An entrepreneurial environment is now a reality all over the world. Every year, investors give money to promising projects created by enthusiasts with the original idea to change the world for good. But someway on the way to succeeding with that idea, the values change, priorities change, and even behavior changes, to turn the original idea into a mess that steps with only one purpose – to win more money to ensure another month or a year of existence. Here is where the visionary leadership dies. People who have started with passion now look overwhelmed and with no purpose in their eyes; owners of the company, often the main boosters of the original vision, look empty, and their presentations are now done in front of bored and not engaged employees, seeing at the company a place to give them some money to survive.
Recently, I have gone through video channels of fourteen start-ups in fin-tech and gaming and watched how their vision develops over time. I assumed that people at these companies would strive for more focused success and stable growth over the years. Instead, I found that in their existence, even those who started the companies with energy and shone in their eyes looked like mashed potatoes. At first, I was surprised because my assumption was about the other range of the scale. With the growth of the business, those businesses have overgrown their founders, who, on the other hand, were struggling to give the power to the hands of professionals who have the knowledge and the expertise to grow the ideas exponentially.
Those in leadership roles looked like scared, angry puppies who weren’t ready to make the next jump in the development of their company and were afraid not to be replaced. They have surrounded themselves with people standing at lower professional qualifications. The people attending live presentations were not interested in what was happening, or at least this was to be seen from several shown on the cam, all of them being engaged with their phones.
Now, still in the honeymoon phase of the company life, leaders, or what the owners may have hired as leaders, obviously have forgotten why they were employed in the first place, or maybe they never realized it, to live the company in the state of weightlessness, allowing it to move from the top of the unicorn player to the base of an average and non-interesting place, with fewer people believing the words of the CEO, and more of the others playing the game of political correctness, or with other words duplicity and lack of engagement to help the company move.
And still, it is all in the hands of those in leadership roles. How they set the agenda, the results are going to be achieved. No matter what can be done, it may sound easy, but unfortunately, the way unicorns do it is one of the most detaching ways for everyone in the loop with them.
What happens is that the founder starts searching for ways to boost everything at once by educating leadership teams (often with expensive programs that don’t deliver much value) or directly searching for replacements for some of the leadership team members. The small mistake every founder makes and the lesson they learn way too far in the future is that critical change doesn’t start with the leadership team but in another place, which is much harder to change. In my humble practice of consulting, I have met several, to say more than thirty unicorn gurus, who needed help but didn’t want to admit it. Well, guess what? Seventy-five percent of them do not exist anymore or are smaller than the original idea they have to be. So, if there is much Ego in the process, and no direct approach can help because of it, maybe there is a list that the visionary of the Unicorn can check on to find for themselves where they stand and what needs to be changed. Here is a short list I have created for a unicorn owner I met at the beginning of 2024 who desperately needed and, at the same time, was embarrassed to ask for help.
Look at what is different in you than expected.
It may sound easy, but it is the most complicated task. The visionary must create a list of characteristics of the company’s appearance in terms of numbers, behavior, and values. Some may say that this is an easy exercise because the owner has everything in their head, but unfortunately, this one is the hardest because it opens the eyes. The list must contain three sections: Where are we now, Where do we want to be, What are our values, where do we stand now, and where do we want to be as a company? Sounds easy – right? Now, the hard part is to give that questionnaire to themselves, and people they trust will provide honest feedback and know the company. This is how objectivity is born in the process. Often, what comes as feedback is a reflection of the style of the owner. It has its positives, but at the same time, it also has its negatives.
Analyze results without biases.
“That can’t be true. My company is too different from what is written here.” – Have you heard that? Well, the truth is that owners of unicorns are some of the most blinded people in the business world. Their Ego is so high that it makes mistakes look impossible to happen and unacceptable when they are found to be there. The analysis here must happen with people the visionary or the owner trusts but outside of the company. Most owners trust consultants not because they are the most educated people in the room but because they represent a non-biased group who must have objective views and can offer the following steps without being too polite and hiding details. While the Ego is the easiest part of our personality to hurt, the first analysis may happen with people the owner or the visionary trusts and believes in instead of directly inviting an external consultant. If this group of participants confirms that what was diagnosed is true, this is the place to invite external help.
Get an unbiased external look that is direct and harsh.
Sometimes, consultants want that contract because they see potential in it to develop within time and start politely selling a large part of their portfolio step by step. It is not the consultant, a unicorn owner, or a visionary with high Ego needs. The consultant should be harsh and direct; they must tell the truth, no matter how it hurts. They should be the eye-opener, not the one who further boosts Ego. The more uncomfortable the owner and the visionary feel during the process, the deeper the change in them is. This exercise is not to create more comfort but to shake what is now and eliminate everyone from their comfort zones because that is where the real work starts.
Give freedom to get the best help.
Now, there are plenty of cases when an owner hires a consultant to find out they are not ready to work with one. Giving the consultant space is crucial for the process. The access to what is found in the initial analysis phase with the trusted group, access to practices that the company has established in dealing with bad reviews, etc. For example, studying One Unicorn, I have found that their marketing team is quite active on a global platform for sharing opinions about the company and its services and giving their best to cut all the negative reviews they can, and if not possible, to overwhelm them with positive ones. The signature is easily recognized in the pattern of the messages published. At the same time, Unicorn has offices in several countries, and the Marketing team does not do much work there. In these countries, the company looks like an absolute crap – people share negative opinions in the local language and English, they talk about the poor leadership coming from the HQ of the company, etc. And because of the magic of internet search engines, you only need to search for the company in a specific location, different than the original global platform and HQ location, to find how unstable the are as culture and how toxic the environment is. For example, in one of their offices, they have sixty people, and the office is three to three years old, but at the same time there are more than a hundred and twenty negative reviews. This is what the consultant should have the freedom to find out. What is the real plus in the company? Any discrepancy created by such an action agenda as the one of the marketing team of the described company should be left behind, no matter how much it hurts to see the negatives. The more freedom and support the consultant gets, the better the final output.
