← At Work with The Ready
At Work with The Ready
22. Founder Mode vs. Manager Mode is the Wrong Question
00:46:23
Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin explore why some leaders are drawn to “founder mode”, and how it’s just as flawed as “manager mode”.
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- [00:01]
A
I would love to be on a fly on the wall in the C suite of Microsoft or Apple if they talked about founder mode at all.
- [00:08]
B
Like, I know.
- [00:09]
A
I wonder how Satya read read founder mode or how Tim read founder mode. It's like.
- [00:14]
B
All right, well, hey everybody. Welcome to the show. I'm Rodney Evans and that guy in my favorite podcast blouse, and I think his also is Sam Sperlin.
- [00:26]
A
That's right. I busted out the best shirt for this episode because I wanted to bring.
- [00:30]
B
You know, my best foot forward, objectively, the best shirt. Welcome back to Outwork with the Ready. This is a podcast about modernizing organizations as the future of work meets the present moment.
- [00:42]
A
Each episode we turn our attention to one common organizational pattern that we think is worth digging into and pulling it apart like a delectable croissant and propose solutions for what to do instead.
- [00:53]
B
Did you blow any bubble spit bubbles while you said croissant?
- [00:57]
A
I did not.
- [00:57]
B
That's a callback.
- [00:59]
A
That's a callback. That's right. I learned that in French class. That's why I nailed that pronunciation.
- [01:04]
B
I wouldn't know, but it sounds delicious. Because we love a work meme. This week we're talking about founder mode. But before we do, let us check in.
- [01:15]
A
All right, Rodney, it's spooky season. It's Halloween. So what's your Halloween costume plan for this year?
- [01:23]
B
I have one because Bridget does it for us. So one of my really good friends, I told the story on this show before of my best Halloween costume ever, which was also a partner costume with Bridget because Bridget is like both the vision and the execution. She is founder mode and manager mode on our Halloween game. And this year she and I are being Diane and Carla from the old show Cheers. So we are going to be Waitresses in 80s Clothing with aprons and the whole deal. And I am very much looking forward to it. Yeah. What about you?
- [02:00]
A
I'm going to be a hot dog.
- [02:02]
B
Wow. Just really. Is this what that book leave in was about?
- [02:09]
A
Yeah, I think it's actually waiting for me downstairs in the package room. I believe it has arrived. It's a shame that I'm actually not wearing it right now. It may be the only thing that could beat the podcast blouse, but would be a full head to toe hot dog costume.
- [02:22]
B
It is a shame. Also coming full circle because we're on an old zencaster with Aaron Dignan's name in the link. The first year that I met Aaron, he was a hot dog for Halloween and I remember him showing me a Picture of him eating a hot dog while in a hot dog costume. And I was like, is that cannibalism?
- [02:42]
A
I'm definitely intending to follow in his footsteps.
- [02:45]
B
You gotta.
- [02:46]
A
Somehow I didn't even realize that consciously. That's the power of founder mode.
- [02:52]
B
Well played, sir. Well played. So y', all, there is an article that's been floating around the interwebs and like all articles that have a hot take, there have been reactions to it and reactions to the reactions. And now we're going to make podcasts reacting to the reactions to the reaction to the thing. And that article was about a thing coined as founder mode. We will get into all of what that means, but essentially the idea is that there are two ways to run a startup and one is in founder mode and one is in manager mode. And we're going to talk about the difference and maybe just that binary in general. But the pattern that I thought was really interesting for us to explore is this. I believe that founder mode takes the position that there is a unique like genius slash hero that is required to run an organization. But where that hero exists, they often create an organization that depends on their heroics and therefore cannot be run by someone else, which reinforces and validates the need for founder mode. So that's the pattern that I see get repeated. And we've seen it in pop culture when a founder leaves and has to come back. And there's a lot in this that is to me about what the system design is that requires a founder to founder mode indefinitely.
