Situation
A business family's affairs are run by people who have never sat in the same room: the accountant, the lawyer and the manager of each company. Each sees one part. Nobody holds the whole picture, and the question of who decides next has not been asked in years.
Objective
Put the whole picture on one page, name where the risk sits, and bring the open decisions to one table with the family and its own chartered accountant and lawyer, so that nothing is decided by default.
Approach
How this desk would run it
The Family Map
One page: every entity, every owner and every decision-maker across the three branches. The whole picture in one place, before any decision is taken.
The Three Biggest Risks
The map shows where the risk is sitting. The office names the three biggest and notes which adviser must answer each. It offers no opinion of its own on tax, law or investments.
Three Decisions, Framed
Each decision becomes a short paper: the question, the options, what each adviser must answer, and the date by which the family needs to choose. The office frames. It recommends no structure.
The Adviser Table
The family's chartered accountant and lawyer sit at the same table: one agenda, one set of minutes, actions with names and dates. The family chooses its advisers, and the family decides.
The Calendar
Filings, renewals, reviews, board and family meetings, and documents that expire. One calendar, kept by one desk, so that nothing lapses.
Sequence
Indicative order of work
Phase 01
Before the first word
A conflict check, a non-disclosure agreement, then the written mandate. Detail moves only on a private, encrypted channel.
Phase 02
Map
The first seven questions are asked on that channel. The answers become the one-page map.
Phase 03
Table
The risks and the decision papers go to the family, with its chartered accountant and lawyer in the room. The family decides.
Phase 04
Calendar
What is decided is minuted. Filings, renewals, reviews and meetings go into one calendar, reviewed at an agreed interval.
Measure of Done
What the mandate is for
The Family Map
In this scenario the mandate is met when the family holds one page that shows who owns what and who decides, the three biggest risks are named, three decisions are in front of it with its own advisers at the table, and one calendar carries what follows.
ARKA coordinates and frames. It does not give tax opinions, legal advice or investment advice, does not manage or invest money, take custody of family assets or sell financial or insurance products, and does not act as trustee, executor, nominee or signatory. It recommends no structure. The family chooses its own chartered accountant and lawyer; they are engaged by the family directly or through ARKA, as the mandate sets out.
Desk
Who would run it