Founder vs Bean Counter Mentality

Extracted Attributes

• Type

  Business Philosophy/Concept

• Core Conflict

  Long-term, customer-centric founder vision vs. short-term, financially-driven management

• Associated Company (Current Example)

  Starbucks

• Associated Company (Historical Example)

  General Motors (GM)

• Proponent of Founder Mentality (Concept)

  Bain & Company ('Founder's Mentality®')

• Critic of 'Bean Counter' Focus (GM context)

  Bob Lutz (author of 'Car Guys vs. Bean Counters')

Timeline

• Bob Lutz publishes 'Car Guys vs. Bean Counters', critiquing GM's focus on financial metrics over product quality and creativity, illustrating a historical example of the 'bean counter' issue. (Source: Web Search Results)

  2011

• The 'Founder vs Bean Counter Mentality' is discussed by the All-In Podcast hosts as a key theory for Starbucks' challenges, following the September 18th Fed Rate Cut and amidst discussions of the 2024 US Presidential Election. (Source: All-In Podcast)

  2024-09-18

Glossary of baseball terms

This is an alphabetical list of selected unofficial and specialized terms, phrases, and other jargon used in baseball, along with their definitions, including illustrative examples for many entries.

Web Search Results

• Don't Let the Bean Counters Run the Business

  When Bob Lutz wrote “Car Guys vs. Bean Counters” in 2011, GM was struggling, having recently emerged from bankruptcy in 2009. The book highlights Lutz’s critique of GM’s focus on financial metrics at the expense of product quality and creativity, which he argued led to the company’s decline. [...] When Alfred P. Sloan took the helm of GM in the 1920s, he brought with him a clear vision and a strategic approach that would revolutionize the company. Sloan recognized that for GM to thrive, it needed to move beyond a centralized management structure. He implemented a decentralized management strategy, allowing individual divisions to operate with a degree of autonomy. This approach enabled each division to be more responsive to market needs and innovations, fostering a culture of agility and [...] While there isn’t specific evidence that leaders at GM read the book or met with Lutz, the impact of his ideas on GM can be inferred from the company’s subsequent actions. Lutz emphasized product excellence and creativity over cost-cutting and financial engineering. This emphasis influenced GM’s strategy, leading to a renewed focus on designing and producing high-quality vehicles. This shift is evident in GM’s current performance and strategic moves, such as the overhaul of employee performance

• Founder's Mentality℠ and the paths to sustainable growth

  founder mentality and that's huge founder companies are insurgents they are at war against their industry on behalf of a dissatisfied um customer and this leads to sort of an extraordinary sense of nobler mission a long-term view of what you're doing with the company the other thing you lose is the owner mindset um owner mindset is this incredible cost mentality everything everything is your money it is this notion of being um Absolut bias to action hatred of bureaucracy and it's this [...] and then the final thing is the unscalable founder one of the things that we're very clear about in our research is the founder can be the problem the phrase we use is founder mentality not the founder because sometimes the founder himself or herself is the issue one of the westward winds that we've talked about a lot is this issue of Revenue grows faster than Talent so we' spent a huge amount of time with founder companies and what say is we don't have a growth problem we have a sustainable [...] off track uh from retaining that Founders mentality Bane has been looking at the issue of um how companies grow sustainably for at least 40 years and one of the things that's quite fascinating is when you look at the um the annual reports of the global 2000 on average the leaders of those companies are projecting to outgrow their markets by two times that's on a revenue basis and on a profit basis to grow to outgrow their markets by four times and so it's a reasonable question to ask on any

• Are Bean Counters More Selfish? - Kellogg Insight

  Says Murnighan, “we were surprised at how strong the results were.” In both the ultimatum and dictator games, participants start with a monetary “endowment.” In the dictator game, they can keep all of it; in the ultimatum game, they must offer part of their endowment to another, anonymous person, and they only keep their remaining part of the endowment if the other person accepts their offer. The twist is, in the ultimatum game only the offerer knows the original endowment and can lie to the [...] responder about the total size of the pie. How much the participants kept and how much they offered were up to them. Participants who reviewed the quantitative tutorial before playing the game offered significantly less money to the receiver compared with those who read the historical article. They were also more likely to lie to the receiver about the size of their endowment.

• 'The Founder's Mentality': Leveraging Startup Thinking for Long-term ...

  One is called “crisis overload,” which is in the growth phase, after the idea is proven and the company tries to scale itself five or 10 times. A company that got into trouble trying to scale itself, for example, was Lululemon. The second one we called “stall out.” This is a case of a very large company that is still growing and suddenly discovers that 5%, 10%, 12% revenue growth has suddenly gone to 1% or 2%. Profits are flat for a while, the indicators are bad — like Starbucks. We found that [...] The third is what we called the owner’s mindset, which is an aversion to bureaucracy and a desire to jump on problems, take responsibility right away, which often gets lost in big companies. It’s the essence of private equity’s success, in a way. Knowledge at Wharton: What are some examples of companies that are really following this path right now and being successful in the process? [...] Zook: It usually is. We did find that these characteristics of the founder’s mentality can be practiced by any leader. Take Disney, for example. The rejuvenation of Disney over the last decade under Bob Iger is an example of a non-founder coming in but really getting it and rejuvenating the spirit. He bought Pixar. He bought Marvel Comics. He even went and bought the rights to the rabbit that was the hero in the very first Disney animated film. The rights had been sold, and he recaptured it.

• Founder's Mentality and Micro-battles: Summary

  • Define the repeatable model and create a playbook • Translate playbook for execution • Develop training programs • Create the pull for change • Shift behaviours and adapt • Take innovation to the customer • Roll out; embed in the organization • Continuously improve based on customer feedback • Balance winning with scaling • Create customer (internal/external) feedback loops • Execute flawlessly • Provide customer feedback for [...] ## One of the barriers to growth is the perceived trade -off between the ## benefits of size and ‘Founder’s Mentality ®’ Leaders and the front line share a bold mission, a focus on the needs of their core customers, and a commitment to develop the routines, behaviors and talent that transform industries Relative scale, proprietary assets, and superior capabilities to out -invest competition, better serve custom ers and attract the [...] industry rules & boundaries Build learning systems to reconnect with customers and frontline Refocus the operating model on franchise players Create a company of insurgents Simplify to fuel growth Founder ’s Mentality ®This information is confidential and was prepared by Bain & Company solely for the use of our client; it is not to be relied on by any 3rd party without Bain's prior written consent 9NDL 18.03.12 JA Preez on FM -MB for ...