Lets not forget that VCs often try to take control, put their monkeys into a company and then drive it into the ground because they don’t know the business. I can name five companies in the NW that have had this experience.. TR>

In the Industrial Age, when organizations were structured like the machines with interchangeable parts running down on the factory floor, so were the jobs performed by their employees. William Whyte’s ‘Organization Man’ was a square peg who fit in a square hole. Today, successful, entrepreneurial organizations are structured not as machines but as networks. They are fluid, flexible, responsive and responsible to their environment and to the customer communities they serve. So are their employees, CEOs included.

The rigid organization cannot survive the tremendous market currents at work in the global business environment and the rigid individual cannot prosper. ‘Rich versus King’ is a rigid, Industrial Age test being put to a Networked World.

King, Rich, Servant, Knight in Shining Armor, Supplicant, Wizard, Sheriff, Jester (or in Furqan’s more concrete terms, Financier, Salesperson, Marketer, Engineer, Product Developer) — a great CEO might play any or all of these roles, depending on the situation they find themselves in. Herb Kelleher, the founder of Southwest Airlines, used to show up in the maintenance hangar at 3 in the morning with coffee and donuts for the night crew and sit and listen to what was on their minds. Where does it say in the VC playbook for CEOs to do THAT?