- [04:23]
A
Cool. And this might be a good time. If you haven't read the article, it's actually quite short. Just Google Founder Mode, Paul Graham and give it a quick read because we're not going to do like an in depth, line by line kind of take of it. And it'll be also in the show notes of this episode. So go give it a quick read, come back and you will be better situated for the conversation we are about to have. So where. Where do you want to start to dig into this idea?
- [04:52]
B
I mean, I think I want to start by asking you what made you interested in really talking about this? What was it about the founder mode versus Manager mode idea articulated in that article that like spoke to you? And honestly, why do you think it sort of like tapped this vein in the zeitgeist? Because it has caught fire in a way.
- [05:14]
A
Yeah, the fact that it did kind of tap into some sort of vein was the first thing that brought it to my attention was just seeing people talking about it. I definitely Travel in circles where people talk about organizational articles and things that come out. But I hadn't seen anything quite grab the attention of people the way this had partially. I think, you know, Paul Graham is a bit of a divisive figure. So I think anytime he, he writes something, there's generally some chatter about it.
- [05:44]
B
But.
- [05:44]
A
But there was something about this idea which I think really for the. A certain type of person really gives them permission to do the thing they want to do anyway. And to have a ready made excuse to not be collaborative, to not work well with others, to not cultivate an organization where other people can contribute and to just kind of do that hero sort of move of just, I'm going to do what I want. And Paul Graham put a name to this thing. And now it's not just me being aggressive and abrasive. I'm founder moding. And I think that is what kind of caught my attention because I have already seen people use this article as a bit of an excuse to do that sort of thing.
- [06:39]
B
Yeah, that's really interesting. It's amazing how when you give a label for something, what kind of mythology it can take on. Let's start with like, is founder mode bad? What do you think?
- [06:52]
A
Well, if we thought it was clearly one or the other, we probably wouldn't make a podcast episode about it. And that's. And to Paul Graham's credit, I think there are some ideas within it that are useful and are good. And I think, you know what, where my mind goes initially is that complete disengagement from a founder or complete kind of like I rise above everything and everybody else handles the stuff is not good either. So founder mode is not the only alternative to that. But if you just kind of look what is the opposite of founder mode? I think I have certainly seen organizations where like that has been kind of the posture that a founder has eventually kind of fallen into. And I don't think that's actually great for anybody.
- [07:41]
B
Yeah. And I think that it's worth saying, like, founding something is a really difficult thing to do. I've worked with a lot of founders who have been like incredibly challenged by the ebbs and flows and just trying to get enough attention and momentum and have enough impact through fast enough that the thing takes flight. That is a very particular kind of inception energy that I do think is valuable. And I think it's uncommon. And I don't think that everybody has it naturally or has the conditions to exercise it if they do have a great idea. So I don't want to discount the idea that being in the mode of actually founding something is important because I don't think we would have a lot of upstarts without it. And you have to have people in this world who like, question the status quo and are iconoclastic and anti authoritarian in some ways and look around and go like, you know, it's like Airbnb is referenced a lot in that article. Like the co founders of Airbnb could have looked at VRBO and said, like, I think they've got it and just let it be. And as it turned out, instead they created a app and a full philosophy that completely changed how people travel and how they think about property. And like, we need people like that in this world, I think.
- [09:11]
A
Yeah.
- [09:12]
B
And the idea of founder mode as a persistent requirement for quality is innate.
- [09:20]
A
Yeah, absolutely agree there. I think just the one last kind of positive thing that comes to mind for me is that especially early in an organization, the founder really sets the tone for like everything in the organization. What is quality? Like, what sort of behavior do we permit here and.
- [09:39]
B
Right.
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A
And I think it does us all a disservice to pretend like the founder doesn't have an outsized impact on setting those kind of initial conditions for how an organization is going to run into the future.
