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Sounds like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk. To some extent, Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos. Contrast: New / outside CEO syndrome. Any organizational design has problems.

by wegs 6y ago

Sounds like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk. To some extent, Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos. Contrast: New / outside CEO syndrome. Any organizational design has problems. Founders tend to be better than replacements, but far from universally. I've worked in two organizations with "Founder's Syndrome." In one, it was hyper-destructive in much the way described. In one, it lead to a lot of soft issues (we felt micromanaged), but ultimately, really good technology which won in the market. That's why I hate these stereotypes.

kanox 6y ago
> Sounds like Steve Jobs Apple went to shit when Steve Jobs was pushed out and only recovered when he came back. This is the worst example if you want to claim that excessive founder control is a negative thing.
- Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
  Chances are SJ learned a lot from that experience and returned to Apple more ready to run it. If he wasn't pushed out, it is likely he could run the company into the ground much faster than his replacements did.
- im3w1l 6y ago
  Well, he is arguing the opposite. That there are drawbacks, but bigger benefits.
- spottybanana 6y ago
  Depending on what you mean by "shit". From employers perspective Apple was probably better place to work after Jobs left, since Jobs was pushing the employees to work insane hours and was very demanding. I would bet things were more relaxed after Jobs left in the 80's. Don't know how the culture developed after Jobs came back.
- wegs 6y ago
  I want to claim it has upsides and downsides, that each example is different, and that you need to dig into nuance of how it is done. I further want to claim that thinking about this in terms of oversimplified cliches, stereotypes, or syndromes does more harm than good. Oh... and I want to claim I dislike articles like this one on Wikipedia and its oversimplified and sometimes ill-thought-out sources which substitute cliches for figuring stuff out. How's that for a claim? It doesn't make for good headlines, but I think it's honest.
- nojvek 6y ago
  My take after reading Steve Job’s biography was that he was a control freak, absolutely. However he really understood what matters and had his priorities correct. He knew the iPhone really had to stand out and perceived to be 10X better than its competition. He understood the MacBook Air had to fit inside an A4 envelope. In a way he created the keynote slides in his head and then worked with a team like a maniac to a achieve the vision. Same could be said for Elon I guess. I have worked with Founders who think they are Steve Jobs and want to control everything. It turns out, it’s really hard to prioritize. The founder CEO I worked had his hands in many departments. It would take him months to make a decision because of the sheer number of decisions. The org turned toxic because even though we knew it was the wrong decision, things went ahead. A lot of projects were “special CEO projects” to stroke his ego. PRs were pushed with “because the CEO wants it tomorrow, we’re gonna hack this in. Don’t have time for tests”. Needless to say a competitor startup that started 5 years late captured a big part of the market.
rsynnott 6y ago
I think _Ballmer_ may actually be a better example, albeit a non-typical one. He was fairly clearly unsuitable for the role and got it due to his early involvement with Microsoft; it's hard to imagine that if they'd gone out to interview CEOs and he _hadn't_ been involved early on that he'd have gotten it.

by wegs 6y ago

kanox 6y ago

> Sounds like Steve Jobs Apple went to shit when Steve Jobs was pushed out and only recovered when he came back. This is the worst example if you want to claim that excessive founder control is a negative thing.

Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
Chances are SJ learned a lot from that experience and returned to Apple more ready to run it. If he wasn't pushed out, it is likely he could run the company into the ground much faster than his replacements did.
im3w1l 6y ago
Well, he is arguing the opposite. That there are drawbacks, but bigger benefits.
spottybanana 6y ago
Depending on what you mean by "shit". From employers perspective Apple was probably better place to work after Jobs left, since Jobs was pushing the employees to work insane hours and was very demanding. I would bet things were more relaxed after Jobs left in the 80's. Don't know how the culture developed after Jobs came back.
wegs 6y ago
I want to claim it has upsides and downsides, that each example is different, and that you need to dig into nuance of how it is done. I further want to claim that thinking about this in terms of oversimplified cliches, stereotypes, or syndromes does more harm than good. Oh... and I want to claim I dislike articles like this one on Wikipedia and its oversimplified and sometimes ill-thought-out sources which substitute cliches for figuring stuff out. How's that for a claim? It doesn't make for good headlines, but I think it's honest.
nojvek 6y ago
My take after reading Steve Job’s biography was that he was a control freak, absolutely. However he really understood what matters and had his priorities correct. He knew the iPhone really had to stand out and perceived to be 10X better than its competition. He understood the MacBook Air had to fit inside an A4 envelope. In a way he created the keynote slides in his head and then worked with a team like a maniac to a achieve the vision. Same could be said for Elon I guess. I have worked with Founders who think they are Steve Jobs and want to control everything. It turns out, it’s really hard to prioritize. The founder CEO I worked had his hands in many departments. It would take him months to make a decision because of the sheer number of decisions. The org turned toxic because even though we knew it was the wrong decision, things went ahead. A lot of projects were “special CEO projects” to stroke his ego. PRs were pushed with “because the CEO wants it tomorrow, we’re gonna hack this in. Don’t have time for tests”. Needless to say a competitor startup that started 5 years late captured a big part of the market.

rsynnott 6y ago

I think _Ballmer_ may actually be a better example, albeit a non-typical one. He was fairly clearly unsuitable for the role and got it due to his early involvement with Microsoft; it's hard to imagine that if they'd gone out to interview CEOs and he _hadn't_ been involved early on that he'd have gotten it.