Thank you to Vern Glaser, Jennifer Sloan, and Matt Knight for this week’s FFI Practitioner article about intelligently implementing AI in a family enterprise, with strategies for both family enterprise advisors and their client families.

“Business families with AI are going to replace business families without AI.”

This stark adaptation of a common AI adage—“AI won’t replace humans—but humans with AI will replace humans without AI”¹—was coined by the Alberta Business Family Institute to capture the existential challenge facing family enterprises today. While 32% of all companies report active AI implementation according to PwC’s 2024 Global NextGen Survey,² nearly half of family businesses (49%) have either banned AI outright or haven’t begun exploring it. Only 7% have implemented these technologies anywhere in their operations.

This is not merely a technology gap—it’s a potential competitive crisis that threatens the very advantages family enterprises have traditionally leveraged: close customer relationships, quality focus, and adaptive capacity. The irony? These distinctive strengths could be significantly enhanced rather than compromised by thoughtful AI adoption.

Family enterprise advisors face a critical opportunity: helping these enterprises navigate AI implementation while preserving their unique character and values. This article proposes a framework using three complementary roles—digital assistant, data wizard, and creative coach—to provide a structured pathway for integrating AI while strengthening the distinctive qualities that define successful family enterprises.

AI as a Digital Assistant: Enhancing Operational Efficiency

The first and most accessible role for AI is that of a digital assistant, handling routine administrative tasks that traditionally consume valuable time. For family enterprises hesitant about new technology adoption, this approach offers a low-risk entry point with immediate benefits in tasks including the below:

• Meeting transcription and summary generation
• Calendar scheduling and expense management
• Document organization and retrieval

An example comes from a second-generation family office that implemented AI-powered meeting transcription services. This seemingly modest implementation reportedly reduced administrative time by 15 hours per week for key family executives, allowing them to refocus on nurturing customer relationships and guiding long-term strategy. The system automatically organized meeting notes, flagged action items, and maintained searchable records while preserving confidentiality—a critical concern for most family enterprises.

Tips for Advisors

When introducing the digital assistant concept, advisors can position it as “administrative amplification” rather than automation. They can help clients identify specific administrative pain points where AI can provide immediate relief while emphasizing how this creates space for the relationship-building activities that truly differentiate their enterprise. An advisor can consider facilitating a workshop where family members can experience low-risk AI assistant tools firsthand, demystifying the technology while demonstrating tangible benefits.

AI as a Data Wizard: Enabling Better Decision-Making

Moving beyond administrative efficiency, AI’s second role can be to serve as a data wizard—a powerful analytical tool that offers family enterprises several strategic applications:

• Customer relationship management and pattern recognition,
• Financial planning and generational scenario analysis,
• Supply chain optimization and risk assessment,
• Operational process improvement, and
• Market trend identification.

Consider a second-generation family business in the construction industry that applied AI analysis to their customer support database containing over 8,000 help desk tickets. The system revealed previously undetected patterns in ticket volumes, response times, and common issues that conventional reporting had missed. Crucially, the family implemented AI as decision support rather than decision replacement, maintaining their authority over final choices while benefiting from enhanced analysis.

Tips for Advisors

When guiding family enterprises toward data-driven applications, advisors can focus on connecting AI analytical capabilities to the client’s specific long-term priorities. Advisors can start by facilitating a session to identify which decisions would benefit most from enhanced data analysis, particularly those with multigenerational implications. They can consider developing a “decision rights matrix” with clients that clearly delineates which decisions remain exclusively with family members versus those that can be enhanced by AI analysis.

AI as a Creative Coach: Driving Innovation While Preserving Values

The third and perhaps most sophisticated role for AI is that of a creative coach—an intelligent thinking partner that can enhance innovation across many domains:

• Product innovation and development,
• Marketing strategy formulation,
• Brand positioning and messaging,
• Customer experience enhancement, and
• Design concept exploration and testing.

The authors’ work as family enterprise advisors illustrates this potential. When partnering with a third-generation manufacturing business, they deployed AI as a collaborative thinking partner during the strategic planning process. By using AI to apply strategic frameworks to their specific industry context, the system generated comprehensive competitive analyses and identified distinctive family-business resources that could fuel innovative growth strategies—all while maintaining alignment with their core values.