- [09:53]
B
Yeah. And like, I don't see a reason that they shouldn't like the sort of architecting and the building of all of the initial walls and stuff. Like, you know, it's an exciting and it's an important thing. And I think like the architect's fingerprints are always going to be on a house, no matter who ultimately builds it and decorates it and lives in it. That's worth like acknowledging because I think part of what I objected to actually in like a bunch of the content that I read about the founder mode thing is I think it actually discounts in some ways that initial vision and energy and architecture to say that the only way to have the house keep expanding is by the architect to be there, let and encourage and design for founders to start shit, that's cool. And to do the things that you're saying, like to potentially be something, some of the genetic material for how an organization behaves and what it steers toward and what the foundational principles are. And like, I think that stuff is really valuable and I actually think it cheapens it to say, but you gotta keep being there and making sure or it'll all go sideways.
- [11:09]
A
Love that. So why don't we start with, I think the thing that rubbed both of us Wrong the most, which is this false dichotomy that is set up in the article. Do you want to start there?
- [11:23]
B
I do. So I wanted to make the whole episode about this and Sam wisely waved me off. But we talk a lot about either or thinking at the ready. And you've heard me say the third way approximately 9 million times on this podcast.
- [11:40]
A
You are practically Rodney the Third way Evans.
- [11:43]
B
Thank you. Thank you very much. That's my baseball nickname. I think that there are a lot of problems with either or thinking that people don't really tap into because it's not something that we talk about. And I do believe in the third way. I do basically always think that there is one. And because I think I anchor to that. I don't critique the either or thing often. But there are a few things that really bugged me. And it bugged me in this article that was like, it's either founder mode or manager mode. And manager mode was painted as like, you know, just basically like colorless suits who just, you know, are like, hire and. Yeah, exactly. Which I'm like, well, you know, I think there are managers who probably don't fall into that category. Exactly. But regardless, the thing is about either or thinking. And it has, you know, a lot of like, tenants in like, colonialism and white supremacy. And like, there's a long and rich history of how either or thinking has come to be part of systemic design. And on the positive, it does simplify our choices to believe that there are only two, but what it generally doesn't allow for is a lot of creativity in terms of what combinations of choices are, the exploration of a bunch of different alternatives. And usually it also really invites polarization. So anytime we get into binaries and this article is a perfect example, it's like, choose your side, choose your fighter. And it's like, what is the benefit of that? To me, it's so pointless. And I see this in all kinds of places in organizational design where it's like, we're either fully self managing and like a flat organization where we fire all the managers, or we're like the most bureaucratic, most hierarchical, most command and control. And I'm like, guys, it is not like that. You do not have to choose the most extreme sides of this fence almost ever in this life.
- [13:42]
A
Yeah, there's a universe of options between those two that are, you know, rich and interesting and creative and don't have to be exactly like any other organization. And when you set up a false dichotomy like this, and if you don't initially catch it. That's what I think is so dangerous about this kind of rhetorical tool. Is that my first reading of founder mode? Like, just a quick kind of power skin? It's like, oh, yeah, like manager mode. That sucks. Like, I don't. The way you just described manager mode there. Like, yeah, like founder mode all the way. And like, of course, it took me like a split second, like, okay, obviously these are not the only two ways to run an organization. But if. When you present it in that way, it's very easy to just, yeah, like you said, choose your fighter and now you're on your team and you got the other team over there and now we can just talk past each other and fight about, like, fiction.
- [14:40]
B
Totally. And it's like in this conflict, which is like, not really a conflict, actually it's just an article that invites people to make a choice. But that is how either we're thinking goes. Importantly, to me, you're asking to choose between two things that are deeply imperfect, when the third thing, which is creating the kind of leadership and the kind of vision and the kind of work that your organization requires to be successful in scale, isn't discussed around the table at all. So it's like you either have a visionary at the helm who holds the organization to account, or you have a bunch of suits who don't give a shit and are just functionaries. And I'm like, both of those suck. Both of those are terrible choices. And neither of them considers organizational design and what a system needs to do and be in order to scale effectively. It's completely predicated on the idea that, like, the effort of one or a very small group of humans is the reason that an organization succeeds or fails, which, like, is only just like such a particular part of that story.
