and management. All communication is grounded in relationships. Unless we’ve been otherwise educated, most of us unconsciously enact a style of communication we learned in our families and carry it into the workplace. Whether it’s resolving relationship issues, confronting challenges, managing conflicts, or planning for long term success, effective communication guarantees that every situation will be addressed and resolved in a thoughtful, deliberate, constructive, and comprehensive way. (*T. Harris & M. Nelson, Applied Organizational Communications: Theory and Practice in a Global Environment)

Competency is the capacity to deliver results that ensure continuity and stability. Families in business must understand how family dynamics affect sound business practice. From those making decisions in the board room to those carrying out the day-to-day operations, everyone must contribute to the success of the business by knowing how to perform his or her position at the highest level. Because of unique and subtle connections in a family business, competency standards must be clearly established, applied, reinforced and rewarded (or not) at every level in the company. Competency leadership principles and procedures must be consistent with the company strategy, while encouraging every employee to have a sense of ownership and investment, and to think and act like a leader.

Introducing David Bork


David Bork
Founder

Learn More about Family Business Pioneer David Bork