"In 1985, Freada Klein (then head of organizational development for Lotus) did an experiment... With Kapor’s permission, Klein pulled together the résumés of the first forty Lotus employees... Klein explained that most of these early employees had skills the growing company needed, but many had done “risky and wacko things” such as being community organizers, being clinical psychologists, living at an ashram, or like Kapor, teaching transcendental meditation.
Then Klein did something sneaky. She submitted all forty resumes to the Lotus human resources department.
Not one of the forty applicants, including Kapor, was invited for a job interview. The founders had built a world that rejected people like them."
It's unclear whether this was and is a mistake. You need different kind of people in the beginning and when the company is executing a tested business model.
We can usefully divide intellectual tasks into two sets: filling and framing. Fillers add more useful detail or content within some framework, while framers explore possible new frameworks. While both tasks are essential, framing has higher variance; most frame attempts fail, but a few produce great value.
This definitely causes issues later on when the organization or movement becomes incapable of replacing the original founders. The founders would need to both hire a lot of fillers and also mentor others like them to take over in the future. But this causes enormous resentment. Fillers will feel (absolutely correctly, this is exactly what happens) passed over for promotions that they by every other metric thoroughly deserve.
Why should a company hire people that are similar to the founders?
At an early stage, companies need very different people than later on. At first, they need generalists; once you reach a certain size, you need specialists.
The founders should be self-driven, they should have a vision, they should know about all parts of the business. Later employees should be excellent in their speciality, should have execution skills, should be able to follow someone else's vision.
And down the road they need zero generalists? I think the important takeaway is that they were 100% rejected. Maybe they need fewer people who are framers or founders as time goes on, but to have none sounds risky.
As you said the founders need vision. If those visionaries are filtered out in hiring, eventually the company will die (on the inside).
Then Klein did something sneaky. She submitted all forty resumes to the Lotus human resources department.
Not one of the forty applicants, including Kapor, was invited for a job interview. The founders had built a world that rejected people like them."
http://vault.theleadershiphub.com/blogs/if-you-werent-boss-w...