- [15:55]
A
Yeah, well, and it lets you really center your ego in the story of what is going on here. If things are going well and you're founder moding, then, you know, it's pretty easy to like, draw that causal connection in your mind. It's because of how I'm doing stuff. And if you're not founder moding and things aren't going well, well, then obviously I need to get in there and start throwing my weight around. And in general, when we have anybody in an organization, but particularly senior leaders kind of driving with their ego, it very rarely ends up in a good place for anybody but them.
- [16:32]
B
Yeah, totally. One of the articles that Jack gave us was the recent Kim Scott op ed in the New York Times, which I thought was really brilliant because it, you know, it was talking about how this idea is like not how Silicon Valley started. And in fact a lot of the most successful leaders have been collaborative and cooperative and have invited more people into the owning and the stewardship of the place. And that, that is in fact how Apple became as successful it was and Google became as successful as it was. And like the, the sort of reduction to there is this singular hero who never listened to anybody and that is how Apple became Apple. Like A is just like not true. B, it's also not very helpful because even if it were true, how many of those people are out there? Even if there is a story in which that myth holds up to scrutiny and I don't know that story if there is one, because most places that have a very famous founder, when you actually talk to people inside of the building, you get a very different story than what is posted on their website and on their, in their kitchen, by their kombucha station, etc. So even if that person exists who can successfully both start and scale and go it completely alone based on like their unique instinct, that's not a model for creating and growing companies. Because how many of those people are out there at the right place and the right time that they can make a go of it? Like I'm just thinking not enough.
- [18:15]
A
Yeah, well, and it'd be one thing if we were sitting here trying to make this argument and looking around at the most successful organizations. Choose your metric, you know, financial or otherwise.
- [18:25]
B
Sure.
- [18:25]
A
And how many of them are actually founder led? I mean, I don't have the list in front of me. Facebook obviously still led by Zuckerberg, but you've got Microsoft, Satya, Nadella, you've got Apple, Tim Cook. You know, there are so many counter examples to founder mode being the way that organizations get successful and stay successful that it's not even hard to like find those. And I would love to be on a fly on the wall in the C suite of Microsoft or Apple if, if they talked about founder mode at all. Like I know how to. I wonder how Satya read read founder mode or how, how Tim read founder mode.
- [19:03]
B
It's like, all right, well yeah, same, I would be very interested. And I think that like one of the points that we talk a lot about on this show, but particularly shows up when you start to orient to the specialness and frankly the overwork of an individual is just fragility, like you're just creating a fragile system. There is no resilience in requiring one person to Be there forever and stay forever and hold the vision in their like, obviously, like the hit by the bus question is the most obvious one, but it's even just like anything that scales will reach a level of complexity where founder mode breaks. Like that is inevitable. And so it's a ceiling on the success of the company to say that this person has to be involved in every important decision because it's like, well, then you're going to have to stay in the range of that person's expertise.
- [20:08]
A
Yeah. And then if you range outside of that person's expertise, but they still have the outsized impact of being involved in those things, then you are relying on their judgment, continuing to be right or continuing to be lucky, neither of which is particularly resilient.
- [20:29]
B
That's really true. And I also think that in that kind of reliance and dependence, what you're also not doing is requiring people inside of the organization to learn that kind of judgment. And you know, hearkening back to other episodes, like our people positivity episode, our strategy episode, like paying attention to market signals, integrating what is happening in the landscape with strategy, either for the organization or fractally. These are skills that people can learn and practice. These are not like, this is not like being born with perfect pitch. Like, are there people who are naturally better at vision? I'm certain that there are. Can smart people who care practice visioning and like long term thinking and future scenario planning and like, yes, they, they can. I've seen people in client organizations for 20 years learn how to do these moves. And so again, just in terms of sustainability and scalability and adaptability and just resilience, I'm like, don't tell people at your company that they don't know how to do that and they never will. Like, that's just, that's not a good idea.
