The age of the founder superhero is over
Photo by Yulia Matvienko on Unsplash
We glorify founders as the ultimate heroes of a successful business story. From the ideation to the exit or to the thriving business, they’re the ones we look up to as those who’ve achieved it all by the sheer force of their intellect, brilliance and emotional intelligence (or lack thereof).
What we don’t see is the burnout. The lost family time. The hours put in at the cost of so much else. The insane pressure coming at them from everywhere : employees, customers, investors. The fear of taking time off in case the whole thing crumbles the moment she leaves.
What we also don’t talk about as much is how crucial the team is to the success of the business. Most founder stories are written with a hero’s journey story arc to them : the misunderstood founder who, after much sacrifice and brilliance, goes on to disrupt this and that field and build a company that is loved and valued.
The team, when mentioned, is the mere side-kick who came together and did something great only because they were steered by the genius founder.
Humble founders do absolutely acknowledge how crucial their team is in carving out success though.
The reality is in stark contrast to this narrative
My experience working in and consulting for businesses for over 15+ years has been that very often, the most brilliant ideas and top notch execution comes not from the founder, but from the team members.
In fact, the more autonomous the teams and the more empowered they are, the more innovative the ideas that come through which bubble up and create an environment that is both agile but also forward-looking.
The way companies are organised today do not encourage innovation.
This glorification of the founder puts undue pressure on her shoulders and fosters a mindset where she needs to be the one calling all the shots; or at the very least her executive team does.
But as a company grows, the founder and executive teams are further and further away from where the actual business is happening, i.e where sales and customer conversations are taking place.
Which is why it’s getting more and crucial that as a company scales, it finds an organisation that is as decentralised as possible while still running cohesively, so that on-the-grounds signals can be picked up as quickly as possible and processed without going up and down the hierarchical system to some people who might be getting increasingly out of touch with the realities of the business.
What I’m seeing, time and time again, is that companies operating on strict hierarchies are becoming bottlenecks to their own success.
Having more and more people just managing other people’s work and acting like elevators up and down the hierarchical system is a cumbersome way to operate, and is getting increasingly so given how complex and fast moving the world is becoming.
What we need is more of the following :
Small, independent teams that are cristal clear on their remit and empowered to make decisions within a certain perimeter
Empowered individuals who are trusted with their expertise and who don’t need to ‘validate’ their work every other day by some manager who probably doesn’t know any better
A clear vision and strategy coming from the top that teams can just run with and execute on in a way they deem best without having to spend time in endless meetings seeking alignment and clarity
A clear process of review and recalibration every 3 months to understand how the company is doing and where adjustments need to be made
This system exists
This isn’t some theoretical company organisation and governance that hasn’t seen the light of day. I’ve seen companies try this in bits and pieces with more or less successful outcomes, but the best governance I’ve experienced so far is holacracy, which has most of the elements talked about above and which gives a clear set of rules that everybody needs to play by while maintaining their autonomy, so that the business can effectively run in a decentralised way while making sure crucial information circulates throughout the company.
We need to move away from the hero founder narrative, cut the founder some slack and empower teams to make better decisions.
We don’t need more founder burnout because of the toxic hustle culture that’s been around for far too long.
What we need is more people empowered to do their best work, with shared responsibility and decision making ability so that businesses can be operated by healthy, well-balanced and smart people whose potential is being capitalised on on a daily basis.