Managing the founding Director

[jpopat]

Hi all

A fairly open topic but wanted to hear your thoughts on how best to manage the approach of founding Director.

An 'associate' is involved with a business as a director, but the founding director has a hard time separating himself as a private individual and the business as a separate entity. A lot of 'I'll decide this and I'll decide that.....' as opposed to 'we'.

Would be good to hear any tips or opinions from those with similar experiences.

Many thanks
JP

 

[japancool]

Have you discussed this with the founding director?

 

[Webzsuite.com]

Well he is a CEO (managing director) and most likely main shareholder, after all it would be his business.

What kind a director is your friend ?

CEO in most cases has to make a decision, it is not a collective hierarchy for a reason.

You may have a board meeting, shareholders meeting, but CEO role is to make strategic decisions, he is responsible for a whole company.

If your friend do not know how to impact the decision maker, than perhaps he shouldn't be a director (of what ?) in a first place.

 

[Ekim Saribardak]

It's called chief executive for a reason, a CEO's job is to make the decisions on behalf of the company.

 

[Chris Ashdown]

The board is the one that makes the decisions with the CEO in charge of implementing them

The CEO or chairman may come up with a plan to take the company forward but its then put to the board to agree

In this case he may have the majority of the shares in the company and be able to carry the vote with them

 

[lesliedocherty]

I worked for a family business where the 'father' had set-up the business and passed it onto his sons, but he was still very much in the background and had a key say in all the decisions. They had quite a hard job managing him and introducing technology or change proved to be a futile task for me.
I remember when i was updating the web server i noticed that every email in/out got sent to the fathers inbox.

 

[Ekim Saribardak]

I worked for a family business where the 'father' had set-up the business and passed it onto his sons, but he was still very much in the background and had a key say in all the decisions. They had quite a hard job managing him and introducing technology or change proved to be a futile task for me.
I remember when i was updating the web server i noticed that every email in/out got sent to the fathers inbox.

I've been in the same situation back in 2009
The father has built the business from 0 to 15m $ in 45 years and left the business to his son and daughter but he visited every Friday to make all the decisions.. It was a VERY hard job to convince him that the business had to be on google and rank well to get more people to hear about the company. Took me 1 year and a lot of conversations and presentations to slowly convince him.

The sad part was he died of old age (may he R.I.P. was a very good man) and the business failed to function properly without him and went bankrupt in a few years.

 

[David Reinhardt]

There's no mention of the title CEO in the original post so I'm gonna park that.

It feels like there needs to be an open conversation. I'd be inclined to start with discussing the directors' current vision for the business (new year is always a good time for reflection), then views on how to achieve that vision. Starting with shared context (hopefully the ambition is shared!) might help avoid the conversation becoming personal.

Ultimately, it sounds as if it needs to be faced head on (tactfully). I don't believe there is a way of managing around it.