Share what you are doing with the team.
A mistake most founders make is doing what they think is right without consulting it with their leadership teams. Imagine how a person in a leadership role will feel if you come to them and say: “Hey, I think you need to change to be more effective. I will do first, second, and third for you. You only must to participate.” Sounds strange? According to Gartner’s research, some seventy-two percent of Unicorn and start-up companies do the same thing with their leadership teams. Deciding about others is at least wrong, if not unacceptable. The actual behavior here should be to create a winning agenda that invites people from the leadership team to participate. Using the consultant as an unbiased and objective source of information, the company’s owner and visionary should ask the others on the leadership team to participate in the change. Here is where the real challenge starts. This is where the owner sees who wants to move forward with them and who needs to be located elsewhere or directed outside the company.
Create a plan with your external support, not by yourself.
Even consultants from the Big 4 companies don’t create plans alone. They always involve colleagues to help them. It is not a sign of weakness but a way to grant objectivity and a high level of correctness and efficiency of all the steps in the plan. Then why should an owner or visionary of a company do this alone- because they have read a book or two, have attended a seminar, or seen a webcast? The more this step is led only by internal understandings, the higher the level of limitation is. The plan the company will execute should be created with the broadest support possible, even if this means assigning another consultant to the project in addition to the primary one. At this step, the agenda for change is born. They are making the draft, refining it, discussing it internally to get support, correcting it, and getting to the final version where all agreed will happen in a specific sequence, developed for the particular company.
Please don’t skip the steps of the plan because they look apparent.
I have seen it many times, and I have done the same. A step that looked too obvious just to be skipped because we needed to “speed up.” But development doesn’t happen just by executing the agenda. People should live that agenda and generate benefits for themselves and others. And what may look evident and easy to achieve may turn into a blind spot for a particular individual. Each step in the plan has its place and adds specific value according to the agenda set. It is hard to achieve excellence in what we do if we decide to learn selectively. It is the same as reading a thousand pages book. You read the beginning, then move straight to the middle of the book, where you read another two to three chapters, and then move to the end to learn the grand finale. All the details that make up the story are lost somewhere in the path of hurrying too much. People learn selectively and with a step-by-step approach. Breaking this approach may mean that the individual will lose direction, energy, willingness, and even internal engagement toward the final result to be achieved.
Present the whole agenda and the logic behind it, and listen.
I have been in a situation where someone else has chosen me several times. It is the same with most small and mid-range companies that still have the owner as an acting person in the leadership team. They decide what is best for the team, and in many cases, no one has the say to propose or do something different. While this creates more toxicity than good, the first step is to present the details and listen to what others may say. After all, there is a lot of effort and money to be invested, and if the result is not satisfying, it will just waste time and other resources. People need to be involved, which means allowing them to put the whole agenda into their centrifuge and understand what will be different for them – not you, the Leader, but them, the users. Getting this finetuning with the team creates space for improvement of the proposed resolution and simultaneously creates connectivity between the individual and the agenda.
Be serious about the feedback and the changes.
Let’s face it: it is a kind of Ego when someone with power says – “I am open to your feedback, but the final decision will be mine.” There is no such scenario in a balanced and supporting leadership style, where people talk, but the Leader does what only he thinks is right. It is how many small or family-owned companies or innovative start-ups and unicorns struggle because they close their decisions to the owner’s capacity. If a leader offers an opportunity for others to be involved, they must also accept their feedback and work on improvements using it. If not ready for that step, asking for feedback may turn into a negative action agenda and affect the internal state of the team.
Create a repeating cycle of improvements and check-ups throughout the process.
It hurts very much when a leader or an owner invests money to find that people do not benefit from that process like they expect at step two or three. Purely Ego-driven leaders move forward in this situation by following their already set agenda and not acknowledging that changes are happening. That often frustrates others in the loop and makes the agenda unfulfillable. Still, this is a sign of maturity level. While trying to get things done, emotionally immature leaders often create more obstacles instead of supporting real change. Forgetting the check-ups is not only a technical detail but a milestone for every project of such type. The more positively the milestone is set, the better the project runs, and the change happens.
The win celebration and their forgotten effect toward the leadership development
Unfortunately, what often happens is that the fast-paced environment and the blind willingness to achieve what is in their head make owners and visioners ruin the expected results. Several times, I have been part of transformation projects where the celebration part has been minimized to a formalized short event. And all this was because we had a “tight agenda, which was not allowing us to do more.” I have been there and still see part of it in leaders I meet. So, why this is not new; for the Leader, owner, or visionary, no matter what they call themselves, the proper celebration is crucial to boost the transformation in the right direction. People need to feel the win, not the Leader’s way, but in their way, and experience the joy of getting there. The sooner the transformation person realizes that the smoother the transformation will go.
IN CONCLUSION:
The sickness of the Unicorn is often seen in star-up cultures. People tend to join this type of company because of the vision, innovative ideas, and thinking and often leave disappointed from the owners’ mentality. The sooner the owners realize that no matter what they started is not theirs anymore but belong to those who create success as a team, the better they will manage transformation, growth, and leadership agenda in their entities.
The Human place - a path from you to yourself 