Vistage

Vistage calls itself the world's largest chief executive coaching and peer advisory organisation, and the numbers support it: running since 1957, with 45,000 current members across 40 countries and around 250,000 leaders served over its history.

It appears in the broader section of this directory because its members are business owners rather than family offices. The connection is timing: a substantial share of family office wealth is created by owners of exactly the companies Vistage serves.

Who joins

Chief executives and business owners of companies above roughly US$5 million in revenue who are, in the organisation's phrase, committed to their leadership climb.

Selection is done by the local Chair rather than centrally, so admission depends on a specific person's judgement about whether you fit their group. Groups are composed of non-competing businesses in the same locality.

How membership works

An interview with a Chair, then placement into their group. Vistage does not publish fees anywhere on its site.

Figures do circulate, and this entry deliberately does not repeat them. The most commonly cited number originates from a comparison page published by a competing organisation, which is not a source worth passing on as fact. Pricing also varies by market and by Chair. Ask the Chair whose group you would actually join, since that is the only number that will apply to you.

What members get

Two things, and the second is what separates Vistage from a networking group.

The first is the monthly peer meeting: a confidential group of non-competing local chief executives working through each other's real problems, using a structured method Vistage calls issue processing.

The second is monthly one-to-one coaching from the Chair. Most peer organisations stop at the group. A paid professional who meets you individually every month, holds you to what you said you would do, and has seen the same problems across many businesses is a materially different offer, and it is why Vistage describes itself as a coaching organisation first.

Around both sit speaker workshops and a research library.

For a family office reader, the relevance is again about the person rather than the institution. If a family member runs an operating company of this size, this is among the most established peer groups available to them, and it will reach them years before anyone in the family uses the phrase family office. The organisation itself has nothing to say about managing wealth once the business is sold.