- [21:53]
A
Totally. And kind of the flip side of that, yes, those skills are learnable and developable. And if you don't ever get the opportunity to practice or exercise those skills, they will atrophy as well or completely fail to develop. Going back to the pattern as you described it, creating an environment where the founder feels like they have to do the thing because people aren't stepping up to do it, because they don't have the muscle memory to do it.
- [22:21]
B
Which is honestly, like, almost every founder I've ever either coached or worked with their leadership team or been around in any context at some point has had the exact victim narrative that you are articulating right now, which is like, I'm the only one I'M the only one who get. And I'm like, yeah, man, you are the only one. Because you set it up this way. Because you told all of them to shut up in color. And now you're like, why am I the only one who thinks about this? Why am I the only one who cares? It's like, because you told them not to. Because you told them you got it and you're the only one who got it. So, like, why would they do something else?
- [23:07]
A
Totally. And like, I'm sitting here thinking, like, I could get on board potentially with the idea of founder mode in moments of crisis and emergency. Sure. That we have to get through in the short term.
- [23:24]
B
Yep.
- [23:25]
A
I could, I could be convinced that that is something I've seen that kind of need to be the reality in various places. The key thing there, though, would be short term, temporary. There's an point to it. I don't think any founder wants to do that forever. There are lots of workaholic founders out there, but I don't think many of them want to do that literally for the rest of their life. So that's. There's something about taking that emergency sort of mindset and just like, operating with that as if, like, we are always in an emergency, which is just a recipe for the individual's burnout. But also I feel like it burns out like the actual, like the organization itself, the processes we have, the policies we have, we just like it all. Everything. If everything is at 11, all the time, you're going to burn those things out.
- [24:16]
B
Yeah, I agree with you. And I think that this is one of the places where, like, again, I'm anchoring to like, half a dozen founders that I've worked closely with in my career and thinking about how this showed up, and it very much did in all of these situations. And it's like, there is usually not a lot of explicitness about things like authority. And so there's a lot of implicit rules. And like, to your point, Sam, I would argue that there's probably a water line. Often founders have more ownership, often they have more stake. Often they are the ones in touch with investors, blah, blah, blah, blah. That, like, there might be a waterline that is like, yo, when shit is hitting the fan, I'm the decider. Like, I will not be building consensus. I will ask for advice from whoever I want it. And like, then we gotta go. Because, like, ultimately is the founder's butt that is usually on the line in a crisis, especially when this existential. And so I agree with you that There are like, moments where I think a singular point that is decisive and where you're marrying basically like responsibility and authority and consequences in one person is a thing that will happen occasionally and probably makes a lot of sense. And I'm like, but can we not have all of the rules be implicit? Can that be a real rule that's made explicit? And can we make it explicit that not everything is that?
- [25:48]
A
And so like invoking martial law.
- [25:50]
B
Exactly. Can we be explicit that sometimes we invoke martial law and everybody understands that that's for the common good and that will end as soon as the crisis is over? Maybe. Because I think keeping. You know, Ali and I wrote this article a bunch of years ago about organizational debt, which is not a concept that we came up with. It's been around for a long time, but we. The point of the article was to talk about how organizational debt can often be traced to unmet needs, particularly in a leader. And the focus of organizational debt, as we talk about it at the ready, is usually on processes and systems that no longer serve, and it often is in the form of bureaucracy and the servicing of the organization instead of the work to be done that actually adds value to the customer. I say this as preamble because the other side of the organizational debt cycle that Ali and I talked about is not the bureaucratic side, it's the chaotic side. And this is a side that I see with founder mode. And it's just the idea that in a founder's refusal to be pinned down, basically they are not making explicit rules, which creates dependence on them, which means the only way for people to get anything done is through influence, which reinforces the dependence on them. And it's like, then the organizational debt is how do you politic your way into convincing the founder of your opinion? And I can't tell you how many times I've seen this in organizations. I worked with one for several years and I swear to you, 80% of the effort exerted by that executive team, which was a team of like very experienced and well compensated professionals, was how to get the founder to take their perspective and how to influence him, because they didn't have any real authority of their own. And I was like, what a waste of calories, having like, you know, $6 million in payroll basically just used to try to get this dude to play on there. It was just, it was insanely inefficient and so wasteful and like that. I, I haven't talked to him, but I'm certain that guy read that article. And was like, yeah, yup, founder mode, it's the only way. But like that organization was horribly, it was incredibly inefficient. People were. Had the worst learned helplessness I've ever seen anywhere. Because they were basically like, at the end of the day, he, he decides and it's always martial law.
