Business Leadership: Founders Versus CEOs - Douglas E. Castle

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Business Leadership: Founders Versus CEOs

By: Douglas E. Castle

Published In: The Taking Command! Blog

Founders tend to be entrepreneurial visionaries, who strive to put their future imagery of success into a machine which we refer to as a business. Founders are largely iconoclasts, rebels and disruptive types with the gifts of imagination, intuition and planning. In contrast, most hired CEOs (many of whom are hired by founders of companies in conjunction with those companies' respective boards of directors) tend to be best at turning intangible visions and printed plans into reality through management and tactical skills. In many cases, founders are excellent strategic thinkers, but are not well-suited toward coordinating all of the moving parts necessary in order to bring a business to the point of achieving its most important objectives.

The way I tend to think about the startup or early-stage enterprise CEO job is fairly simple: In a startup, founders are typically responsible for laying out the vision for the products or services that the company offers, while the CEO is responsible for leading the company towards the execution of that vision. That execution path includes areas such as company protocols, go-to-market strategies, operational structure and many many other aspects that complement the company vision. Similarly, the most important job of a startup founder is to set up the right team and structure to take his or her company to the next level; oftentimes that team requires a new, professional CEO.

A founder may be a great assembler of wonderfully talented Human assets to form a team to fulfill his or her vision, but harnessing, positioning and coordinating the efforts of those assets requires the focused skills of a get-it-done CEO. Founders set a pace, a tone, an image and a corporate culture for the companies which they form. They tend to think outside of the proverbial box, while professional CEOs are used to performing their work within specified parameters, such as budgets, personnel, and other key business variables.

In many cases, particularly in early stages, the roles of founders and CEOs overlap, but this doesn’t imply that the situation must remain that way throughout the lifetime of the company. Certainly, in very early stages, the company founders are in the best position to execute in the original vision of the company. However, after the company reaches certain level the founder-CEOs need to objectively evaluate the best path and team that can maximize the chances of reaching the next set of goals.

NOTE: You can train a CEO but you can’t train a founder….

This is very true. As a startup founder, if you are convinced you are the best person to serve as your company CEO, you have the talent and the desire to make it work there are certainly plenty of resources at your disposal to help you become a world class CEO. Having the right advisors and consultants to support your efforts can be a determining factor in this stage. At any point, you have to be convinced that your role as CEO is the best thing for the company and is not based upon personal ambitions or a need (usually born of insecurity) to control every aspect of your creation.

NOTE: As a founder, you already hold the most important title there is…

In the startup world, there is no greater or more rewarding achievement than founding a company that makes its way to success and to changing the world. As a startup or early-stage business venture founder, focus on always doing the right thing for your company; it is counterproductive to obsess about remaining as CEO if there is a better person to execute on that role. Always remember that you already hold the best tile someone can have: Founder. Without founders, there would never be companies... and without companies infused with the vision of their founders, there would never be any purpose or job for a CEO.

Founders can give the company a Human face and personality. They may be become a charismatic component of the company's branding identity. And very importantly, founders ofttimes make excellent chairpersons because of their ability to conceptualize in "big picture" terms, to remain true to their original vision, and because of their parental dedication to nurturing the company as their minds' offspring.

As always, thank you for reading me.  - Douglas E. Castle
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