Reap Management Series (No 6):The Founder's DNA

Children of successful people rarely replicate the achievements of their parents. Why? They did not go through the circumstances-the fears, the anxieties, the disappointments, the trepidations and the anger-that created their parents. Life achievement is not coated in biology, otherwise the grandchildren of Ahmadu Bello, Awolowo and Azikiwe should have been ruling Nigeria by now. Warren Buffet, the iconic American entrepreneur, said the success DNA is not necessarily hereditary and that is why those who won the Gold Medal in the 2000 Olympics for the United States may not have their children representing the country at the 2020 games.

Stories have been told several times of how Otunba Subomi Balogun left ICON Merchant Bank to found FCMB. He had worked so hard for the company, hoping one day to reap the fruit of his labour by becoming the CEO. But when the harvest time came, the cup passed over and went to another person. In the haze of the fury and the mental storms, a bank was born. Entrepreneurship feeds on ego, a feeling of exceptionalism. Those who make things happen are those who usually feel the compulsion to stop answering “sir” and to rather be the “sir”. Aigboje Aig-Imokhuede said that the feeling of exceptionalism was the motivation that led him and Herbert Wigwe to start searching for a bank to own. It was what led them in to blindfoldedly buy Access Bank, without due diligence, without too many questions.

Wealth is either generated or inherited; but it is hardly shared. Very few become wealthy working for a wealthy man. Achievement is in the doing and the harvest is hardly a season for people who did not sow. You may call it greed but the prosperity DNA multiplies when the body refuses to let enough be enough. A six-digit salary will certainly afford a garden apartment in Lekki Phase one, an annual summer in the US, a membership of Ikoyi Club 38, school fees of children in high-brow Montessori and regular lunch in a Chinese restaurant. But it is what it is: a salary.

The Founder’s DNA breeds control. The “my-own factor” keeps the adrenalin flow; it makes god of human. It is the power DNA: the power to hire and fire; to give and to take; to shout while others listen; to receive apologies when even one is wrong. Ian Young, an entrepreneur, said “I became free the day I began to pass the burden of my life to other people. They go the errand for me. They go where I want them to go”. Is being the founder just about the desire for power and control? Largely. Is it also not about adding value and changing the world for good? Maybe. But the desire to change the world for good is also largely about control and power. After all, legacies are created by those who make things happen; those who change the world.

So, there is nothing extraordinary about the founder; they are just ordinary people who choose to do extraordinary things, according to Edmund Hillary. It is their desire to create that stimulates. The founder’s spirit is not just in biology, it is also in the chemistry of thoughts and the physics of action. It is about the mental propulsion to dominate and control one’s destiny and the destinies of others. The founder zooms the environment to himself rather than zoom into the environment around him. George Bernard Shaw said, “the reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world unto himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man”. The technology that becomes part of everyday life of sane people, often than not, began as an act of insanity by some “unstable” mind.

Karl Marx, Fredrick Engel and several others spat on capitalism but the alternative they proffered has done nothing to improve the world. The founder’s mind is still the capitalism haven. True, capitalism thrives on expropriation and oppression of the weak by the strong.

But the oppression is not done by the strong body to the weak body; it is done by the strong mind to the weak mind. The war for profits is not fought by arrows and cudgels these days, it is fought between brains, minds and spirits. There will be few founders in the world because the leadership class is not an all comer’s affair; it is for the mythical one percent. The class of one percent will be derided; they will be castigated; they will be demonised. But the world, centuries after centuries, will continue to depend on the founders; the one percent class will be the ones for which all prosperity, happiness and growth will depend.