The Founder's Mentality: How to Overcome the Predictable Crises of Growth - Couverture rigide

Three Principles for Managing and Avoiding the Problems of Growth Why is profitable growth so hard to achieve and sustain? Most executives manage their companies as if the solution to that problem lies in the external environment: find an attractive market, formulate the right strategy, win new customers. But when Bain & Company s Chris Zook and James Allen, authors of the bestselling Profit from the Core, researched this question, they found that when companies fail to achieve their growth targets, 90 percent of the time the root causes are internal, not external increasing distance from the front lines, loss of accountability, proliferating processes and bureaucracy, to name only a few. What s more, companies experience a set of predictable internal crises, at predictable stages, as they grow. Even for healthy companies, these crises, if not managed properly, stifle the ability to grow further and can actively lead to decline. The key insight from Zook and Allen s research is that managing these choke points requires a founder s mentality behaviors typically embodied by a bold, ambitious founder to restore speed, focus, and connection to customers: An insurgent s clear mission and purpose An unambiguous owner mindset A relentless obsession with the front line Based on the authors decade-long study of companies in more than forty countries, The Founder s Mentality demonstrates the strong relationship between these three traits in companies of all kinds not just start-ups and their ability to sustain performance. Through rich analysis and inspiring examples, this book shows how any leader not only a founder can instill and leverage a founder s mentality throughout their organization and find lasting, profitable growth.

ADVANCE PRAISE for The Founder s Mentality: Carlos Brito, CEO, Anheuser-Busch InBev The concept of the founder s mentality, and in particular our ownership culture, has been central to our evolution and growth as a company. Remembering how we became successful in the first place has helped us act boldly and quickly with an insurgent mindset. This book offers great insights for business owners and leaders. Michael Dell, founder and CEO, Dell Inc. As a founder I resonate strongly with the themes of The Founder s Mentality, especially with regard to the overwhelming importance of speed, singular focus, and the ability to invest for the long term. Adrian Gore, founder and CEO, Discovery Group Zook and Allen share invaluable insight as to how to preserve a company s founding purpose, perspective, and energy, while preventing institutionalization from diluting it. Their work has been instrumental in the way my leadership team and I think about our culture, our structure, and our business model. Linda Rottenberg, cofounder and CEO, Endeavor Global In this heavily researched and compelling book, Zook and Allen provide a road map for winning growth. Companies that build and maintain healthy cultures scale with speed and sidestep avoidable stall-out. Whether you are a start-up entrepreneur, an investor, or a Fortune 500 manager, you need The Founder s Mentality! --Brito