Tips for Advisors

The creative coach role requires especially nuanced facilitation. It is important for an advisor to position him- or herself as the values translator who helps family members articulate their unique principles, heritage, and aspirations in ways that effectively guide AI’s creative exploration. This requires advisors to develop expertise in advanced prompting techniques that can help clients extract innovative ideas that remain authentically aligned with their identity.³

Values-Based Implementation: Practical Steps for Advisors

For family enterprise advisors guiding clients through AI adoption, the core challenge lies in answering a fundamental question: How can this technology align with the firm’s identity?⁴ Unlike many public companies, family enterprises often have more flexibility to view technological decisions through the lenses of identity and legacy first, ROI second. Below are practical steps advisors can take to facilitate successful implementation that supports, rather than dilutes, the core values of the enterprise families they serve.

1. Establish a Values-First Governance Structure

   • Facilitate the creation of an AI task force that balances family leadership with operational expertise.
   • Help clients develop an AI values statement that explicitly articulates how technology decisions must honor family principles.
   • Create decision rights matrices that clearly delineate which AI-enhanced decisions require family oversight versus operational autonomy.

2. Start with Low-Risk “Quick Win” Applications

   • Identify administrative pain points where AI assistants can provide immediate, measurable relief.
   • Organize hands-on workshops where family members directly experience low-risk AI tools.
   • Develop custom evaluation frameworks that measure both efficiency gains and alignment with family values.

3. Build Cross-Generational AI Literacy

   • Design differentiated training approaches for digital-native next-gen members versus senior family leadership.
   • Create AI translation resources that explain technical concepts in relation to family enterprise priorities.
   • Facilitate multigenerational dialogue about how AI might enhance rather than replace distinctive family enterprise qualities.

4. Ensure Ethical Integration Through Regular Audits

   • Help clients develop practical audit protocols for key ethical dimensions:
     • Data Privacy: What family, customer, and employee data will remain protected?
     • Fairness: How will AI systems be checked for bias, especially in people-related decisions?
     • Transparency: Can the family understand and explain how AI reaches its conclusions?
     • Accountability: Who maintains ultimate responsibility for AI-enhanced decisions?
   • Create balanced scorecards that measure both quantitative benefits and qualitative impacts on family cohesion and enterprise distinctiveness.

5. Position the Advisor’s Role as the “Values Translation Specialist”

   • Serve as the bridge between technical implementation partners and family decision-makers.
   • Develop expertise in values-based prompting techniques that help families guide AI systems to generate outputs aligned with their principles.
   • Facilitate regular reviews that assess whether AI implementation is enhancing or diluting the family’s distinctive competitive advantages.

Success in this process extends beyond traditional metrics. While efficiency gains and cost savings matter, help clients equally prioritize qualitative assessments: alignment with values, impact on family relationships, preservation of distinctive character, and enhancement of their multigenerational advantage.

By serving as the bridge between technological possibility and family identity, advisors can help ensure legacy enterprises remain vibrant, distinctive, and competitive for generations to come.

References

¹ Ignatius, Adi, and Karim Lakhani. “AI Won’t Replace Humans—but Humans with AI Will Replace Humans Without AI.” Harvard Business Review (August 18, 2023): https://hbr.org/2023/08/ai-wont-replace-humans-but-humans-with-ai-will-replace-humans-without-ai

² PwC’s Global NextGen Survey 2024. “Success and Succession in an AI World.” https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/issues/c-suite-insights/nextgen.html

³ McKinsey & Company.“What Is ‘prompt engineering’?” McKinsey & Company. Accessed March 28, 2025: https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-explainers/what-is-prompt-engineering#/

⁴ Daugherty, Paul R., and H. James Wilson. (2018). Human + Machine: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI. Harvard Business Review Press, 2023.

About the Contributors

Vern Glaser, PhD, CFBA, is the academic director of the Alberta Business Family Institute at the University of Alberta, where he researches the intersection of algorithms and strategic decision-making. His work on AI has appeared in several journals including Academy of Management Journal and MIT Sloan Management Review. He can be reached at vglaser@ualberta.ca.

Jennifer Sloan, CFBA, is a PhD candidate at the University of Alberta researching how family enterprises navigate algorithmic decision-making. Her work on understanding “organizations as algorithms” has been published in the Journal of Management Studies. She can be reached at jsloan@ualberta.ca.

Matt Knight, ACFBA, ACFWA, is the executive director of the Alberta Business Family Institute. Matt leverages his background in strategy consulting (Deloitte, EY) and family enterprise leadership to help business families harness opportunities and navigate challenges. He can be reached at mknight2@ualberta.ca.