Title: Founder’s Syndrome: How Organizations Suffer…and Can Recover (Part I) – How Matters
Headings: Founder’s Syndrome: How Organizations Suffer…and Can Recover (Part I)
Founder’s Syndrome: How Organizations Suffer…and Can Recover (Part I)
Author: Jennifer Lentfer

Content: Think first about the community, which is why you created the organization in the first place. Have you prepared the organization to survive (and dare I say thrive) without your presence? Can you think of leaving? Would the organization survive without you? If your answer is “no,” then you have somehow made the organization about yourself, rather than about the mission. This may be difficult to hear—but it’s not about you, nor was it about me. It is hard to acknowledge that no matter how much you put into nurturing the organization you founded, none of that really matters in the long run. The sad truth is that nobody owes us anything for our sacrifices. It cannot be about our emotional needs or the recognition or gratitude we think we should get. The world doesn’t owe us anything for having founded our organizations.