The first independent director

Where a board is entirely family plus the group finance director, it usually meets when there is something to record rather than something to decide. The decision itself was taken elsewhere, often over a family lunch, and the meeting exists to write it down.

An independent director changes the room in three ways. There is someone present who can ask a question a family member cannot ask without it being read as a move against a relative. The non-family executives acquire somewhere their view can land. And an outside lender or investor, who will ask who is accountable, gets an answer.

It is also the least reversible-feeling of this work, which is why families put it off longest. Two things make the appointment easier to make: a written term with a review date, so the decision is not permanent, and a profile drawn from what the family lacks rather than from who the family knows.

The rest of the change is procedural and does more than it sounds. A calendar. An agenda pack five days ahead. A written schedule of matters reserved to shareholders, so the board knows what is genuinely its own.