Why "Manager Mode" is Failing You: Founder Mode Explained

The Story of Lin Xiao: A "配合型積極" Manager

• Lin Xiao is an operations director in a large internet company. He has five teams under him and reports to Vice President Zhou every week.

• Vice President Zhou is known for being strict and efficient but also prone to anxiety. To make Zhou feel "at ease," Lin Xiao tries to be comprehensive in his work.

• Lin Xiao reviews the progress of his five teams every morning. He requires each team leader to submit a simple progress report on Monday and condense the team's core issues into a one-page PPT.

• Lin Xiao is good at "managing upwards." His presentation materials are always exquisite and perfect, making Zhou satisfied. Even if a team's project has problems, Lin Xiao will skillfully downplay the important issues and use good data to cover up the real hidden dangers. He believes that making his superiors "at ease" is his greatest value.

The Problem with the Managerial Model

• If you are a middle-level manager in an enterprise and your work mode is similar to Lin Xiao's, you are a "骗子" who is leading the company into an abyss. This is not my opinion but the view of Paul Graham, the founder of YC (Y Combinator).

• In September 2024, Graham published an article called "Founder Mode" on his blog, which sparked a lot of discussion. Many big shots on LinkedIn reposted it and expressed their views.

• In this article, Graham severely criticized managers. These managers may have graduated from prestigious schools and had work experience in famous enterprises, with a very brilliant resume. Graham said an extreme sentence: managers at the management level are all "骗子."

• I can deeply empathize with Graham's severe criticism. Although I have no experience working in large enterprises, I know many unspoken rules of large enterprises. Because I have provided products and services to many large enterprises during my entrepreneurial journey and have interacted with many of their management teams. Also, many of my friends are still working in large enterprises and often share their workplace stories with me. The prototype of Lin Xiao mentioned earlier is a former boss of a good friend of mine. My friend told me at that time that his core job was to make the PPT look good so that his boss could have good data when reporting to the president's office. So, there would be a lot of "水分" in the PPT.

The "黑箱" Problem in the Managerial Model

• Graham calls the managerial model the "黑箱" model. Each small team or even each person's work can be regarded as a "黑箱."

• The manager directly tells the team below what to do and then appropriately delegates power to them for execution. The team then assigns specific tasks to each person.

• When a task is delegated layer by layer to each person, no one knows whose work is helpful to the goal and whose work is just a waste of time and effort. And the manager will not overly participate in the management of details or skip levels of management. He only needs to "beautify" the reports from the people below and then report them to his superiors.

• It is conceivable that there will be a lot of waste of resources in this process. Many tasks may be meaningless and have no help to the goal, and there may also be various lies. So, Graham said that managers are the group of people who are best at lying. In the long run, this managerial model will lead the enterprise into an abyss.

The Founder Mode and Its Advantages

• Graham believes that enterprises that can grow healthily in the long term are all in the "founder mode." The founder mode requires the founder to understand the "黑箱" of his subordinates and even the "黑箱" of his subordinates' subordinates and give certain interventions.

• Some people may think that this is excessive intervention and the "micro - management" that everyone hates. But the founder mode is different from micro - management. Micro - management is characterized by highly centralized power and control of all details. The manager does not give you the right to make decisions freely and asks you to report everything. Because the power is in his hands, he decides whether and how to do things.

• The founder mode will deeply participate in the work of each level but will not control it. I have summarized three characteristics of the founder mode:

  • The founder will deeply understand the product, users, and market but will not personally modify every design draft or check the code. Instead, he will focus on key decisions and long-term vision.

  • The founder has extremely high standards for the team but will also give real responsibilities and encourage the team to think independently.

  • The founder will not only listen to direct reports but will directly talk to front-line employees about problems to ensure that information is not filtered or distorted.

• In short, micro - management is a low-level form of control, while the founder mode is a high-level form of participation. There is an essential difference between the two.

The Differences between Managers and Founders

• Managers are like advanced "螺絲釘." They don't consider whether the company is moving in the right direction or whether their tasks are helpful to the overall goal. They only think about how to do their分内 work well and make the data look good when reporting.

• Managers hate change. They hope that all their work processes are fixed because they are extremely averse to risks. Once there is a risk, the responsibility is theirs. They just want to complete tasks according to the established process and get their annual salary and bonuses smoothly. They are not not working hard; they are just keen on maintaining the status quo. They work hard not to do things right but to make everything look like there is no mistake.

• This is why large enterprises usually do not like people with too much ability when recruiting basic positions. Because these people have ideas and will break the fixed processes that managers desire. They prefer obedient and stable employees.

• Founders are proactive. Of course, they hope that every member of the founding team is proactive and can play their respective advantages.

The Choice between the Managerial Model and the Founder Mode in Life

• This is not just a corporate management problem but also a problem of how a person chooses to treat his life.

• If you are a "founder" in your growth path, you will actively meet challenges and not avoid risks. In other words, you are on the path of growth.

• On the contrary, if you are a manager, you are always avoiding risks and challenges. Although you seem to be working hard, you are actually standing still.

• I hope we are all the founders of our own lives, not managers. Managers like to follow the rules, which means they always want to choose easy things to do. They like to stay in their comfort zones. Once they have this idea, they cannot cope with this rapidly changing era.

• The era is changing rapidly, which means that this era will not always reward those who only focus on one link as a "螺絲釘." Managers often mistakenly think that their success is due to their personal abilities and ignore the support of the platform, resources, and even the times. The real ability is to create value without the halo of the platform.

Applying the Founder Mode to Life

• Life is like an entrepreneurial journey. As a founder, you need to use the "founder mode" proposed by Graham to manage your life.

• Find the right direction but do not be overly demanding on details; trust yourself but also have appropriate high requirements for yourself; often have a profound inner dialogue with yourself to better understand your real state in different situations.

• In the final analysis, when treating our own "company" (life), we should be more proactive to ensure that the "company" is moving in the right direction.

• Managers may seem proactive, but the real "founders" are those who can actively explore and adjust the course in uncertainty. They do not just "work hard" but "work hard to do the right thing."

• If you find yourself in a state of desperately implementing KPI, making beautiful PPTs, but not even knowing what you are doing, you should ask yourself:

  • Am I actively optimizing my work instead of simply executing?

  • Have I thought about how my work can truly affect the overall goal?

  • Do I have the habit of accepting "established rules" without questioning?

• Remember, the "company" (life) is your own, and you should question.