Roots & Impact – Family Business Succession Program
Rethinking Succession in Family Businesses
About the Program
Succession is one of the most critical moments in the life of a family business. Yet while significant attention is paid to legal, financial, and governance aspects, the human dimension of family business succession often remains overlooked.
Roots & Impact is a six-month transformational learning journey built on a simple but powerful premise: the best way to prepare for a family business succession is to go through it. NextGen leaders and senior entrepreneurs join the program either as a team or as individuals, work on a shared entrepreneurial challenge, and return to their family business with a deeper mutual understanding of who they are as leaders and how they lead together.
Through action learning, executive coaching, and real entrepreneurship, both generations gain clarity about their leadership identity, their role in the transition, and their shared vision for the future of their enterprise.
The centerpiece of the program is the co-creation of a social enterprise in an emerging market, a genuinely new venture, built under real conditions, that challenges both generations equally and creates an experience no classroom can replicate.
Program Content
Imagine a succession program in which you do not only discuss leadership transition, but also experience it through real entrepreneurial responsibility.
The program combines leadership development, coaching, peer exchange, and action learning across 3 connected modules. You begin by exploring your personal journey, values, motivations, and role within the family enterprise and examine how family dynamics, expectations, and established patterns influence leadership and succession.
You then work with a diverse group to create a real social enterprise. Using design thinking and entrepreneurial methods, you identify an opportunity, develop a viable solution, make decisions as a team, and prepare your venture for an investor pitch. This experience allows you to test new leadership behaviors outside the familiar dynamics of your own business and family.
In the final phase, you translate the experience back into your family business context. Through coaching, structured reflection, and peer feedback, you define your future contribution, strengthen intergenerational collaboration, and develop a clear action plan for the next stage of succession.
- Family systems and business dynamics
- Identity and purpose
- Role clarification
- Building a trusted peer community
- Entrepreneurial action learning
- Design thinking
- Team leadership
- Social entrepreneurship
Participants take responsibility for creating tangible impact and pitch their venture to experienced investors.
- Personal leadership development
- Succession readiness
- Intergenerational collaboration
- Impactful storytelling
- Future action planning
- Continued learning through the alumni network
- Evaluate the social, economic, and environmental impact of the developed business model
- Reflect on key insights from the entrepreneurial and leadership journey
- Identify lessons that can be transferred to the family business and professional environment
- Translate personal development into concrete leadership actions
- Define next steps for creating a sustainable impact beyond the program
Program Format and Module Dates
Roots & Impact is based on the principles of Action Learning.
Rather than learning through simulations or case studies alone, participants learn by taking responsibility for real entrepreneurial challenges. Reflection, coaching, peer feedback, and practical experience are integrated throughout the 6-month journey.
This methodology has been successfully applied for more than 13 years in collaboration with WHU through the Capability Program and other executive education initiatives.
Format:
- 3 in-person modules
- Individual coaching sessions
- Peer learning groups
- Virtual teamwork between modules
- A real entrepreneurial field project
- Structured reflection and transfer sessions
Duration: 6 months
Past program cohorts have worked on entrepreneurial projects in Morocco, Uganda, Tanzania, and South Africa.
Module Dates
Program Benefits
Roots & Impact helps you approach succession not only as a business process, but as a shared leadership journey.
You will:
- Gain clarity about your identity, purpose, and future role in the family enterprise
- Strengthen your confidence as a leader and decision maker
- Understand the personal and family dynamics that influence succession
- Experience entrepreneurship outside your family business
- Develop new approaches to intergenerational communication and collaboration
- Test leadership behaviors in a real entrepreneurial environment
- Build a trusted network of peers facing similar transitions
The program enables you to return to your family business with a clearer sense of direction, stronger succession readiness, and the practical confidence to contribute to its next chapter.
Your company’s benefits
- Better prepared future leaders
- Greater alignment between generations
- Clearer roles, expectations, and responsibilities
- More constructive communication during succession
- Stronger leadership and decision making capabilities
- A more sustainable foundation for long term leadership
Certificate
Upon completion, you will be awarded a WHU Executive Education Certificate, a recognized mark of your commitment to growth, leadership, and lifelong learning, issued by one of Europe’s top business schools.
You will receive 9 ECTS credits after successfully completing the program and the exams. For ECTS credits to be granted, a proof of a Bachelor or equivalent first degree is necessary. Please find the Certificate Regulations here.
Participant Profile
Roots & Impact is designed for members of entrepreneurial families who want to navigate succession with greater clarity, confidence, and mutual understanding.
The program is especially suitable for:
- NextGen leaders preparing to take greater responsibility
- Senior entrepreneurs considering succession to the next generation and their future contribution
- Parent and child teams preparing for a leadership transition and looking for stronger collaboration
- Family members exploring questions of identity, leadership, ownership, or purpose
- Participants ready to engage in coaching, reflection, and real entrepreneurial action
Participants can attend on their own or together with a family business partner.
Admissions requirements
- For ECTS credits to be granted, a proof of a Bachelor or equivalent first degree is necessary.
- Participants are expected to have at least three years of post-graduate professional experience.
- Participants should have adequate written and spoken English-language skills at C1 level (or equivalent).
- The exact admission requirements can be found in the Certificate Regulations.
Our Admissions Team is happy to assist you.
We look forward to connecting with you!