Leadership & Succession
Whether the leadership you have is the leadership the next chapter will require, and how a transition is prepared long before it announces itself.
Leadership & Succession →CT Advisory & Partners
Leadership, Governance & Continuity for Business Families
A succession has a date. What decides whether it holds was settled years earlier, and continues long afterwards.
I advise owning families, boards and chief executives on the leadership, governance and ownership questions that determine whether what has been built endures. With nothing of my own to sell into the mandate, and no side to take.
Cornelia Tänzler
Managing Partner
CT-Advisory & Partners
How I help
Board & Governance
Whether the board, its composition and the way decisions are taken still serve the company, its owners and the generation now arriving.
Board & Governance →Family & Ownership
Where a family’s expectations of what it owns are aligned, or quietly are not, and where most of the difficulty families experience actually originates.
Family & Ownership →My approach
One trusted adviser. The right expertise around the table.
You deal with me throughout. Where a question calls for expertise beyond my own, legal, tax, wealth structuring, corporate finance, psychology, independent board membership, I bring in professionals I trust and who share my standards. From that point we work as one team, and I remain responsible for the coherence of the whole.
I have nothing of my own to sell into the mandate. That independence is not incidental to the advice. It is what makes it worth having.
I work in French, English, German and Swiss German, and speak Italian. In a family enterprise, a great deal is communicated indirectly, and it is rarely communicated indirectly in a second language. Working in the language a family actually thinks in is not a convenience. It is how you hear what is not being said.
About
As an independent advisor, I work with business families to develop their own path to continuity, navigating changes in family, ownership and business across generations.
My career has been shaped by more than thirty years in leadership advisory and Executive Search, as a Partner in senior leadership roles within international firms. This work has led me to advise executives, shareholders and boards at times of significant transition, such as changes in leadership, evolving governance, the transfer of ownership or business transformation.
At the intersection of strategy, organisation and human dynamics, the experience has taught me to look beyond roles and titles. To understand the individuals who carry responsibility, their capabilities, aspirations and readiness to act, as well as the less visible factors that can influence decisions.
I bring to this work the perspective of a Family Enterprise Advisor (FEA), broadening the approach to questions of continuity and to the interplay between family, ownership and business. Every family is unique. I therefore take a tailored, multidisciplinary approach, working with the family and bringing in complementary expertise where needed.
If any of these situations echoes a question you are asking yourself, I would be glad to talk it through with you.
If you are wondering what comes next, or are already in the middle of a change, I would be happy to have a conversation with you.
It often starts with a conversation.