- [28:33]
A
Totally. I wanted to ask you. So we've, we've teased this depth finding concept that we've been working on and we're going to do a whole podcast series on it that we're working on right now. But part of the idea in this is we talk about the role of leaders in various ages and not to like give the whole spiel, but basically in our current age, which called the intelligence age, there's this idea that leaders are not just kind of pushing thinking and doing down into the organization, but the organization is actually also pushing, doing back up into the leadership. And I'm wondering how you, how does that kind of match up with the articulation of doing that is in this Founders Mode article?
- [29:25]
B
That's a very good question. I'm going to give you my very short take and then I'm going to toss it back to you.
- [29:31]
A
Okay, great.
- [29:32]
B
Okay. So I think that where the doing thing gets confusing with leaders is that they think that it might mean micromanaging and just like parachuting back into people's work and ripping it out of their hands and doing it for them. That is very much not what we mean. I think in terms of something like founder mode, there is actually more natural orientation towards thinking and doing combined, I think in founder mode than in manager mode, for example. And I feel like it should be directed at things that are actually useful. So like, directed at like the doing as a founder might really be talking to other founders, understanding other categories, visiting customer, like deeply understanding the business firsthand, first person. And also like, I think a lot of really great founders in history have also like kept their hand closely on like one or two special projects where they are really like this feature or this product is like my thing that I am incubating. And they haven't gotten to the point where they're just opining on other people's work. They are still producing something themselves. And I think that's really cool and how it should be for a whole variety of reasons. But I don't think that it's just making the decisions.
- [30:59]
A
Yeah. What do you think that totally that that tracks for me. As we continue to develop this idea for the ready, we should probably be thinking ahead to like what's the misunderstanding of this? That it probably is the micromanagement? I think, at least in some of the workshops that I've given using this content that is I think where leaders initially go to. And I think one of the things that I'm thinking about with the doing is, is, is the doing that you are doing as a leader. English is awesome. Building capacity for us to do new things, better things in the future or are you just kind of getting us through this moment? And I think it's kind of going back to that martial law idea. But if I think when we talk about doing it and thinking in the intelligence age, it's not just the doing for right now, it's the work that we can do right now to make tomorrow and next week and next year and 10 years down the road better or set us up to be able to do those things as well.
- [32:04]
B
What's cool about what you just said that I haven't thought about is like, it's the idea of continual founding, but as part of the company, it's like, what are you going to take 0 to 1 next? Like, okay, so you made this company and so now that you have this material, what experiments are you running to decide, like, what is the adjacency, what is the longer term big swing? Like, what a cool way to think about founder mode as like being a serial entrepreneur in your own company and being potentially the person. And like, I certainly have had elements of this in my role where once I was not completely engaged in client work all day, every day and able to look out more that I was able to be like, let's make a thing. I think founder mode potentially, you know, like done really thoughtfully. Those people who already are likely oriented to entrepreneurialism and to the starting of things might be able to in a disciplined way do that for their companies, which I think is awesome.
- [33:20]
A
Totally and completely necessary if the company is going to continue on beyond the initial founding idea.
