Global Family Business Council (GFBC) – Global Council for the Promotion of International Trade (2024)

Promote Sustainable Growth: Equip family businesses with tools, strategies, and frameworks to achieve long-term growth and profitability while preserving their values and legacy.

Facilitate Generational Transition: Provide guidance and best practices to ensure seamless leadership transitions and succession planning, fostering continuity across generations.

Encourage Innovation and Technology Adoption: Support family enterprises in embracing innovation and leveraging technology to remain competitive in a globalized economy.

Foster Leadership Development: Offer tailored leadership programs and mentorship opportunities to cultivate visionary leaders within family businesses.

Strengthen Governance and Accountability: Advocate for robust governance structures to balance family interests with professional management, ensuring sustainable decision-making.

Enhance Global Market Access: Provide platforms and opportunities for family businesses to expand their reach into international markets and explore cross-border collaborations.

Promote Diversity and Inclusion: Encourage equitable representation of women, youth, and other underrepresented groups in leadership and decision-making roles within family enterprises.

Facilitate Networking and Collaboration: Build a global network of family businesses to share experiences, challenges, and best practices, fostering mutual learning and growth.

Celebrate Family Business Excellence: Recognize and honor exceptional achievements and contributions of family-owned businesses in various sectors.

Advocate for Policy Support: Engage with governments and policymakers to create favorable environments and incentives that support family businesses and their unique needs.

Through these objectives, the Global Family Business Council strives to empower family enterprises to navigate challenges, embrace opportunities, and thrive as pillars of economic and social development worldwide.

Delivery structures

The Steering Committee is alliance's highest decision-making body, with representatives from all constituencies. The global leadership group is a high-level group of alliance leaders who fight for and mobilise greater political commitment to the alliance's Guiding Principles and goals. A High-Level Chair leads the Council. The Secretariat assists the Steering Committee in putting the alliance Strategy, roadmaps, and workplans into action. Each alliance constituency should have one focal point in each partner country, whose job it is to increase country-level involvement and coordinate the particular constituency at the national level.

Balance of roles

Political, technical, logistical, advocacy, and strategic functions are all needed to carry out the partnership's agenda. Wherever possible, these functions are laid out in the alliance partnership Results Framework and associated workplans. The goal of the alliance Secretariat is to assist alliance partners in implementing the strategy. All alliance partners share responsibility for the strategy's implementation. The alliance Secretariat and its high-level Chief Executive Officer are well-resourced to ensure that all partners, partnership activities, and governance structures are well-coordinated and supported.

Multi-stakeholder workplans

In accordance with the alliance partnership Results Framework, each entity in the alliance structure shall design its own workplan. The alliance Secretariat will be instrumental in assisting constituencies, regions, and cross-contituency Work Groups in developing these workplans. As outlined in the Results Framework, a similar set of indicators will be used throughout. The Global Leadership Council, the alliance Steering Committee, the secretariat, partners, and constituency groups will all benefit from independent annual partnership health-checks of partnering efficacy.

Learning, review and course correction

High-level management of this approach is provided by the alliance partnership Steering Committee and its two sub-committees, which include annual performance reviews and revisions to the alliance partnership Results Framework. This learning and review process necessitates a robust knowledge management function that draws on evidence of what works and doesn't work in practise, including both quantitative data and contextual narrative, as well as self-reported and third-party inputs. To improve accountability and maintain a focus on course corrections while also finding, discussing, and celebrating successful practises, the process must stay open and transparent.

MULTISTAKEHOLDERS EFFORTS

Multistakeholders efforts are collaborations between businesses, civil society and other stakeholders that seek to address issues of mutual concern, including human rights and sustainability.All hands must be on deck to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals. It necessitates the collaboration of various sectors and players by pooling financial resources, information, and skills. Cross-sectoral and innovative multi-stakeholder partnerships will play a critical role in getting us to where we need to be by 2030 in our new development era, with 17 intertwined Sustainable Development Goals and 169 associated targets serving as a blueprint for achieving the sustainable Future We Want.Governments, intergovernmental organisations, major groups, and other stakeholders voluntarily undertake multi-stakeholder initiatives for sustainable development, with the goal of contributing to the implementation of intergovernmentally agreed development goals and commitments, as well as the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

SUSTAINABILITY OF SERVICE AND ACTIONS

It is the practice of reducing your demand for natural resources by making sure that you replace what you use to the best of your ability. It is made up of three pillars: the economy, society, and the environment.We work with businesses to integrate sustainability into every aspect of their operations so they may develop new sources of value and live according to their ideals.Organizations must now demonstrate that they are purposeful about sustainability, hold strong ethical standards, and operate responsibly in everything they do as stakeholders demand more environmental, social, and governance (ESG) efforts, regulations tighten, and consumers increasingly expect brands to take action.Companies and brands are increasingly looking to their partners—as well as technology and innovation—to help them incorporate sustainability and make substantial changes that benefit business, society, and the environment.Now is the time for collaboration—for business to join forces with government and society to reinvent, rebuild, and reshape our global economy so that everyone benefits.

LEAVING NO-ONE BEHIND

The primary, transformative promise of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goals is to leave no one behind (LNOB) (SDGs). It expresses all UN Member States' resolve to end poverty in all of its forms, eliminate discrimination and exclusion, and reduce inequities and vulnerabilities that leave people behind and weaken individual and collective potential.The pledge to leave no one behind is a commitment to act explicitly to ensure that those who have been left behind can catch up to those who have experienced greater progress.Extremely impoverished and marginalised groups are sometimes invisible, and as a result, development programmes are frequently disregarded. As a result, individuals who might most benefit from economic improvements brought about by development programmes are left out. But who are these people who are currently being left out of development programmes? And how can we be sure that our own initiatives reach the people who need them the most? These are some of the topics we debate in the Leave No One Behind Platform, along with others.

TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY

Transparency ensures that information is available that can be used to measure the authorities' performance and to guard against any possible misuse of powers. In that sense, transparency serves to achieve accountability, which means that authorities can be held responsible for their actions.

EVIDENCE-BASED DESICION-MAKING

Evidence-based decision making is a process for making the best decisions possible using the evidence available. It avoids decision making that is based on gut feeling, intuition, or instinct and instead relies on data and facts.

INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATION AND AID EFFECTIVENESS

Ownership: Developing countries are in charge of their own progress.Alignment: Development assistance must be in line with the policies, structures, and procedures of the recipient countries.Harmonization: Development partners of donor nations must coordinate their efforts.Managing for results: Management must be focused on achieving objectives.Mutual accountability: All parties must be held accountable to each other.