Albert Einstein’s famous quip that “in the midst of every crisis lies great opportunity” certainly applies to Wendy Sage-Hayward’s career path.
Working for Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) in Vancouver in the late 1980s, she recalls, was all about building expertise in organizational change management and leadership development. Her family’s century-old agricultural business, meanwhile, was humming along in the United States with its second generation at the helm.
Then came the crisis: Three months after her paternal grandmother’s Christmas Day passing, her father died unexpectedly.
“Amidst all the grief, my mother, three sisters and I suddenly became beneficial owners of a business with 30-plus family members—aunts, uncles, cousins and distant cousins—some of whom we had never met. The business hadn’t even transitioned fully to my father’s generation, so there was no planning or preparation for us,” Sage-Hayward says.
Initially structured as a last-man-standing trust that the sisters inherited as beneficiaries, the business was eventually converted into a 50-cousin partnership spanning generations three through five.
“This personal experience brought me into the family enterprise field in a significant way,” Sage-Hayward says.
“Significant” might be an understatement. As well as serving as a director of her family’s firm, Sage-Hayward went on to become an adjunct professor at the Business Families Centre in the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business. She then earned her Family Enterprise Advisor (FEA) certification and helped design the program enroute to being named its academic director and one of the lead instructors for Family Enterprise Canada.
Now a senior consultant in the Vancouver office of the Chicago-based Family Business Consulting Group (FBCG), she specializes in advising family enterprises, boards and business leaders on governance, leadership, next-generation development and conflict resolution.
In between all of that, she has found time to co-write two books on family enterprise continuity, and to co-found Sage Hayward Vineyards on nearby Saturna Island with her husband and in-laws. She is also launching a new business in online education on the subject of family firm continuity called mGen Education Inc.
Sage-Hayward recently spent part of an afternoon with Canadian Family Offices discussing the current shortage of professionals in her field, the evolving skillsets required to support business families, and the push to help these families understand how artificial intelligence (AI), climate change and other disruptive factors will impact their businesses as the rising generation takes over.
What shaped your attitudes and approaches to wealth? Who are your greatest influences?
Navigating the complex leadership transition that my family’s business faced, while also honouring its legacy, was a deeply personal and eye-opening experience. It showed me the intricacies and challenges of family enterprises, and inspired me to dedicate my consulting work to this field. Around that time I was teaching at the Sauder School of Business and met Judi Cunningham, who ran the Business Families Centre there. Her work inspired me to focus on family enterprises more formally, blending my background in organizational change and family systems psychology with the dynamics of family businesses.
As a result, I pursued the Directors Education Program at the Institute of Corporate Directors, which opened doors to teaching communication in the boardroom and learning more about exploring family business governance issues. It wasn’t long before I fully dedicated myself to working with multi-generational families, guiding them through the complexities of ownership, leadership and relationships.
Today, my approach centres on the three-circle model—where family, ownership and business intersect—which offers families a clear framework to navigate their unique challenges. Helping families find harmony in these areas is not only professionally rewarding but deeply personal for me. Family is at the core of everything I value, making this work both challenging and incredibly fulfilling..
What do you find most challenging about this kind of work?
There’s a shortage of professionals specializing in family enterprise advisory services. Even though FBCG is one of the largest consulting groups of its kind, we only have about 30 advisors. The demand far exceeds our capacity.
It’s also a highly specialized field, requiring both depth and breadth of knowledge across various disciplines, such as family dynamics, leadership, governance and technical aspects like understanding the importance of shareholder agreements or trust documents.
Building capacity is a big part of the reason Family Enterprise Canada developed the FEA program, but there’s still a huge gap, particularly in the ‘softer’ aspects of family transitions such as communication, conflict resolution, leadership development and family governance. These are just as important as the technical aspects of transition.
One advisor alone cannot possibly fulfill all of the needs of a family business working its way through a multi-generational transition. We all need to collaborate with experts in fields other than our own, like insurance, wealth management and philanthropy to provide comprehensive support for families to help make their continuity journey smoother and more successful.
What is holding the financial services industry back in addressing family enterprise issues?
A lot of people don’t fully understand the scale, importance and complexity of family enterprises. They represent a massive market, yet they are often misunderstood. Many people think about family business as just business, and overlook the family element. Even in business schools, family business education is lacking. At one point, there were around 600 business schools in the U.S., and only 10 per cent offered any kind of training focused on family businesses.
Can you provide examples of prominent issues you’ve been dealing with lately?
One is the role of ownership in family enterprises. Too often, non-operating owners in a family business are seen as passive participants, akin to shareholders in a public company. They think their role is limited to receiving dividends, but that’s not true. In a family business, ownership is far more active and strategic, and helping families understand that is critical.
Another issue is the transition itself. Family business transitions don’t happen overnight, they take decades. If the right preparations aren’t made during those years, the actual handover can be extremely difficult. If families haven’t prepared properly, it’s not just the business that suffers but also the family relationships.
Family bonds can fray or break entirely during these transitions, which is why it’s essential to focus not just on the business side but also on maintaining family cohesion.
Without naming names, could you share an example of your team at FBCG helping to solve a problem for a family business?
We worked with a family transitioning from Generation 2 to Generation 3 that suffered from a historical gender bias in leadership, which made conversations around succession difficult. One family member from the rising generation had the confidence of Generation 2 and was a perfect fit for leadership, but because of past biases, the family struggled to move forward with the transition.
To address this, we shifted the conversation away from gender and focused on the broader question: “Do you want a family leader? If so, why? And what kind of family leader do you want and need to take you into the future?” This opened up a more neutral dialogue and allowed the family to recognize that the individual in question was the right choice for leadership, regardless of gender.
Over the next five years, this person stepped into the leadership role and has excelled, but it took reframing the conversation to make that transition possible.
What does the FEA of the future look like, and what skillsets will be most in demand?
FEAs will be defined by adaptability and broad knowledge across multiple domains. Most FEAs will still be professionals in their own fields—wealth managers, accountants, lawyers, insurance professionals and the like—but they will bring a deeper understanding of family dynamics and transitions into their work. They’ll be able to have more informed and meaningful conversations with their clients about all aspects of family business transitions, not just the technical ones.
Family Enterprise Canada is developing new programs to help families and their advisors build capacity for the future. For example, one new one I am especially excited about is called “Thriving in a Changing World,” which focuses on helping families and their advisors understand how global trends like AI, sustainability and climate change will impact their businesses.
The FEA of the future needs to help families navigate these massive shifts and understand how to pivot in response. The FEA program also provides a valuable network of advisors who can support families with specialized expertise, allowing advisors to bring in other experts to their team when needed.
Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.
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