- [33:26]
B
Yeah, like every core business will decay. So like, what is your next play? And like, you know, when we look at really progressive organizations like a hire, like there is an ability to start a micro enterprise at hire and to get funding and to be a founder of within the ecosystem of that organization and to like try to find product market fit. Like, I think that's really cool. I just, I don't think that that is how founder mode is being defined, at least in this moment and in these memes.
- [33:57]
A
I think the last thing that stood out to me and I don't think I was the first one to make this observation. I think maybe I saw John Cutler write something about it first, but just. It was striking that the word leadership does not appear in this article at all. And I'm curious if you like pull any meaning from that or have any thoughts about that.
- [34:20]
B
I don't. I don't know. You go first.
- [34:24]
A
Well, I think this is the third. The third wayness of it potentially. You know that there is a version of this article that is perhaps more nuanced and probably less viral that sets up other polarities other than manager mode and founder mode. And somewhere in there is the idea of leadership. And it comes back to, I think what we already talked about earlier, what you were talking about in terms of building capacity for the organization, building an organization that doesn't actually require someone to be in founder mode all the time, that. That requires leadership. And I think sometimes we equate like being a founder with being a leader. And sometimes they are the same. And hopefully they are the same. And hopefully it's a pretty overlapping concept. But often, often not. You can be a founder and be in founder mode. And I think if I have a hypothesis that if you find yourself in founder mode all the time, I wonder if you're not in leadership mode at that point. I'm holding that lightly because I literally just had that thought. But there's something about these two ideas seem to potentially be incompatible with each other.
- [35:46]
B
Yeah, I don't disagree. And you know, we have been talking a lot about the idea of that modern leadership is really stewardship. And what I love about that word, and I know not everybody likes it and that's fine. But what I love about that idea is like leading takes the perspective that you are out front and you are there first. And stewardship takes the perspective that you are responsible for the health of something and for creating or maintaining a thriving thing that can continue to maybe grow or maybe exist or whatever it is meant to be doing that your job is. Is to support it in doing what it's meant to be doing. And that is inherently not a power game like that is inherently a game that is about the thing itself. Whether the thing is a piece of land in a conservancy or your family's money in a trust or an organization. The idea is like you as the steward are responsible to the thing and founder mode and I think supposes the opposite, which is the thing is responsible to you.
- [37:06]
A
Yeah. Yeah, I think that's well said, I guess. Is there anything else we wanted to hit?
- [37:13]
B
I mean, the Only other thing is, like, I fundamentally believe that the speed and complexity in which we are operating right now does require collaboration. I just don't think, in the words of some of my old colleagues, that you can fight a network with a chain of command. The world is inherently connected, and I just don't think that up and down a hierarchical link is how you adapt and respond. I fundamentally believe that to succeed at pretty much any scale today requires collaboration of some kind of. And if you are going to hoard power in an organization and keep the rules ever changing and implicit and create competition between the people around you, which is something that happens a lot in founder mode, I don't think that you can have it both ways. I don't think that you can sit in the seat of sort of absolute power and have real collaboration. I think if you are going to, like, crown yourself king, you are necessarily going to create competition among those around you. And I don't think it's possible to survive that way in the long term.
- [38:36]
A
Yeah, that makes me think of Ashby's Law of Requisite variety, which basically says that a system must have at least as much variety as the environment it's trying to create, control. So I think the environment, in this case the organization, and the complexity of our organizations and of the world in which they are operating in is only going up. So the system for controlling that, if it's just a dude or a dudette making calls, that is not a system that has as much variety as what it is actually trying to control. So I think there is an incompatibility there where in the long term you will not see the results that you are maybe seeing in these kind of short term, sort of emergency sort of situations.
- [39:23]
B
I love that. I love it when you bring nerd stuff in. Yeah, nerd shit. Also, I have to make a joke that I've been sitting on since the very beginning of this podcast when you were talking about how you run in circles of org nerds. And then I just kept thinking about how we should just call that a nerdical. And now it's read into the record and we'll live forever. Anyway, Sam, let's give the people some ideas. That's what they come here for. You go first. Okay.
