The Importance Of The Founder-CEO Paradox Of Success

Improved Essays
This paradox of success, as Wasserman (2003; 2008) calls it, implies that there is a higher turnover rate for founder-CEOs who are successful in leading the company to key milestones. This paradox is confirmed by other studies ( ), and suggest that founder-CEOs are not only replaced due to bad performances, but also because they were able to lead the organization to success. Due to the results of these studies, founder-CEOs face a dreadful dilemma since performing below expectations can result in the replacement of their position, but also performing well may cause them to lose their position. Founder-CEOs who value control over wealth, may choose for gradual and less profitable growth, instead of fast growth, in order to learn and adjust and …show more content…
Hence, when the CEO lacks the needed capabilities and traits to make the right decisions, the firm’s performance will suffer (Dubocage & Galindo, 2014). Appendix 1 lists some of the key qualities of a successful founder-CEO, who is able to lead the organization through different stages of growth and who is able to attract financial funds needed to succeed.
If the founder-CEO lacks (some of) these traits and capabilities, it can become an antecedent for the replacement of his/her position as CEO. Lacking vision, a large network or commitment for example can imply that the founder-CEO will be replaced since he/she will not be able to lead the organization to success in the long run. Absence of one or more of these qualities can strengthen the motives mentioned earlier ( firm performance, growth rate, and loss of confidence), resulting in the replacement of the
…show more content…
As mentioned before, founder-CEOs sometimes step aside voluntarily from the CEO position because they feel burned out. The continuous stress, the highly demanding workload and the fact that there are ample guarantees for success and financial stability are factors that force some founder-CEOs to step down from their position or even quit completely (Wasserman, 2012). In some cases, the founder does not want to step aside, but is being forced to step down by the board of directors of venture capitalist because they lost confidence in the founder’s ability to lead the organization due to their inability to cope with all the stress, workload or insecurity (Dubocage & Galindo, 2014). Loss of motivation by the (founder-)CEO is detrimentally to the firm’s performance, since it will cloud the CEO’s judgement in all their decision-making due to absenteeism, personal (physical health) problems and productivity (Becherer, et al.,

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Five Temptations of a CEO Professional Leadership Paper In the book the Five Temptations of a CEO by Patrick Lencioni, there are many critical points that are made about what temptations you will face when you become a CEO and the concept of reality. Assuming the responsibility of a CEO of a corporation or small business is incredibly difficult and extremely stressful. Furthermore because of this you will be put under many temptations. Some of the temptations that Lencioni discusses are Results vs. Status, Accountability vs. Popularity, Clarity vs. Certainty, Conflict vs. Harmony and Trust vs. Invulnerability.…

    • 894 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Bad Leadership in Non-Profit Organizations While good leadership as numerous benefits to a non-profit organization, bad leadership can have the opposite effect on an organization’s performance, culture, and overall organizational health. Over the past one hundred years, there have been many examples of non-profit leaders that have hurt their organization by failing to leader it.…

    • 590 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The text describes several ways to help prevent you from becoming a victim of the leadership derailment process. Some of these include lack of self-awareness, lack of situational awareness, lack of intelligence, dark-side personality traits, disgruntled employees, slackers, criticizers, wars and bankruptcies to name a few. The inability to combat these situations would mean a leadership derailment. Understanding and defining the cause of derailment is the first step to take in trying to minimize leadership derailment.…

    • 1019 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The scenario for this paper’s topic is leading a continuously changing organization and will be presented as follows: A new chief executive officer (CEO) has been employed to lead a mid-sized organization that has settled for the status quo which places the company in a position of stagnation – holding steady, but no growth due to not keeping pace with changes in the area it serves. The company is staffed with new employees who want to modernize the organization and loyal, long-time employees. The Board of Directors, while recognizing the service of the latter group of employees also recognize that some sectors of the company’s operations will benefit from being moved “off shore” and modernizing (GCU, 2012). This essay will discuss foundational theories to be used to lead the organization, how effectiveness is assessed from the foundational theories, how they can be adapted in this situation, and how the new CEO’s leadership skills and style…

    • 1180 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Direct Leadership versus Organizational Leadership Leadership is a relevant role in any institutions, mainly for the armed forces. The biggest challenge for leaders is to switch from the junior level to the senior level, improving and adapting their competences to face the demands of the new position. Knowing their strengths and weakness, leaders in any level have to be an example for subordinates, having the ability to influence and motivates them, leading and guiding them toward the mission accomplishment. On that account, they need focus on the objectives, and develop good communications skills in order to transmit their advices and orders. Furthermore, leaders have a responsibility to develop other leaders, encouraging initiative and…

