The Founder's Mentality

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 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" - an insurgent's clear mission and purpose, an unambiguous owner mind-set, and a relentless obsession with the front line - to restore the speed, focus, and connection to customers, all of which are lost as companies grow. 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. Discover more at: The Founder’s Mentality ® blog and Videos on the Founder’s Mentality

Over the last 10 years, Professor René Rohrbeck has been investigating the practices that companies use to drive organizational renewal. Having benchmarked more than 500 companies with his maturity model, he will share inspiring case studies, dissect best-practices and discuss the challenges that organizations face when building systematic future preparedness. His research has also uncovered three paradox that winning companies have learned to manage actively:

> Scanning broadly for change drives while also analysing deeply the drivers and their interdependencies
> Being agile, yet persistent in building new profitable growth
> Reducing uncertainty through foresight, while continuously embracing uncertainty to avoid commoditization

SOLD OUT  

Programme

Practical info

• Date: Tuesday 21 February 2017
• Time: 17.00 - 19.30
• Place: Upper Multiroom, S building (2610), Fuglesangs Allé 4, 8210 Aarhus V. 2610. See options for parking
• Language: English
• Price: Free (The event is free to attend but registration is required. Notice, seats are limited and all attendees must sign up through the registration link)
• RSVP: No later than 15 February 2017
• Capacity: 125 seats, which will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis
• Refreshments: Coffee, tea, water and snacks 
• Who should attend?: 
  - Executives interested in understanding the nuts and bolts of the Founder's Mentality.
  - Senior managers looking for tools to enhance their business strategy.
  - Industry experts eager to hear from thought leaders.  

Key takeaways

After this event, attendees will better understand how to drive profitable growth by avoiding three pitfalls: 

#1 Overload: The internal dysfunction and loss of external momentum that management teams of young, fast-growing companies experience as they try to rapidly scale their businesses.

#2 Stall-out: The sudden slowdown that many successful companies suffer as their rapid growth gives rise to layers of organizational complexity and a dilution of the clear mission that once gave the company its focus and energy. Sony, Philips, Panasonic, Sears and Mazda are among today’s companies in stall-out.

#3 Free Fall: The most existentially threatening. A company in free fall has completely stopped growing in its core market; and its business model, until recently the reason for its success, suddenly no longer seems viable.

Chris and René will leverage their distinct research perspectives to identify which levers are most powerful for different types of organizations and environments.

Pay it forward

Members of the Alumni Network can invite one guest.

Speakers 

Chris Zook

Chris Zook is a partner at Bain & Company, one of the world’s leading management consulting firms, working with top executives to help them make better decisions, convert those decisions to actions and deliver the sustainable success they desire. Chris has been co-head of the firm's Global Strategy practice for 20 years. He specializes in helping companies find new sources of profitable growth.

He is the co-author with James Allen of five bestselling books on strategy, including The Founder's Mentality: How to Overcome the Predictable Crises of Growth (Harvard Business Review Press; June 2016), which was given 6 out of 6 stars by Børsen and selected as second best business book of 2016. Their book Beyond the Core was recently selected as one of the 100 Best Business Books of All Time. Discover more about Chris

Professor René Rohrbeck

René Rohrbeck is Professor of Strategy at Aarhus BSS and partner in a Strategic Foresight and Innovation consultancy. Before joining academia, he worked in the automobile and telecommunication industry. His passion is to contribute to making organizations more future prepared. Discover more about René 

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