- [39:56]
A
Okay.
- [39:58]
B
I thought you were booing me. I was like, wow, I'm doing.
- [40:01]
A
I was actually booing myself because I see what, like three hours ago, me wrote into the board and I think it's just nonsense. So I've been kind of like noodling on something throughout this episode. I'm going to try to articulate it, but I don't know if Emergence.
- [40:17]
B
Let's go.
- [40:17]
A
Emergence. Org is bad. And I think the thing that I'm sitting with here is that one of the things that Founder Mode assumes is that the only thing we are optimizing for is the financial return on the organization. Obviously it's important. If you don't have that, you don't have lots of other things. So not downplaying that as a thing that is important, but I will always be a voice of work. Can be more than that. It should be more than that. Like, it's an opportunity for people to grow and to learn about themselves and find meaning in their work and help each other and just like be good humans working together on something that matters. And I think that's what maybe rubbed me the most wrong way about the Founder Mode article, which is just like, we don't give a shit about any of that. I'm here to make decisions so that we make as much money as possible.
- [41:21]
B
Yeah.
- [41:21]
A
And I know there's caveats out. Out the butt around like, yes, we need to do that, but I guess I don't know. The thing I want to just like throw out there instead is like, there are other things to optimize for. And I think if you adopt a Founder Mode as a leader or as an actual founder, I think you're cutting yourself off from a lot of really good stuff that you can experience as someone leading an organization.
- [41:45]
B
I love that it's such an interesting observation because it is really true that there is just an underlying assumption that financial maximization is the first principle for everything, which. Which also is recursive in nature because the people who are going to benefit the most from that are the founder and their investors.
- [42:10]
A
Yeah.
- [42:10]
B
Yeah. Interesting. So my idea isn't really an idea, but it is, it is. It's amusing. I've been thinking a lot about this lately because of structure work that I'm doing at the ready right now. And I think that an alternative to Manager mode, which this we didn't spend a lot of time on, but is like, problematic for other reasons, is really thinking about in an organization less about like either hierarchy or just like cowboy nonsense. What are real checks and balances on power or on authority that aren't just reporting lines. Like, it's not just like, I'm the manager so I keep people in line, or like, I'm the founder, so I ultimately swoop in and decide whenever I want to. It's like, what are some reasonable checks on that. And it can be things like, you know, if you're a founder who's like, I'm in founder mode, then, like, is there an opportunity for people to convey their confidence in you in a safe and anonymous way? Is there a way for you to at least understand whether, like, the decisions that you are making are creating the kind of environment that people want to work and live in in a non, like, employee survey, HR ish way? I'm like a lot of founders that I've been around. Again, I think this is a reinforcing narrative of like, my job is hard. I'm the only one who can do it. I'm the only one who understands I carry the weight of the world. No one else wants to help me or could help me because they're too unspecial to do so. And therefore I don't need any hedge on me. I need no constraints because of, like, the iniquity of this situation. And I just like, don't really buy that. I'm just like, have an andon cord somewhere in your organization that if you are in founder mode and it is unchecked, except theoretically by a board, which is a topic for another day, or investors, which is also a topic for another day, I feel like, at a minimum, a founder should be held to account to some degree by their organization.
- [44:42]
A
Love that. All right, should we wrap here?
- [44:45]
B
Let's do it.
- [44:46]
A
We are always looking for new topics for the show. So if you have an organizational pattern that you're having trouble changing or you just want to hear us talk about, shoot us a note@podcastheready.com this show is.
- [45:00]
B
Engineered by Taylor Marvin and produced by Jack Van Emberg, who's still here. He's been here the whole time. At work with the Ready was created by the Ready, where we help organizations around the world change the way they work. Thank you so much for listening.