What the Roy family drama teaches about building a lasting family business
The writer, a partner at Lansberg Gersick Advisors, says HBO’s award-winning series “Succession” has become required viewing for people who advise family companies. She argues that although the Roy family’s world feels brutal and unreal, the show is useful because it exposes the forces that can destroy a multigenerational business.
After trying several times over three years to finish the series, she says she now sees it as a concentrated lesson in intergenerational erosion. In her view, Waystar Royco fails not because of one mistake but because it lacks the systems that sustain family enterprises across generations. By contrast, real family businesses are usually driven by purpose, values and responsibility, even when they face conflict and complexity.
She identifies seven missing “engines of continuity”: learning, values, vision, structure, process, policy and leadership. In the Roy family, there is no commitment to development or training, no clear ethical compass, no shared future-oriented vision, and no formal structures such as a family council or independent board. Decision-making is described as arbitrary, manipulative and based on Logan Roy’s whims, including the absence of a proper process for choosing a CEO and unclear treatment of Shiv’s leadership role.
The article says written policies on family employment, compensation, dispute resolution and dividends would reduce uncertainty and protect shared interests. It concludes that leadership in a family business is not about hoarding power, but about long-term stewardship, helping others grow, and knowing when to let go. Sustainable success, she writes, is not inherited, it is built deliberately, and the real question is what families can do together now to create an enterprise that lasts for generations.
