Family Businesses in the GCC – The Next Chapter

Global economy is always in a state of transition, yet the pace of change has been unprecedented during the last few years. A global pandemic, supply chain disruptions, big data growth and human capital mismatch have created unforeseen challenges for the privately held businesses. Traditionally, the family owned businesses like to grow organically, yet at some point they reach a stage where they need a radical strategic review of their entire business universe.

The most critical factor is taking an integrated, 360 degree view of the entire business spectrum. It is essential because there are a number of global and regional economic forces at play which create a complex and dynamic situation for business owners. The fragmented and piecemeal way of looking at projects, business lines and investment strategies could rather be counterproductive. There is so much interplay between technology, finance, investment, business and governance, that delinking one from the another could lead to more challenges and entanglement.

One approach is to create a strategy and governance vertical without any operational responsibilities, ?which first undertakes a fresh, unbiased view on how business need to be managed going forward and benchmark that to review the existing state of doing things. Another option is to create organization-specific investment dashboards for privately held businesses which give a classified, purpose-built analysis of risk and return scenarios.

In any case, family owned and privately held businesses must gear up for the next decade of economic and business challenges, as it would determine the course of their future generations.