Founder CEO or Professional CEO?

The founder CEO of my last organization, Manu Parpia, when he decided to pass the operational control to a professionally hired CEO; mentioned to his close circle that after a certain time founders need to step back and give control to a professional CEO and see he/she builds it to a great height.

Manu is back as CEO of Geometric after gap of four years, this is different story.

But, the point we need to draw is founder CEO or professional CEO.
It’s very difficult to take one side in this argument. We have seen cases, like Infosys where the founder team continue taking the charge, Wipro saw Pramji back in to helm after short time of non-founder CEO. At global level Google saw this kind of transition.

But, there are several example in medium enterprise segment, where professionally hired CEOs made it big and taken the organization in to a newer height.

As I wrote earlier, it’s very difficult to assume one way is best or the other. Founder CEO Model seems to work as one person or group of people seems to have control on the course of the strategy of the company, the direction it needs to take. (Though board decides it finally). It has disadvantages as well in not able to get out of the mold and scale to new heights. It will lack bigger ideas or broader market experience to position the company.

On the other hand, professional CEO would need lot of time to understand the organization culture and its strengths/weakness. Understanding the current problems and then creating a strategy to provide value to customers will be a huge task to manage.

Building the organization and managing the business and stakeholder’s expectation should be primary focus of the company.

If customer/business growth becomes the center of any company, it will have bright future.

Currently we are going through some organization changes in my company and these are the thoughts came to my mind looking at current state of merger and takeover.