William Parizeau

“Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple,” Steve Jobs.

Single-family offices are rarely under-resourced. They are often overactive.

Despite highly capable professionals, trusted external advisors, customized solutions layered on customized solutions, and constant motion in service of the family, many family offices struggle with the same quiet problems. Decisions get revisited. Priorities drift. Staff feel stretched. Families sense effort but not always progress. The issue is not sophistication, it is focus.

Research and practitioner experience converge on a simple conclusion. Durable single-family offices are not defined by how much they do, but by how clearly they decide. Work from organizations such as the Family Office Exchange and the Cambridge Institute for Family Enterprise consistently points to governance clarity, defined authority, and predictable operating cadence as markers of offices that endure across generations. The most effective single-family offices share a surprisingly unglamorous trait. They operate from a simple, explicit governance backbone. Purpose is written down. Authority is defined. Decisions follow a cadence. Documents live in one place and are reviewed on a predictable rhythm. Nothing about this is flashy. Everything about it compounds.

Governance as an operating discipline
Governance is often misunderstood as control or bureaucracy. In a well-run family office, governance does the opposite. It reduces friction by limiting what needs to be debated, clarifying who decides, and establishing when decisions are revisited.

Family enterprise research reinforces this view. The Cambridge Institute for Family Enterprise has long emphasized that governance mechanisms function primarily as coordination tools. When purpose, roles, and decision rights are explicit, families and executives spend less time negotiating process and more time executing strategy. 

Without governance, everything feels urgent and open ended. With governance, most things are settled until a known review point. That shift allows leadership to move from reactive service delivery to intentional stewardship. The goal is not more rules. The goal is fewer recurring conversations.

The operating backbone
Effective governance needs a physical and conceptual home. In the offices that function best, that home is a single consolidated reference that anchors purpose, authority, decisions, and review cycles. Call it a governance binder, a playbook, or an operating manual. The name matters less than the function.

This backbone is not a static archive. It is a working system. It separates what is true from what is debated and what is debated from what is reviewed. Practitioner frameworks echo this need for consolidation. Pitcairn describes governance as foundational because it provides a shared reference point rather than relying on personalities or institutional memory.

The seven domains of a governed family office
A single-family office becomes unfocused not because it lacks intelligence or capability, but because everything is treated as equally open to debate. The governance backbone imposes a disciplined separation between different kinds of decisions. Each domain answers a distinct question. When these questions are mixed together, confusion follows. When they are kept distinct, clarity compounds. 

Family identity and purpose. This domain answers why the office exists. Without explicit purpose, every decision becomes negotiable. When purpose is documented, it constrains choice and sharpens alignment.

Governance and decision making. This domain answers who decides and how decisions are reviewed. In its absence, authority defaults to personality or persistence. Clear governance replaces informal power with legitimate responsibility. Structural Agreements. This domain captures what is legally true. Trusts, entities, and ownership structures define the real boundaries of the system. When they are unclear or inaccessible, debates drift into friction.

Operations and Infrastructure. This domain answers how the office actually runs. Staffing, vendors, and systems belong here. Periodic review prevents invisible complexity from becoming permanent cost.

Investments. This domain defines how capital is deployed and how success is measured. An explicit investment philosophy and variance review shift conversations away from market noise and toward intent.

Family service. This domain treats the family as a client. Service standards and communication norms prevent improvisation from becoming exhausting and allow service to be consistent and sustainable.

Risk and compliance. This domain protects the system. Risk reviews and audits make complexity visible before it becomes destabilizing. Together, these domains form a closed system. Everything the family office does belongs somewhere. If a decision or request cannot be placed within a domain, it should not proceed unchecked. Governance creates focus by removing ambiguity.

The power of cadence
What distinguishes this framework is not documentation but rhythm. Static documents reduce debate. Monthly reviews surface drift early. Quarterly reviews force prioritization. Annual reviews reset expectations. Operational maturity research from the Family Office Exchange consistently shows that predictable reporting and review cycles separate reactive offices from those that scale effectively with complexity. Value is created through consistent deliberation, not constant decision-making. 

How structure Is built in practice
Structure does not begin with a blank page or a consulting project. It begins with consolidation and sequencing. First, consolidate what already exists and organize it into the seven domains. Most family offices already possess the majority of the required material scattered across files and advisor deliverables.

Second, explicitly distinguish what is static from what is revisitable. Purpose, authority, and legal structures are largely static. Plans, budgets, performance, and service levels are reviewed on a defined cadence. This distinction alone eliminates a surprising amount of noise.

Third, assign ownership. Each domain needs a clear owner responsible for accuracy and preparation. Ownership does not mean unilateral authority. It means accountability for clarity. Finally, introduce cadence before perfection. The system becomes valuable once it is reviewed consistently. Documents improve when they are used. Unused documents decay.

From activity to stewardship
This shift in structure produces predictable behavioral changes:

-- Staff stop improvising because priorities are visible; 

-- Leaders stop relitigating because decisions have review dates; 

-- Families stop wondering what is being worked on because reporting is structured; and 

-- Advisors plug into a system instead of driving it.

The office becomes quieter, not slower. Focus replaces motion.

A deliberate choice
The families that extract the most value from their single-family offices are not the ones with the largest teams or the most complex structures. They are the ones that slow down, decide deliberately, and institutionalize mission clarity.

A simple governance led operating framework, maintained with discipline, becomes the quiet engine that allows a single family office to serve well across generations without burning out its people or confusing its principals. This framework is not original to me or theoretical. Andrew Barbieri, a former colleague and single-family office chief financial officer, built and operationalized a system very much like the one described here when we worked together. What distinguished his approach was not complexity but discipline. He took existing materials, imposed structure, defined cadence, and insisted on clarity. The result was an office that spent less time reacting and more time stewarding.

In a world that rewards motion, the advantage belongs to those who choose structure.

About the author

William Parizeau
He is the CEO of the Matthew Pritzker Company, LLC, a Chicago-based single-family office. He has been active in the family office space for over 15 years. He works at the intersection of legal strategy, operational leadership, and multigenerational wealth management for ultra-high net worth families. His background spans trusts and estates law, family office services, and hands-on leadership of single family offices. He has advised families on complex estate planning and structuring, led business units delivering bespoke solutions to UHNW clients, and overseen all aspects of family office operations – from investments and governance to succession planning and next-gen engagement.