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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TAKING COMMAND! ACHIEVING YOUR OBJECTIVES.

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The Guide to self-mastery, goal-setting, strategic planning and decision making, leadership, management, contingency planning, leveraging assets, rule and domination, choosing allies, dealing with enemies, assessing risk, time management, negotiation... achieving personal authority, influence, wealth and success through total TRANSFORMATION.

Key Terms: Leadership, management, self-growth, self-mastery, personal power, career advancement, negotiation, winning, wealth, success

"Need To Know" Means SERIOUS.

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In becoming involved with a project, program, strategic plan or even in building a new enterprise, it is instinctively Human to want to discuss aspects of it with others; if it's is an source of pride and achievement (actual or potential) we want to either 'sell' the circles of individuals around us on the concept and the excitement with which it is associated, or to exercise our bragging rights.

These instincts and propensities must not be indulged -- in giving in to them, we can do damage in several different ways:

1) Compromise important information;

2) Undermine the objectives of our whole inside team, or the individual members of it;

3) Make our objective appear less important, or less far along in the completion cycle. Telling stories or putting on endless "dog and pony shows" psychologically minimizes your importance as a leader or a decision-maker, just as it makes the subject of your limitless leakage seem trivialized.

Inform people on a "need to know" basis. It makes you, and what you are working on more secure, more perceptually important and far more valuable.  

General Rules:

1) Before having a discussion, determine if there is adequate "need to know." Does this other person have a serious role to play in the project or effort?

2) Insist on speaking with one selected and trusted representative of any multiparty organization, and let that person assume the role as tactical liaison with his or her organization for you.

3) Do not entertain dialogue and questions from persons who A) cannot demonstrate a "need to know," or who B)cannot clearly inform you of the purpose of the interview or meeting.

Sometimes the less others know, the stronger you are -- both in situational reality and perception. Unimportant people can spend all day talking to anyone who will listen about anything; important people are focused on achieving things and do not freely expend their time casually.

You needed to know this. You were on my list.

Douglas E Castle [http://aboutDouglasCastle.blogspot.com] for the TAKING COMMAND! Blog , at http://TakingCommand.blogspot.com.

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Your Life Is A Business: Plan. Prepare. Decide. Go.

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It would seem to be so simple. Be prepared. Plan. Don't panic. Be vigilant and proactive --- don't be passive and reactive. Don't wait until you're desperate to make decisions - your decisions (not your knee-jerk responses) are your destiny. Even in those things that are not within your control; you CAN control your response. Business success is attained through clarity, decisiveness, focus and tenacity. Again?

Those (above) are the realities of business success. If you picture your life as a business -- a journey where you must first define what your destination will be, and where you must secondly take the incremental steps (forward or sideways, but not backward) and make the incremental decisions that will bring you there. That's right - not "take you there."

By the way, during the longer journey, expect some detours, delays and problems. Permit yourself to course-correct as necessary. Adjusting your trajectory is a part of living in the real world -- it is not an admission of foolishness or weakness. It's not about ego. It's about You Go.

Soldier on with the business of your life, friends, comrades and colleagues.

Douglas E Castle

http://TakingCommand.blogspot.com
http://www.TNNWC.com

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ORDER OUT OF CHAOS - A Socio-Economic and Behavioral Commentary

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ORDER OUT OF CHAOS - A SOCIO-ECONOMIC AND BEHAVIORAL COMMENTARY

Throughout the United States and the rest of the world that surrounds us (I sound a bit paranoic, don't I?), people are frightened. The economy is in a contractionary state; many formidable and once-credible "bedrock" institutions have failed amid allegations of major misjudgments and corruption -- and the distinctions between the public and private sectors are becoming increasingly unclear. People tend to be frightened by rapid change and general uncertainty.

Panic makes for some terrible decisionmaking, while maintaining a calm and analytic state of mind while those about us are in a state of irrationality can reveal some contrarian investment bargains. While fear has locked many investors and businesses into a paralytic holding pattern, a distinct minority, virtually a special social class, is quietly buying up controlling stakes and future monopolistic positions in a variety of industries, companies and commodities. This minority, for the most part, is comprised of very wealthy, privileged families...families who have prospered through generation after generation, almost regardless of the political or economic environment. We will refer to them (for the purposes or simplicity) as dynastic families. Their blueblooded names are familiar to many of the rest of us, and they have held tremendous power for quite some time -- centuries, in fact.

I am betting that amongst the pedestrian, "common" population, fear is a far superior motivating force than the promise of an opportunity for gain. I believe that we travel long, circuitous routes in order to avoid confrontation, pain and loss, while we seldom leave the living room couch for an opportunity, which might require effort on our part. Inertia, indolence and a lack of ambition combine to work against the potential efficacy of positive reinforcement, while fear actually creates a physiological reaction (i.e., the secretion of adrenalin, cortisol, etcetera) which actually produces the means for rapid movement in a "fight or flight" response.

The endorphin "rush" produced by the mind's complex neurochemical apparatus is, in contrast, usually much slower to gain a foothold and much weaker in terms of its sway over our responses to the environment and circumstances. It is interesting to note that fear is regarded by many as a visceral reflex, while ambition, and the excitement that accompanies it, is seen to be more of a cerebral, learned action.

Is it possible that the actual physiology of the members of these dynastic families has changed, through some sort of evolutionary genetic mechanism, over the generations? Is it possible that the progenitors who spawned these imperial families started out with an anomalous physiological/ psychological makeup which permitted them to seize ever-increasing stakes of wealth and power while others panicked and fled? Is there a "contrarian gene" that makes these people different, or is it a function of a learned response which is handed down from each generation to its successor?

These few have triumphed through virtually every tragic chapter in the course of Humanity's erratic, ungainly evolution. I am fascinated by the fact that such a small group of persons can continually control the bulk of the world's resources.

These dynastic families all have one thing in common -- they are not motivated by fear.

I am equally fascinated by my almost dull, ho-hum, all-too-calm expectation, in my dual roles as a Strategic Planner and a Futurist, that these dynastic families will become even wealthier and more powerful as a result of the severe economic recession that has befallen us; and that they will emerge, as they always have, with an even greater percentage of the world's wealth when the current crisis has ended. The irony is that these families always benefit by their uncanny ability to maintain their cool in the midst of the confusion -- to make order (and money) out of chaos. This observation has made conspiracy theorists out of many of us. We are indeed, by and large, a fearful group of primitives running from the lightning, while these others are out flying their kites.
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