Anil Sachdev, Founder & CEO of School of Inspired Leadership shares his views on ‘The founder’s dilemma’
Delhi, Delhi (PRWEB) July 21, 2015 -- A founder needs to create a team with exclusive skills, allowing room for a leader to emerge to whom the founder can eventually hand over the reins of the organisation. People skills are, therefore, key. A founder too needs to play different roles at different points of the organisation's life cycle. "One of the challenges that a founder faces includes knowing when to let go," muses Anil Sachdev, founder and CEO,School of Inspired Leadership.(http://www.soilindia.net)
Escalations to the founder are very common initially, which means he also needs to possess negotiation and conflict resolution skills. "Take Uber as an example," says Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder, Paytm. "The company shoulders legal blame in virtually every market, but the founders have been successful in training management teams or else it would not have expanded so much so soon."
Furthermore, being too experimental later on may backfire. The startup style, useful when a company was small, flexible and agile cannot be applied later as it takes a long time to implement decisions. "If I have a 10-member team, I can change my mind every two days, but if I am running a 30,000-strong organisation, I cannot do that. Founders must accept this reality," says Praveen Sinha, co-founder, Jabong.
Connecting the dots
Because an entrepreneur has been working at the company from day one, he knows every nuance of his business rather well. Take media mogul and News Corporation founder Rupert Murdoch. On acquiring The Sun (London) in 1969, his proposal to convert the newspaper from a broadsheet to a tabloid, faced opposition from printers who said the printing machine couldn't be accordingly adjusted. In one meeting, Murdoch reportedly climbed atop one of the machines, opened a cabinet, and pulled out a bar that, when placed in a certain way, converted the machine to a printer of tabloids. An important lesson: being in control of the finer aspects of a business ensures you are never out of the game.
One great advantage founders have is that they move keeping in mind the big picture. "Infosys' NR Narayana Murthy was very clear about what he wanted to do with the company - to build it into a global business," says Pai.
One could argue that some of these qualities of a founder can also be found in a professional manager, but one must understand that leadership is the superset here. A few elements of leadership can make a founder, but all founders may not be great organisational leaders.
The question, really, should be about when should an organisation move from the energy of the founder-creator to that of a leader-manager.
Anil Sachdev is Founder & CEO of School of Inspired Leadership, Gurgaon which provides one year MBA programs in Business Leadership and HR Leadership. SOIL is a business school situated at Gurgaon offering one year Executive MBA programs in Leadership. (http://www.soilindia.net/pg-programs/business-leadership-program)
School of Inspired Leadership, School of Inspired Leadership, http://www.soilindia.net, +91 9818009240, [email protected]
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