How To Succeed A Founder?

How To Succeed A Founder?

Recently, I met with a former CEO in Vienna who'd stepped down after successfully transitioning his company to his successor. Over coffee, he said something that stuck with me: "You know what nobody tells you about following a founder? It's not that they won't let go. It's that the entire organization doesn't know how to relate to leadership that isn't them. Every decision you make gets filtered through 'but X would have done it differently.' You're not just replacing a person. You're trying to change how the entire company operates."

This conversation came on the heels of reading an excellent Harvard Business Review article, "Leading After the Founder" (January-February 2026), which validated much of what I've observed working with founder-led organizations. But that café conversation reminded me that the real story of founder transitions lives in the nuances that don't make it into research papers: the emotional undercurrents, the unspoken power dynamics, the mistakes that seem obvious in hindsight but are invisible in the moment.

Why succeeding a founder is a specific challenge

If you approach a founder succession the way you'd approach a regular CEO search, you will fail.

In a typical CEO transition, you're replacing a leader. In a founder transition, you're attempting to separate a person from their identity. The founder doesn't just run the company. In their mind, they are the company. Every brick in the building, every customer relationship, every cultural quirk exists because of decisions they made, often when the business was just them and a laptop.

The founder doesn't just run the company. In their mind, they ARE the company.

The HBR research confirms what we see in practice: founder CEO transitions have a failure rate two to three times higher than other CEO changes.

And what's even more - what often happens is not captured in the statistics: slow-motion failures are even more common than spectacular crashes. Companies that limp along with an incomplete transition, where the founder sort of left but didn't really, where authority is ambiguous and cultural confusion reigns.

Does this sound familiar? The founder transitions to Chairman but keeps his office on the executive floor, continues joining customer meetings "just to say hello," and cc's himself on leadership team emails. The new CEO tries hard but can't make his mark on the organization and lasts 18 months before burning out. The company loses three years of momentum.

When is a founder succession necessary?

The assumption that founder transitions are inevitable once a company reaches a certain size or maturity is often wrong. Sometimes the best succession plan is no succession at all. Before embarking on this painful journey, make sure it's actually necessary.

I know of a supervisory board at an Austrian industrial company preparing for a founder exit after a significant PE investment. They'd already engaged a search firm, drafted role profiles, the works. Then someone asked the question that stopped everyone: "Why are we doing this?"

Long pause.

"Because that's what you do after a PE round, isn't it?"

No. It isn't. Or at least, it shouldn't be automatic.

The founder in question was in his late forties, energetic, deeply respected by customers, and had demonstrated he could evolve his leadership style as the company scaled. Yes, he needed a stronger executive team around him. Yes, he needed to delegate better. But replacing him? That would've destroyed value, not created it.

They restructured their approach: kept him on as a CEO, brought in a great CFO, hired a COO to handle operations scaling, invested in leadership coaching for the founder. A few years later, successful exit at a significant multiple. The founder is still CEO.

Before you plan a founder's exit, make absolutely certain they really need to exit.

The learning in this: Before you plan a founder's exit, make absolutely certain they really need to exit. Look for these signs:

• The founder has lost passion and it shows

• The company needs skills the founder fundamentally doesn't have and can't develop

• Decision-making has become erratic or resistant to input

• Key executives are leaving because they can't work with the founder

• The founder wants to leave but feels trapped by obligation

If none of these apply, consider whether the real issue is building a stronger team, not replacing the leader.

But when it really is time for a founder succession

But if a founder succession is necessary, act quickly and decisively.

But if a founder succession is necessary, act quickly and decisively.

If a transition is genuinely needed, someone has to bring it up and start the process.

Sometimes the founder initiates. They've recognized they're no longer the right person for the next chapter, they're exhausted, or they have a new passion calling them. These are the easiest transitions, even if still emotionally complex.

But more often, others have to raise it. And that's exponentially harder. Think about those great companies with visionary founders going ages past retirement age but showing no signs of retreating or planning their succession. It's the elephant in the room. An investor tries to raise succession planning with a founder-CEO. The founder's face flushes, his voice goes tight: "Are you trying to push me out of my own company?" The meeting derails. It takes six months of careful relationship repair before the conversation can happen again productively.

The HBR article emphasizes approaching founder transitions "from a position of strength," and I completely agree.

Approach founder transitions from a position of strength.

