Beyond product-market fit: the next founder challenge

Whether you have a service-oriented company or one that is centred around a product, the idea of fit is bound to come into play. As the organisation’s founder, it is likely that you have had to analyse and consider whether your service or product actually fits the needs of the market you are targeting. These kinds of discussions are common amongst both founders and investors in the early stages of organisational growth. 

 

However, there is another kind of “fit” that is not often spoken about and one which may be even more important than the rest: whether the founder is still the right fit for the top leadership role of the organisation they founded (and perhaps even whether the founder was ever the right leader in the first place).

 

Checking your own leadership fit

These questions may be tough to stomach, but they are necessary. In the global research on founder leadership I have conducted over the last eleven years, one of the biggest challenges to both organisational growth and its internal health has been how clearly the founder leader can see themselves, particularly if they have chosen to remain as the organisation’s CEO past start-up.

 

This does not mean that a founder’s assessment of their person-organisation fit always determines that they are not the right fit for the organisation; but it does often lead the founder to a greater understanding of their own leadership strengths, as well as possible blind spots that might require additional support.

 

In interviewing over 350 people, including both founders and the people who surround them in their personal and professional lives, my research has uncovered certain patterns related to long-term founder leadership. One of these is related to the way that founders view their role and their responsibilities.  Founders who choose to remain as the top leader of their organisation and have a deep understanding of what the leadership component of their role requires often achieve better results in terms of the morale, motivation and performance of their teams, as well as how the company performs overall. These are also organisations that are more likely to continue to thrive even after the founder steps down from their role.

 

On the other hand, founders who choose not to focus on the leadership component of their role and remain identified with being a founder only have the tendency to not only neglect some parts of the leadership component of their role, but also to continue to lead in the same way they did when the organisation was just getting started. In the early stages of organisational growth, a founder needs certain skills in order to rally people around their vision, raise the funding that is required to get the organisation going and get the initial team together.

 

Once that is all completed, precisely at the moment when there is potential for scaling, is when it is critical for the leader to take a look at themselves and ask the question of whether they have the right skills to take the organisation into its next level of growth and expansion.

 

Looking beyond yourself

If you are a founder who conducts this kind of person-organisation fit analysis and realises that you might require an upgrade in your leadership skills to take your organisation to the next level, the key is seeking out resources and support. This might be in the form of additional formal leadership training, mentorship or groups of fellow founders who might be facing the same challenges as you. Ideally, it would be people who have already overcome some of the same challenges and would be open (and humble) enough to share what really worked for them.

 

On the other hand, you may have realised in your analysis that you need to hire additional people around you who can fill in the gaps of the leadership skills you might not have (yet). When you select these individuals, make sure that they are people you can learn from and then check in with yourself that you are open to this kind of learning. They need to feel like they can come into the organisation and spread their wings, not be confined to leading in a leadership style that might be exactly like yours.

 

It is also a real possibility that you may realise that you are no longer the right leader to take your organisation to the next level. This is not an easy realisation or a decision to make, but it may be a reality if you start to consider what might be best for the organisation rather than your personal needs. If you come to this realisation, it is not a failure in any form, but one of the most mature decisions a founder can make for the sake of the organisation’s future and thus your own legacy. 

 

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Dr Susanna Kislenko is a social psychologist and director of The Founder Leadership Research Lab at the University of Oxford; her research explores the complexities of long-term founder leadership and the profound ways it can shape organisations over time

 

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com and golero