FOUNDER’S SYNDROME

As an entrepreneur you have great characteristics; coming up with new ideas, new technologies, confident, charismatic, risk taker and the list is endless. However, these very same qualities can pose a risk to the long-term growth of your company. While making solo decisions and being inseparable from your company may have been an asset at some point, these traits will not be helpful as the company grows over time.
Think about it; What happens if you were not able to be present in your company anymore? ‘It could very well be the end of the organization’. What happens if you chose to stick around? ‘Your individual vision becomes the company vision. Alternative ideas are muted, and the business becomes more about you than the organizational mission’.
As an entrepreneur be on the lookout for these warning signs of the founder’s syndrome; The Company is largely associated with you, no strategy or planning, few systems and processes in place, lack of communication and decisions are often made in a vacuum with no collaboration or buy-in, excessive micro-management and censoring of new ideas, capable employees feel unable to contribute, irregular staff engagements where motivation is through fear and guilt, as a leader you are unwilling to ask or accept help and there is no succession plan.
“In the founders eyes there is no one who can lead, guide or grow the business like themselves and the fear that the business can be destroyed if handed over to their children or independent management is a clear and present danger to them” Carol Musyoka
Founder’s syndrome is a threatening disease since it involves founders constraining or undermining the company that they sacrificed blood, sweat and tears to build. The best method of dealing with founder’s syndrome is for it never to occur in the first place. This requires you as the founder to become more aware of your abilities and how those abilities might be constraining your company. It requires you to invest heavily in your own leadership development. It requires your board of directors to practice good governance and look after the long-term interests of the company.

Reflection
3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.- Philippians 2:3-4

Mary Kamore is the Lead Consultant M_OliveS Mentors