Family Businesses
Build Confidence in your Family- or Owner-Managed Business
Relevant, creative and powerful support for family offices and family businesses - and those that regard themselves as “family” in professional services, teams and more.
We work with traditional family businesses, family-like partnerships, founders, and owner-managed enterprises.
The insights, research, and tools we offer apply to all types of organisations navigating the overlap between family and business.
Unite generations with clarity. Secure the future with confidence.
Family and business often blend — bringing pride, pressure, and complexity. The GLAS Method® helps families align head and heart across generations, so decisions honour both legacy and growth.
Grounded in The GLAS Elements Framework™, it gives you a shared language and structure for clarity, confidence, and connection — keeping the family strong and the business moving forward together..
"Family businesses can teach us everything we need to know about life. It's not just family businesses that need to consider succession, it's every organisation, person and family; or to put it another way, ensuring sustainable success for the future is imperative." Dani Saveker - CEO & Founder (The GLAS Group)
Dani Saveker - CEO & Founder (The GLAS Group)
Magazine cover 2004 - Dani with the first product she designed for her family’s business.
The GLAS Method® is founded by Dani Saveker who has been the CEO of her own family’s business.
Having been a fourth generation family member in a 106 year old business, she had the intention of creating an independent business with a community to inspire and support families working, and living, in and around business. Little did she know at the time that her quest to help family businesses, like her own, would shape something much more profound.
The GLAS Method®
The Business of Family and The 7 Elements of Family Business™
While not a comfortable or popular statement, Dani Saveker has long believed that much of the traditional family business consulting world is outdated — still rooted in models developed in the 1970s and 1980s.
Businesses are not what they were then — and families certainly aren’t either. Our world continues to evolve, and it demands a new approach. The GLAS Method® was created to meet that need — and has since become much more.
Today, we help family and family-like organisations navigate bold, dynamic journeys that include succession, alignment, communication, and complex family dynamics.
The most common work we undertake with family and owner-managed businesses is to help them — individually and collectively — build confidence and clarity across all areas of the business, increasing and leveraging asset value. This clarity supports long-term sustainability, whether the business remains family-owned, transitions to management, or prepares for an exit.
Here’s a quick overview of The 7 Elements of Family Business™ — dimensions present in every family, business, and system.
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Identity
01
Know who you are — and where you’ve come from.
Clarify the story, values, and vision that connect generations and guide how the family and business move forward. -
Relate
02
Keep relationships honest and healthy.
Face the hard conversations with empathy and respect — building trust that can hold both family and business together. -
Activity & Results
03
Work together with focus and intention.
Align actions and roles so that effort turns into progress — not pressure or conflict. -
External Impact
04
See how you shape — and are shaped by — the world around you.
Honour your legacy while staying open to new ideas, partners, and possibilities. -
Purpose
05
Stay connected to your ‘why’.
Ensure the family’s values and vision remain the compass that drives both business success and personal fulfilment. -
Leading
06
Share responsibility with clarity and care.
Balance authority, governance and collaboration — nurturing the next generation of leaders with trust and transparency. -
Motivation
07
Understand what drives each generation.
Uncover the values, ambitions, and needs that keep the family and the business thriving — together.
Family Businesses
Transforming alignment, culture, and dynamics from the inside out.
Family enterprises are living systems — made up of people, values, and relationships that span generations. When they thrive, they blend purpose and performance in a way few organisations can. But maintaining that harmony takes clarity, communication, and trust.
The GLAS Method® brings a fresh approach to family business advisory — one that combines structure with sensitivity, and insight with empathy. We go beyond traditional consultancy to uncover the patterns, principles, and dynamics that shape your culture — helping families and teams see clearly, connect deeply, and move forward together.
Whether supporting family members in or out of the business, non-family leaders, or the culture as a whole, we help align vision, strengthen communication, and build strategies everyone can stand behind. The result is a more cohesive and confident organisation — one where relationships and results evolve in balance.
Behind every successful family business lies alignment — between people, purpose, and progress. Yet as families evolve, so do their dynamics, ambitions, and ways of working. The GLAS Method® brings structure and understanding to this evolution — helping families see clearly, communicate openly, and build strategies that honour both legacy and growth.
Through tailored programmes, facilitation, and creative outputs, we strengthen culture, leadership, and governance — turning complexity into clarity, and relationships into lasting progress.
Succession, Transition &
Future-Proofing
Creating clarity, confidence, and continuity for the future.
Succession is often misunderstood - it’s not just about exit plans or handovers, but about shaping a sustainable future where purpose and people remain aligned. At GLAS, we prefer to think in terms of future-proofing - ensuring the next chapter of your enterprise is grounded in clarity, trust, and shared vision.
