The Noosa Tax Intensive has returned in 2020, reinvented for a digital and safely socially-distant world. Australia’s premier SME event, the 28th Noosa Tax Intensive is split across two destinations, in Noosa, QLD and Terrigal, NSW, and promises an excellent line up of tax experts from across the profession.
One such expert is Professor Justin Craig of Bond University, who will kick off the program with his insights into family owned-business and what makes it work.
“In developing the programme this year, as a committee, we felt drawn towards how family-owned businesses operate through & beyond a crisis. With COVID-19 being a crisis like no other and likely to have a long term impact, we wanted to introduce delegates to the latest emerging thinking about how family businesses can achieve sustained success both through and beyond 2020,” Paul Banister, CTA, Chair, Noosa Tax Intensive Organising Committee said.
“Professor Craig is a leading global thinker surrounding what makes business-owing families tick. His application of practical entrepreneurial experience and academic know-how to this topic will be both fascinating and thought provoking.”
Justin, who has a long history of combining an academic skillset with an entrepreneurial mindset, will be speaking from the Noosa location, with his keynote address, Continuing differently: Building trust in decision-making teams, livestreamed to delegates in Terrigal.
“All families differ but are similar. Likewise, business-owning families are the same, but very different. By extension, the businesses they own and operate differ significantly. That is what makes understanding them both interesting and challenging,” he said.
“Initially, family business scholars and their advisors focused on the difference between family firms and nonfamily firms. In so doing, they tended to assume homogeneity among family firms to produce generalizable findings. Inevitably, over time, this assumption was questioned, and contemporary approaches to understanding family firms are driven by appreciating their heterogeneousness.”
Justin’s keynote address looks at how successful business-owning families commit to the development and implementation of four independent but interdependent plans.
Justin outlined the four different plans as the:
He said these plans, “provide much needed accountability in the family, ownership and business systems that make up the complex world that is the landscape for business owning families.”
“Building and maintaining trust and a focus on continuity is an ongoing challenge, for all.”
By understanding the four plans outlined above, decision-making teams are able to configure their own way forward.
“Successful leadership start by considering that planning is not about control, but about trust. Then, they think about laying out the four plans and deciding where to start to concentrate their efforts. They build trust by having a plan for the plans,” Justin said.
There’s plenty to learn from the session, which is bursting with insights on the approaches that successful business-owning families use to diagnose and plan in order to survive and thrive.
“The aim of the game is to ultimately build governance that contributes to there being trust within, between, and among the team of decision-making teams. As the business evolves into a portfolio of businesses in multiple asset classes, there is a need to understand that with this comes an increasing amount of complexity and uncertainty,” Justin said.
“While in the early stages of the business, the founder and typically several trusted executives or advisors were able to make unanimous decisions as they had aligned experiences and aspirations, as the business grew into multiple businesses and the revenues, profits, and challenges increased, there needs to be consideration of diverse views and the requirement for different governance structures.”
“This year’s “Noosa” is designed to inform delegates about the key tax and governance issues that are certain to challenge business-owning families and their advisers in the year ahead,” said Banister.
“Practitioners will not only benefit from some great content – they’ll also be able to take advantage of the rare 2020 opportunity of enjoying a face-to-face premium signature event in the company of industry friends and colleagues.”
This year, we have reinvented the Noosa Tax Intensive experience. Over 12 - 13 November 2020, delegates will enjoy a blend of live-streamed presentations and in-person, interactive workshops and networking opportunities, hosted at the Sofitel Noosa Resort & Crowne Plaza Terrigal.
The program takes members on a deep dive into the key tax and governance issues that SMEs, especially family businesses, must be aware of to flourish through and beyond the COVID-19 crisis.
“This event will be too good to miss, whether you can make it to Noosa itself or the beautiful Terrigal. In our COVID-Safe world, there’s limited spots so register now.”
Register now Download brochure Find out more
He has held the position of Professor of Entrepreneurship and Family Enterprise at Bond University since 2019.
Prior to pursuing an academic career in the late 1990s, Justin worked for one of Queensland’s prominent entrepreneurs and in entrepreneurial ventures with members of his family.