The Granddaddy of Them All

Friday, September 7, 2007

As I was thinking about Adizes’ life cycle stages recently, the Adolescence stage particularly intrigued me. This is the stage when the organization needs to transition from the Founder running the business to hiring professional managers to do so. This is when a lot of drama can occur. It doesn’t always go as smoothly as, let’s say, the Google experience when founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin recruited Eric Schmidt from Novell to run Google. It also seems regrettable that the transition can go so badly that circumstances conspire to separate the founder from the very company he or she created (witness Steve Jobs in his first go-around with Apple). I understand that some founders are serial entrepreneurs and are quite happy to move on to the next challenge. But what about those founders who clearly aren’t cut out to be CEO’s of the companies they start but still want to play a significant role in the company’s development and success? They represent the most tangible link to the early days of the company when its values and mission were fresh and energized. Must the new regime push him or her to the sidelines? Is there a role for them?

I think there is and I think we need to look to the role of grandparents in our families to give us some ideas of the role a Founder can have as his or her creation grows up. There are a variety of dimensions to the grandparent role. In some cases it serves as a bridge between parents and children. In other cases, it can reinforce and perpetuate the values and beliefs of the family. Given their position of once-removed from the primary responsibility of raising the children, grandparents can add an objectivity and “long view” to day-to-day activities that parents can’t.

How could this translate into a business setting? I see a need, particularly in companies at the Adolescence stage, to have someone of authority have the responsibility of making sure the organization develops both adaptability and resiliency to ensure its longevity. The common CEO and COO roles divide along areas of focus and somewhat along time – the CEO role primarily has an external focus with a medium term view while the COO role primarily takes an internal focus with an immediate term view. What is missing in these two roles is the long view. Who has primary responsibility to ensure the organization has an organizational infrastructure that will help it continue into the future regardless of market conditions or particular leaders? I think this can be an invaluable role for the Founder as the company matures. They can provide a degree of support, stability, and credibility to the organization that an outside, professional leader would be hard pressed to replicate. And this job need not be just a seat-warmer.

With a title like “Chief Culture and Sustainability Officer,” their primary responsibility would be to build and maintain an organizational culture that gives the organization core survival skills and strategic drive. To make this concrete, I would give him or her primary responsibility for developing the key organizational capabilities and management practices that the Denison Model (see my July 27 posting, “Next Time Call Me”) has identified as key to long-term, bottom-line, organizational vitality. Otherwise, this effort can fall through the cracks – too “big picture” for the COO, too operational for the CEO and too critical for the VP of Human Resources. With such a role, the founder could bring a perspective and context to executive deliberations that would otherwise be missing. And they could serve as the bridge between the past and the present and as the guide between the present and the future.

In the right situation, this role would give certain types of founders the greatest reward for the creativity and hard work it took him or her to get the company started and off the ground – the legacy of a company that lives on past them.