But let me add a practical dimension: how it begins matters enormously.

And just to clarify: Not all founders are created equal. The startup founder chasing an acquisition is a different breed. I'm talking about the long-term founder - often older, in traditional industries - who's built their organization painstakingly over decades. Their company isn't an asset. It's who they are.

And for those framing is everything.

Framing is everything

Never position transition as "you're the problem."

Position it as "you've built something so valuable that it's bigger than any one person now, including you, and protecting that legacy means planning for continuity."

Another approach: "You've built something valuable that needs to outlive any one person. Succession planning isn't about replacing you. It's about protecting what you've built."

That reframing makes all the difference.

Make sure you have mapped out a clear "next chapter" for the founder

Most founders don't intentionally sabotage their successors. They just can't help themselves. The company has been their baby and their entire identity for 15, 20, 25+ years. Stepping back creates an identity void that can feel unbearable.

The new role for the founder must be real, meaningful, and bounded. Some options:

Chairman/Aufsichtsratsvorsitzender/Aufsichtsrat – Works when the founder genuinely wants to govern rather than manage. This generally works well due to the clear structural separation between Vorstand and Aufsichtsrat. But the danger is using the role to micromanage from a different room, which helps no one.

Chief Innovation Officer or Technical Advisor – Excellent when the founder has deep domain expertise and loves the technical/product side more than the business side. An automation sector founder becomes Chief Technology Advisor, focused on R&D and IP strategy, and is genuinely thrilled: "I finally get to do what I love without the budget meetings."

Strategic Advisor/Board Member – This is the trickiest. It often becomes a fig leaf, a title without substance. If you go this route, define specific areas: major M&A transactions, key customer relationships, industry representation. Make it concrete or it becomes a source of confusion.

Clean Exit – Sometimes the healthiest option is a clear cut, genuine departure. This works beautifully when the founder has another passion project waiting, when they're genuinely ready for a new chapter. I know a founder who stepped down at 60 to sail around the world, literally. Stayed on the board remotely, joined calls from various ports, brought a refreshing outside perspective because he'd genuinely moved on psychologically. This is the ideal scenario.

The Interim Bridge – Sometimes you need a "cooling off period," giving the founder time to withdraw gradually, getting used to their new role while making space for a successor. Bringing in an interim CEO for 18 to 36 months can take the emotion out of a complicated transition. This works particularly well in family businesses where the founder's child is in the business but not quite ready, or where the organization has never been led by anyone but the founder and needs to learn new ropes with external management. The interim CEO professionalizes the business, mentors potential successors, and gives everyone breathing room to make the right long-term decision. Then the successor (next gen or external management) can take over once the glitches are ironed out and the founder has adjusted to their new role.

The key insight from my café conversation: the founder's new role must preserve their dignity and sense of contribution without creating shadow authority. As the ex-CEO put it, "The founder needs a way to still matter without mattering too much."

The founder's new role must preserve their dignity and sense of contribution without creating shadow authority.

What personality traits do you need to successfully succeed a founder?

Beyond obvious technical qualifications, here's what matters:

Ego management

The successor needs self-confidence without self-importance. They'll be compared to the founder constantly, often unfavorably, especially in the first year. "Well, Klaus would have approved this immediately" or "Maria never would have made us fill out this form."

One CEO described it perfectly six months in: "I spend half my energy doing the job and half my energy not taking things personally." That's the reality. You need thick skin and a long time horizon.

Cultural decoder

The best successors spend their first 90 days mostly listening. They go on customer calls, shadow long-tenured employees, ask "why" a lot without immediately suggesting changes.

Complementary strengths, not competing ones

Don't hire a mini-me of the founder. Hire for what's needed next. If the founder was a brilliant visionary but operationally chaotic, bring in someone who can build systems without killing creativity. If the founder was a relationship genius but financially unsophisticated, bring in commercial discipline.

The founder whisperer skill

The successor must actively manage the relationship with the founder. This isn't about manipulation. It's about recognizing that the founder will always have emotional authority and finding ways to honor that without being controlled by it.

The best successor-founder pairs have formal check-ins: weekly coffee, monthly board prep sessions, whatever works. The successor actively seeks the founder's input on selected issues. One CEO described it as "therapy sessions for the founder. He downloads everything on his mind, I listen, occasionally I take an idea, but mostly it's just helping him process his feelings about not being CEO anymore."

