Sunday, October 23, 2005

Talking Point: Founder's Syndrome

Ave Maria School of Law grads should be aware of the following management/organizational health anomaly, especially because they deal with non-profit organizations, and because the issues surrounding this type of problem are often explained away in charitable duties that conflict with the real solution.

Founder's Syndrome
Founder's Syndrome is essentially the series of management difficulties encountered when a single individual involved in an organization begins to make all management decisions of an organization. It is often accompanied with odd behavior metrics, such as a "party line" against which no one may speak or sharp polarization on issues where the side not agreeing with the asserted power is labeled as against the organization.

A great example of founder's syndrome, described by a recovered founder, comes from an article by Hildy Gottleib (available at: help4nonprofits.com). Gottleib founded Diaper Bank.

She states that her organization started in her garage and grew into a $12 million nonprofit. The nonprofit ran into problems and she eventually realized she was the cause. Her nutshell of the syndrome states that the core to Founder’s Syndrome is where decisions are not made collectively, but under the total control of the founder. The founder acts out of fear of losing control of the nonprofit. So the essence is that the founder exerts total control, or attempts to exert total control.

Among Gottlieb’s other observations, is that most frequently, the founder is the infrastructure of the organization. She suggests to other founder’s that they learn two important things:

Some of her other criticisms seem to poke directly at the heart of the matter, such as: founder’s tend to perceive the organizations as being about them, and they forget that their personal vision is not as important as the organization’s and the community’s vision.

Please take a look at this article -- these aren't my comments, but rather the advice of someone who had this problem and worked through it. Sometimes the founder's "vision" is so strong that the significant contributions of others is minimized or altogether disregarded. Among other problems, such a development is not only inaccurate, but uncharitable for it denies basic justice.

From my own experience, I can relate to having seen this type of organizational problem in my work prior to law school. Sometimes organizations can adapt and take a new form, other times the person in the role of the founder can wake-up and change (as Gottleib did), and other times the organization fails.

Google or search Amazon for the term yourself and see that this is a well-documented problem.

You will encounter this problem frequently in dealing with nonprofits that suddenly grow, experience a significant or sudden change in status, or that develop a cult of personality. You should keep this information in your hip pocket as you move into counsel positions with these types of organizations.


Comments:
Good points. A few years ago, I met Peg Luksik, a major pro-life foundress in Pennsylvania (I forget which organization she started). She made pretty much the same points: once your organization gets off the ground, you need to quit so it can grow into its own entity.

I wish Leo Clarke had raised these points when he taught us Corporations...at least then I would have learned something in that class. :)
 
if only the act of diagnoising the disease helped the actual symptoms before it's too late...
 
Yeah, the closest you'd get in biz-org would have been the minor discussions on minority shareholder rights. It's the closest analogy.

I think the symptoms appear way before it's too late in these things because there's too many success stories.
 
I've often felt (and I know Johnny agrees with me on this from many discussions on his couch following Aqua Teen Hunger Force) that a big chunk of the world's problems are caused by an unhealthy lack of humility. Imagine if Uncle Tom gave himself a good look in the mirror and realized what he's become. Sadly, he's probably got a bad combination of good Catholic press and too many yes-men to realize anything else.

How many of our criticisms has he-himself actually heard? How many were filtered out by the BoG during his October revolution? Why haven't more Soviet-communist uprising metaphors occurred to me?

Which reminds me...my only copy of Photoshop is on my now-defunct laptop, so I'm hoping Johnny can manufacture an image of Chinese laborers working under a giant poster of Uncle Tom. Either that, or Charlie Rice in Tianamen Square...
 
One interesting thing I'd like to learn about Clements's story is whether there was a strong personality in his way that persuaded him.

What I've seen in other contects is that a strong personality interjects early in the process and keeps his or her line clear and holds their ground.

The obvious strong personality for the law school so far was the ABA, which is an irrefutable authority to law schools wo wish to have interstate students. The ABA interposed guidance and a goal for the management, much of which was embodied in the charge of Dean Dobranski.

Now that the ABA backs off because of accreditation, it's not clear what the goal is, and I think the ensuing fiefdom battles are the result. People are now assertig what the goal should be.

Despite being labelled as uncharitable, I think the discussion on defining the new future of the law school is good and expected of a school that reached all its goals so early. The school is in many ways a late adolescent/early adult now... it has to decide what it is going to be when it grows up.

Much in line with the person metaphor, it can go the route of codependence, addiction, or become an adult.
 
But was the SCC founder having private revelations? No really, I'm serious. Was Mary telling him to do this or that, eat this, wear that, add wings and breadsticks to the menu and deliver in less than 30 minutes?

I'm just wondering.
 
It came in a vision, "build me a hot house where I can grow more vegetables for pizza"
 
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