Transitions can be complex, emotionally charged, and full of unseen dynamics. The GLAS Method® brings structure and sensitivity to this process - helping families, boards, and leadership teams navigate change with honesty, care, and strategic foresight.
We focus on both the organisation and the individuals within it - ensuring each person finds clarity in their role, contribution, and future. Through facilitated conversations, vision alignment, and scenario planning, we help you unlock new possibilities, reveal hidden strengths, and create a roadmap that honours legacy while enabling growth.
Whether you’re exploring options, planning an exit, or preparing the next generation, GLAS provides the framework, neutrality, and partnership to turn uncertainty into confident direction - ensuring the business, and the people behind it, continue to thrive.
How We Help Family Businesses
Clarity, connection, and continuity for your most valuable asset — the people behind the business.
At GLAS, we help family enterprises bring structure, strategy, and sensitivity to the areas that matter most — alignment, culture, communication, and the future.
Our approach blends facilitation, design, and leadership development into a coherent framework that strengthens both the business and the family behind it.
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See beneath the surface to what really matters.
Every engagement begins with a Discovery Audit - an in-depth workshop and written report that uncover not just the visible issues, but the underlying dynamics, values, and opportunities shaping your business.
It becomes the foundation for strategy, alignment, and the next phase of growth. -
Build leadership that protects values and drives vision.
A 12-month development experience designed specifically for leadership teams within family businesses - combining practical tools, reflective learning, and the GLAS Method® framework.
It strengthens alignment between business strategy and family values, helping both family and non-family leaders grow with clarity and confidence. -
Create a living blueprint for your future.
This facilitated process guides families through transition, culture, and governance - culminating in the creation of a Charter or Blueprint.
This document becomes a reference point for decision-making, communication, leadership, and succession -ensuring everyone moves forward with shared understanding and purpose. -
Personal clarity, collective confidence.
We provide tailored coaching and advisory support - whether for next-generation leaders, during transitions, or as a neutral sounding board.Our work often leads to the creation of Legacy and Charter documents - tangible outputs that capture the essence, structure, and future of both the business and the family.Each process can evolve into a ‘living document’ - from a private legacy book to a suite of strategic visuals - articulating the story, values, and direction of the business.
These outputs often serve multiple purposes, from communication and governance to marketing and cultural
In Search of Understanding
The work that Dani and her team have undertaken over several years, focused on building personal, relationship, business and market alignment - as well as building identity and purpose; which are essential to all family businesses.
Bourn out of the frustrations Dani felt having been fourth generation in her family’s manufacturing business, she wanted to provide the right understanding, support and inspiration.
She also felt that the existing thinking around family business was out of date and irrelevant in a fast changing world, and created FIB to tackle this. Alongside her “day job” within FIB, she continued to seek understanding around the dynamics of both families and business, both separately and combined. This research was eventually what formed the basis of GLAS; the Global Life Alignment System. To this day, Dani and her team are committed to an openness and curiosity for how the world, business and society is changing and evolving - to ensure the best and most relevant support is available to clients.
GLAS became far more than a family business tool in 2015, and is now the overarching framework for families and businesses, sports teams, wealth management, sport and nutrition, legal services and projects - to name but a few areas. We often refer to GLAS as providing the structure for infinite applications.
We still work with many family businesses (as well as clients in many other contexts), but all under the GLAS brand. This includes the option of developing the GLAS framework for other advisors to use with their clients under a licence, whether that is a family office, wealth advisors, accountancy or legal firms.
What our Clients Say
The sale of our business finally completed yesterday — and I genuinely don’t think it would have happened the way it did without your help.
Your guidance gave us the clarity and alignment to focus our efforts on the right goal at the right time. Without that, we likely wouldn’t have agreed collectively to pursue a sale, and we certainly wouldn’t have secured our valuation before COVID.
That focus and timing made all the difference — shortening the process by years and protecting the true value of what we’d built.
2nd Gen - Family Business East Midlands
Director and Shareholder
This project turned into a huge piece of work, but it’s already proving invaluable.
I truly believe it marks a turning point in our company’s history — and it’s one that you made possible. Thank you for guiding us through it.
5th Gen - Family Business West Midlands
Director and Shareholder
Working with Dani and the GLAS Method really helped us to understand and align our plans for the future as well as ensuring we were equipped to communicate better.
Dani has an experienced, calm and thoughtful approach that creates space for everyone to be heard and facilitates open and honest dialogue, with actionable outcomes. Personally, it has helped me understand my own role more clearly and given us tools to move forward together with more confidence and clarity.
Josie Morris MBE
2nd Generation CEO