Thursday, February 6, 2014
Founder's Vision
A news article just reported that Bill Gates is going to step back into Microsoft as a director and technology advisor. The article mentioned several other founders that came back to the companies they started and the various outcomes of that return. Some outcomes are good, some not so good. A broader question to consider is the following: Since a company is usually started by one or a few people with a vision, should that vision change with successors to those people? If yes, how fast should it move away? In one sense, the vision of the founders is what defines the company and moving away from that is creating a new company. But the vision for a company is not built in a day by the founder, either. While the founder is still around, he is defining the company all along the way. The world around the company does not stay the same, and the founder makes changes to keep up with it. Looking at it from this view, change is actually healthy for a company and is necessary after a founder leaves. However, changes to the vision and ideals of a company should be carefully considered and be slower to occur.
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I think that the founder is important for giving the organization its identity, but even when the founder is still with the company adaptions still occur. There is a constant need to change to adapt to the market.
ReplyDeleteOne advantage that a founder has is that he knows why the decisions were made to bring the company to where it currently is. That gives him insight to know which of those conditions aren't true any more and which decisions might be good to reconsider.
ReplyDeleteI think as long as the person in charge has a good vision that his employees can deal with, it doesn't matter how fast change occurs.
ReplyDeleteIf you don't adapt, you die. As long as founders can adapt to change, then I believe it adds a lot of value to the company to have them stay on. However, if they are stuck in the past with their original good idea and can't refine their vision, they should step aside.
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