Family businesses constitute a large portion of successful enterprises in India, as it does in different parts of the world. In its journey from a founder-driven small entity to a professionally run organisation, one key transformation it has to go through is the process of ‘institutionalisation’. The human resource (HR) leader plays a key role in this process. An exploration of the role the HR function has to play during the various phases of this transformation journey could serve as a guide to HR professionals building their careers with family businesses. Our effort has been to develop a model which could work along with validated tools which measure the influence a family could have on a business. We hope that such knowledge would prepare the HR leader to be better prepared to play the role of a partner during the evolution of the organisation into a professionally run entity.