Back to basics

We can all think of founders who left an indelible mark on their businesses. 

Walt Disney, Steve Jobs at Apple, Ray Kroc at McDonald's are three at the top of my list. The founders are no longer at the helm but their legacy, the vision, values and passion they instilled, still lives on in their businesses.

The founder’s mentality doesn’t just endure in in big companies like Disney, Apple and McDonald's, it has a lasting effect in great companies of all sizes. Small family businesses now on their third or fourth generation of management, successful tech start ups with new owners and management and the small consulting business taken over by the management team when the founder retired.

I recently read, ‘The Founder’s Mentality’ by Zook and Allen which expands on this theme.

Zook and Allen are consultants with a large US consulting firm and have observed the impact of founders over their long careers. The book has numerous case studies of the positive impacts of founders and the challenges faced by their firms after their departure. 

The examples mainly relate to larger companies but the principles are relevant in all cases where a founder is no longer active in the business.

They describe certain traits which are universal in successful founders:

• What they call an insurgent’s clear mission and purpose
• An unambiguous owner mindset
• A relentless obsession with the ‘front line’

Let’s look at each of these.

An insurgent’s mission and purpose describes an urgency to get things done. This might involve disrupting sector norms and doing things in a different way with relentless energy and speed.

An owner mindset describes itself. Obsessive focus on getting things right and spending money only on what matters.

Front line obsession is about focusing on customers and delivering a great product or service. It means also giving priority to front-line resources and rewarding and recognising front line employees.

That’s all well and good but how can these traits be applied practically in business? 

Zook and Allen describe what they call ‘predictable’ stages in a business life cycle when things go off track after a founder has moved on - overload, stall out and free fall.

Overload is where a growing business gets overwhelmed by challenges and new opportunities, stall out is where growth slows or even stops and free fall is a business in serious trouble. It has lost its way and starting to go backwards.

Zook and Allen argue that going back to the basics of the founder’s mentality can help companies at each of these stages recapture their mojo and get back to what made them successful in the first place. Even those in free fall can get things back on track again by returning to their founding principles to regain their earlier momentum.

There are lessons for all founders when exiting from their businesses to instil a culture and processes which enable their vision to continue, when the inevitable complexities of growth arise.

As founders, we may not all aspire be the next Disney but we can ensure that some of what we stand for endures and thrives.

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