Mistakes that hinder transitions

Professionalizing in haste

New CEOs, especially those from larger corporate backgrounds, often come in with a mandate to "professionalize." Translation: implement all the processes, org structures, and governance they knew at their last company.

They arrive and immediately announce "we're implementing SAP," "we're moving to a matrix organization," "we're standardizing everything." The founder's loyalists revolt, culture gets crushed, baby gets thrown out with the bathwater.

Better approach: Change slowly and surgically. Fix what's genuinely broken. Preserve what's working, even if it's unusual. Keep the founder's tradition of monthly all-hands meetings in the company cafeteria instead of replacing them with video updates. That single decision can buy enormous cultural credibility.

Misreading the shadow board

In every founder-led company, there's a formal org chart and a shadow power structure. The shadow board consists of long-tenured employees who have the founder's ear, whose opinions carry weight, who can make your life easy or impossible.

Too many successors fail to recognize these power dynamics. The founder's longtime assistant who's actually the company's institutional memory and cultural gatekeeper gets treated like administrative support. She quietly makes the new CEO's first six months hell by "forgetting" to include him on key email threads and telling employees "he's still figuring things out." The finance director who's been there since day one and informally advises half the organization gets bypassed in favor of new external hires. He doesn't fight openly - he just becomes quietly uncooperative, and his skepticism spreads like wildfire.

Smart successors identify the shadow board early and win them over. Not through manipulation, but through respect and inclusion.

Trying to win every battle

Some successors feel they must assert authority immediately and decisively. They pick fights with the founder over decision-making authority, insist on changing things the founder holds dear, draw bright red lines.

Sometimes you need to let the founder "win" on things that don't ultimately matter so you can win on things that do. Is it worth fighting over whether the founder keeps coming to the annual customer golf event? Probably not. Is it worth fighting to ensure you have final authority over budget allocation and hiring decisions? Absolutely.

Pick your battles strategically.

Underestimating the organization's attachment

Many external successors think "I'm the CEO now, people will follow me." But organizations don't transfer loyalty like that. The employees loved the founder, trusted the founder, felt safe with the founder. You're an unknown variable.

I've seen a brilliant operational leader completely underestimate how much the organization needed to grieve the founder's departure. People were mourning. When the new CEO interpreted their lack of enthusiasm as resistance to his leadership personally, he got defensive, pushed harder, and created a vicious cycle. The sales team became quietly uncooperative. Long-tenured managers started leaving. Within a year, the company had lost a third of its institutional knowledge.

A smarter approach: acknowledge the transition emotionally. The new CEO might for example open his first all-hands by saying, "I know many of you are feeling uncertainty and maybe some sadness about this change. That's natural. Peter built something extraordinary here, and my job isn't to erase that legacy. It's to build on it. I need your help to do that well." This gives people permission to feel what they are feeling, and they might find it easier to trust him.

What boards should do

If you're a board member or investor in a founder-led company, you have a special responsibility. Waiting until there's a crisis is not a strategy.

Make succession planning a standing agenda item from the first board meeting. Not to pressure the founder, but to normalize the conversation. Start with "what would happen if you got hit by a bus?" and build from there to "what's your vision for your role in five years?"

Invest in the executive team around the founder early. Creating a pipeline of strong leaders at the C-1 level does two things: it makes the company less dependent on the founder day-to-day, and it creates potential internal successor candidates.

Create psychological safety for honest conversations. Many founders won't admit they're struggling or burning out because they fear looking weak. Create space for vulnerability. A board might for example do yearly "executive health checks" with the founder. Not performance reviews, but honest conversations about wellbeing, energy levels, and whether the job still brings satisfaction. That's the kind of governance that prevents crisis transitions.

A final thought

As the former CEO and I were wrapping up our conversation, he said something that stuck with me: "You know what made the difference? About a year in, the founder and I finally had an honest conversation. He admitted it had been harder to let go than he expected. I admitted I'd underestimated how much I'd need his help. After that, we actually became good partners."

That's really what it comes down to. Founder transitions work when people are honest with each other, when roles are clear, and when everyone involved cuts each other some slack because this stuff is messy.

Get the human dynamics right, and the rest becomes manageable. Get them wrong, and all the governance structures in the world won't save you.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

• Marion Heil is the founder and managing director of Board+CEO Advisors. She is based in Vienna.

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