Insights for Family Enterprise Boards from the 2025 Private Company Director Compensation Survey

Across many Family Enterprise boards, a familiar pattern takes hold: The agenda is thorough, the reporting is sound, and oversight is steady. But when conversations turn to the long view — risk tied to strategy, choices that shape ownership, decisions that will be lived with by the next generation — the dialogue constricts. Directors and owners alike become more measured, questions are more carefully phrased, and long-held assumptions remain largely intact. This doesn’t signal a lack of discipline or commitment, only that the stakes are different when decisions carry the weight of legacy.

In Family Enterprises, decisions are rarely only commercial. They shape continuity, control, and relationships over time. Caution is often appropriate, but when it begins to limit how broadly boards examine context, explore future risk, or share their full perspective, it can quietly constrain the board’s contribution.

We see this pattern in our work with private company and Family Enterprise boards. It also shows up clearly in the data.

The 2025 Private Company Director Compensation (PCDC) Survey is a national collaboration led by Compensation Governance Partners, in partnership with Watson Board Advisors, Family Enterprise Canada, and The Directors College. The partnership reflects a shared commitment to strengthening governance quality, building director capability, and grounding insight in how boards actually operate.

Together, we set out to understand how privately owned companies in Canada structure, compensate, and govern their boards, and how governance practices are evolving. The survey gathered insights from 186 organizations across sectors and ownership types, offering a broad view of private company board practices across Canada.

The survey data shows private company boards are generally strong on core oversight. Where they differ is in how widely they open the conversation before decisions are made. The findings point to four connected windows where boards can either expand or constrain their effectiveness: context, foresight, contribution, and generative work. These windows reflect how directors engage with the enterprise. They are not steps or stages, but governance capabilities that develop over time, often under pressure

The Context Window

For Family Enterprises, context extends beyond markets and regulation. It includes ownership structure, family expectations, history, and often unspoken assumptions about control, and continuity. These forces shape how decisions are made long before they reach the boardroom.

When boards focus primarily on performance and compliance, they can miss how ownership dynamics and family influence are affecting judgment — especially when the business appears stable. Paying attention to both internal and external context helps boards see where the business environment, ownership interests, and the family system are aligned, and where tensions may be building quietly below the surface.

• 62% of participating governance boards monitor organizational culture
• 56% of participating governance boards monitor external environmental trends
• Over a third do not formally track either

The Foresight Window

Family Enterprises often carry success stories that shape today’s assumptions. Those stories can steady the organization or limit its imagination. The survey data shows many boards are comfortable reviewing risk but less engaged in questioning the beliefs underneath strategy.

For Family Enterprise boards, foresight means creating space to ask questions that may feel uncomfortable:

• What assumptions are we protecting because they are familiar?
• Which risks feel unacceptable because of legacy, not logic?
• How might this strategy strain the enterprise five or ten years out?

Foresight is not prediction. It’s disciplined imagination about what could come next.

Nearly a third of participating fiduciary boards do not identify the key risks facing their organization, and more than half don’t see the board as having a role in helping the company “think bigger.” This suggests a foresight opportunity. It seems that many participating boards are comfortable reviewing risk but less engaged in exploring what could change in terms of the assumptions underlying their strategy, for example — or how the company might respond.

Boards hold a unique vantage point that lets them see across time and context. Using that perspective to test assumptions, explore alternative futures, and pressure-test strategy helps organizations prepare, not just react. Foresight work doesn’t replace oversight; it strengthens it. Scenario planning, tabletop exercises, and structured “what if” discussions give companies the tools to navigate uncertainty with agility.

• 38% of governance boards do not identify key risks
• 57% of boards do not see a role in helping the organization “think bigger”

The Contribution Window

Role clarity is one of the hardest — and most consequential — governance disciplines in Family Enterprises. Directors may be family members, non-family independents, owners, or former executives. Without care, the boardroom can begin to feel like an extension of the kitchen table, where history, authority, and affection travel easily across roles.

When that line blurs, boards do not necessarily overstep — often they hesitate. Family directors may hold back to preserve relationships. Non-family directors may defer to ownership influence. Both can become cautious about challenging management or testing assumptions, especially when decisions carry family implications.

Contribution improves when roles are clear enough to allow challenge without fear of overreach. The data suggests many boards have this clarity on paper but still underuse their ability to add strategic value in practice.

Many participating fiduciary boards continue to define their role narrowly. The data shows they focus on compliance and accountability but less on partnership. More than a quarter of boards indicated they don’t see themselves as a sounding board for the CEO, and roughly one in four don’t believe they provide advice to management based on their subject-matter expertise. At the same time, only 38% of participating boards hold joint planning or offsite sessions with management.

Without structured time together, board and management miss opportunities to share context, test assumptions, and align on priorities before decisions are made. Boards and management have distinct roles, but both generate the most value for the company when they work collaboratively toward the same goals with clarity and respect. Contribution happens in the boardroom and between meetings, when directors offer insight that helps management think and prepare.

• 27% of boards do not see themselves as a sounding board for the CEO
• 28% of boards do not advise management based on their subject-matter expertise
• 38% of governance boards hold joint planning or offsite sessions with management

The Generative Conversation Window

Family Enterprise boards are navigating multiple systems at once — the business, the ownership group, and the family itself. Decisions must work not only commercially, but across relationships and generations. In that context, the board’s role isn’t only to make decisions, but to help make sense of what the enterprise is really trying to build and protect.

Generative conversations allow the board and management to step back from solutions and explore meaning — how emerging issues connect to purpose, ownership intent, and long-term continuity. These discussions are not decision-focused; they set the stage for stronger decisions later, forming shared understanding around priorities and strengthening alignment in enterprises where legacy and change must be held at the same time.

High-performing boards practise generative governance, which focuses on sense-making and framing questions before strategy is set. Generative discussions explore what issues mean, why they matter, and how they connect to purpose. They are not decision-focused discussions but rather set the stage for more effective decision-making later. Generative discussions are especially important when uncertainty is high and the environment is dynamic – like today.

Alignment and collaboration come from working toward the same goals with a shared understanding of context and priorities. When animated by curiosity, Boards and Management teams can explore together trends, environmental shifts and possibilities making complexity more manageable.

• Fiduciary governance: Ensures accountability and stewardship
• Strategic governance: Guides direction and allocates resources
• Generative governance: Shapes meaning, explores purpose, and reframes questions

Closing Reflection

The 2025 Private Company Director Compensation Survey highlights four windows where boards can evolve how they govern: context, foresight, contribution, and generative work. Each reflects a different way boards can expand understanding and strengthen judgment, and for Family Enterprise boards, they offer opportunities to bring perspective, curiosity, and discipline to decisions that matter across generations.

The full findings, including detailed director compensation data, are explored in the 2025 Private Company Director Compensation Survey report: https://www.compgovpartners.com/private-company-director-compensation