Genesis. Growth. Then the test.

 

Every enterprise begins with the spark of entrepreneurial energy, the founder’s drive, ambition, vision. As the venture builds momentum, scales up, adds people, processes and systems, it injects stability, but also risk. Because without the right balance, what once felt alive can become weighed down.

A modern-day parable is Apple. Born of Jobs’ entrepreneurial fire, it soared. Then came the “establishment.” Jobs was ousted. The soul left the building. Apple drifted. Until the prodigal founder returned, not just to revive the company, but to re-infuse it with purpose. The rest is history.

Here’s what I’ve observed:
When you’re building, you’re agile. You do things. You experiment. You learn by doing. You focus on purpose, on outcome, on value created. You are a “Doer” in the truest sense of the word. In the words of my recent post, a Doer is someone who makes things happen, who cares about what’s good for the organisation and beyond, who takes responsibility and deliver.

Then as scale arrives, processes creep in. Structures to govern. Systems to measure. Beans to count. That’s not inherently bad, stability matters. But when the emphasis tilts too far toward process and loses sight of the raison d’être; the driving engine stalls. The “Passenger” emerges: someone more invested in the machinery, the compliance, the credits, the own agenda, rather than the outcome or the impact.

And here is the fatal tension:

• If you stay purely in “Doer” mode without systems, chaos reigns, decisions get missed, growth becomes fragile.
• If you over-systematise and let the “bean counters” dominate, you become rigid, unresponsive, blinded by process rather than purpose.
• Most organisations toggle somewhere in between. But the danger: the passengers gain ascendancy. They’re comfortable with status quo, minimal risk, personal gain—and often end up driving the ship. Meanwhile your true “Doers” drift away, disengage or leave. The outcome? The system survives for a while. but the life drains out of the enterprise.

So what’s the distilled wisdom?

• Keep founders’ spirit alive: Remind yourselves of the outcome, the customer-impact, the value you set out to create.
• Embed systems, yes; but don’t let them become the mission: Systems exist to enable, not to replace action or purpose.
• Promote Doer-thinking: Celebrate those who pick up the ball, who care deeply about the work, who challenge “this is how we’ve always done it”.
• Be alert to passengers: The ones who prioritise process over purpose, comfort over change, credit over contribution—they’re not the fatal enemy alone; the problem is when the governance structure rewards them.
• Balance is dynamic: The cycle will shift—start-up to scale to maturity. What you need is conscious recalibration: when you scale, build enough muscle to keep doing, keep adapting, keep delivering.

If you ask me, the real question is: Will your enterprise choose to be right, or will it continue to do right? Will it chase compliance, status, structure and miss the reason you started? Or will it hold fast to the why, even as it puts the what and how in place?

You may not disappear into the mythology of “passenger vs doer” in black-and-white. We all move along the continuum. What matters is the direction. If we respect ourselves as those who build, create, deliver, not just manage. we will pay the price for the choices we make. But more importantly, we’ll build something that lasts, that matters, beyond the next quarterly cycle.

Here’s to being a Doer. And to building enterprises that don’t just run , but roar.

“Systems should be the stagehands.
The moment they start demanding the spotlight, the show begins to fail.”

#entrepreneurship #leadership #growth #culture #systems #purpose

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