    • 546 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Changing Your Culture

    • 1066 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Introduction As we continue to grow as a society and a culture, we are faced with inevitable changes. When changes occur it does not mean something or someone needs to change, it means something or someone has to change. To better elaborate, change in the business society is based on the economy, the evolution in innovation and technology, customer needs, and based on growth opportunities (Richards, n.d.). Author Meghan Oliver wrote an article titled, How to Change the World by Changing Your Culture. In the beginning of the article, Oliver states that “only certain types of cultures ae linked to employee engagement and satisfaction, quality of service, and organizational sustainability” (Oliver, 2014).…

    • 1066 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    What does it take to be a “good” leader or manager? Leaders must encompass a variety of skills, knowledge, and expertise to lead a robust team within the healthcare domain. Virtuous leaders are hard to find within today's modern health care arena. To be a successful leader, I believe it is necessary to possess various leadership traits; these characteristics are sometimes first nature or cultivated by trial and error.…

    • 611 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    According to Forbes, there are top 10 leadership qualities which are honesty, confidence, commitment, positive attitude, ability to delegate, communication, sense of humor, creativity, intuition and the ability to inspire. However, these qualities should not be the basis of leadership. It is basically about character and competence, what the leader needs to cope with, given constant changes, crashes and crises. Specifically, social entrepreneur’s leader encounters many trials such as many leader doesn’t have any formal business education and were only driven by their passion in solving a social problem.…

    • 282 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Decent Essays

    “Key Qualities of Leadership” Individuals involved within leadership roles can “make or break” a company. Without key qualities of leadership, an individual cannot fully provide their customers or its employees with the experiences they deserve. Without proper skills and reinforcement, leaders cannot foster a positive workforce or support their employees. Without certain key factors a leader or manager becomes just another employee, and not the leader they are required to be. Having leaders with the skills such as honesty, accountability, the ability to inspire and to delegate, and basic communication skills are all necessary parts to becoming proven and respectable leaders within a business.…

    • 499 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    With a similar image to Mao Zedong during the Great Leap Forward, the company was put through an economic crisis with debt as severe as 3.8 billion. The CEO was also resistant to change at the time. He did not like to use e-mails to communicate with his employees. He also led his employees by telling them to do whatever off the top of his head without understanding…

    • 1042 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Effective leadership could contribute to the success of change. Leadership plays an important role in mobilizing organizational change, as can be seen in the Kodak case. According to the trait theory, effective leadership should have some key traits. Generic traits of the leaders might be similar, for example, Carp and Perez have some common traits such as job-relevant knowledge (Kirkpatrick and Locke, 1991). However, it cannot be easily concluded that traits alone are sufficient for effective leadership or the absence of some of these traits make them any less leader, because trait theory ignore the interaction between leaders and their followers as well as other situational factors (Robbins and Coulter, 2002).…

    • 1079 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Anne Mulcahy, former CEO of Xerox is one of them. To save the company from bankruptcy, she bluntly told the shareholders the Xerox business model was unsustainable. She acknowledged her lack of financial expertise and relied upon treasurer’s office to tutor her on financial matters before meetings. She gained support from leadership teams by taking time with them, being honest, and asking for their commitment.…

    • 1095 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    CEO Compare and Contrast A Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of a company is the “boss” and they are responsible for everything, including the success or failure, of the company. They are in a place of legitimate power, “a place were a person in a higher position has control over people in a lower position in an organization” (Giang ). Without a clear understanding of the power that they hold, they may abuse it. A CEO has many individuals counting on them to be successful with every move they make and a CEO must be able to meet the needs of all of those individuals, including employees and customers.…

    • 1284 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Brilliant Essays

    They underestimated the capacity of their competitors and did not seem to have a set long-term strategy as to how they would deal with competitors or how they would continue to innovate their products in order to keep up with what the market demanded and wanted. Failure in leadership was also evident in how quickly the company grew and the growth was not monitored by either CEO’s that led to large unnecessary hiring of employees and then a large laying off of those very employees. This showed that the leaders were not attentive to what was good and sustainable for the company, but it also was an example of how to lose trust from employees, as they felt they had no job security with such high job terminations within the…

    • 1185 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Brilliant Essays
  • Improved Essays

    For example, the CEO of a company always looks for the future expansion of the business and how to stabilize it. A leader without vision is no better than a handicapped commander. The vision of the leader also inculcates foresightedness in people working under them or people following…

    • 995 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays