One Tuesday morning, in a bright open space of the 11ᵉ arrondissement of Paris, Marc Lefèvre looks at his ten employees. The company he founded five years earlier-a start-up specializing in the delivery of organic products-has become a national player. The atmosphere is tense. Marc, tense, kick the floor to Clara, his marketing manager. Three months earlier, he still promised that “freedom of expression” would be the DNA of the box.
What he does not yet know is that some employees have created a signal group entitled: “Flee the open space”.
Ironically: Marc has left a stifling multinational to never live this again.
I/ The mirror effect of success
The scenario is more common than you think. Originally, many entrepreneurs start from anger or frustration. They want to build a “radically different” working environment. But, as the structure grows, organizational constraints, financial pressures and inherited habits reappear.
The silent paradox: the founder who wanted to be liberator turns, unwittingly, into an “optimized” version of what he fled.
“It is often an unconscious psychological mechanism,” explains Hélène Boisset, a work psychologist and coach of leaders. When you have undergone a model, you know it by heart. And under pressure, we reproduce what we know … Even if it is precisely what we wanted to avoid. »»
II/ From the garage to the head office: where it all starts to switch
In the first years, the promise is simple:
Then the successful machine gets carried away. Investors come to capital, the payroll increases, customers become more demanding.
The founder, formerly a flexible conductor, must suddenly keep an infernal rhythm. Decisions should be quick. The errors cost more. And little by little, the control reflexes replace initial confidence.
Highlight signs:
- Multiplication of internal procedures “to save time” but which in reality slow down everything.
- more frequent and longer meetings, where speech is concentrated in the hands of the founder.
- Strategic decisions taken in small committee, without real consultation.
- decreasing tolerance for error.
III/ The starting culture … which dilutes
Each company has its founding mythology. At “Greendrive”, for example, everyone remembers the first year: improvised cuisine as a meeting room, brainstormings at midnight around a pizza, and a slack filled with gifs and internal jokes.
Today, new arrivals have not known this time. Culture is poorly transmitted. The “ancients” become the guardians of the frustrated temple, and the “new” see one start-up like any other, with its rules and its pressures.
It is here that the founder often feels vertigo: “It is no longer my box … or rather, it is mine but I no longer recognize it,” says an entrepreneur in the Tech sector.
IV/ why we reproduce what we hate
Three main causes stand out in testimonies and studies:
1/ Organizational memory
We manage as we were managed. Even by rejecting a model, it remains our implicit reference. This is what Hélène Boisset calls “ghost managerial DNA”.
2/ Pressure of stakeholders
Investors, customers, partners … all require performance and predictability. However, organizational rigidity is a classic response to uncertainty.
3/ Emotional erosion
Initially, the entrepreneur operated on enthusiasm. But after years of mental load, fatigue makes it more tempting to use ready -made patterns, even if they are contrary to the initial values.
V/ Employees, first witnesses of the tilting
Sophie, a developer, has joined a start-up “for autonomy”. Three years later, she felt like she was “permanently monitored”: “At first, I was trusted. Today, you need a ticket for each technical decision. My leader – The founder – validates everything. It slows down everything and it demoralizes. »»
Others tell a more insidious phenomenon: the loss of meaning. When the values displayed no longer correspond to practices, cognitive dissonance is strong. And disillusionment is often more painful than in a business already perceived as traditional.
VI/ The taboo of “change of posture”
Talking about this paradox remains delicate. In the entrepreneurial imagination, the founder is the one who “embodies vision” and who “inspires”. Recognizing that we have become the oppressor is to admit a form of personal and public betrayal.
“It’s very difficult for a leader to say: I am becoming what I hate. Because it refers to the very identity of the company and its own history, ”analyzes a governance consultant.
Result: we prefer to accuse growth, the market, or “the young generations who do not understand effort”. But the problem remains.
VII/ Possible exits
Breaking the cycle requires conscious, long, and often uncomfortable work. Some effective levers:
1/ Make a counterpower
Create an internal or external committee capable of saying “no” to the manager. Not to brake it, but to help him see his angles dead.
2/ Rewrite the values charter
Not that of five years ago, but the one that corresponds to today’s business. And regularly check that practices stick to the principles displayed.
3/ Train in letting go
The control is reassuring but kills creativity. Some leaders follow specific training or coaching centered on the delegation.
4/ Institutionalize memory
Document and tell the “founder legend” so that new employees understand the initial DNA – and for the leader to remember why he started.
VIII/ What if it was… inevitable?
Some experts nuance: perhaps this paradox is not a failure, but a step.
“Human structures stiffen naturally with size, a bit like a living organism that must create a skeleton to stand up”observes a teacher in sociology of organizations.
The challenge, according to him, is not to remain “free” as on the first day, but to choose what rigidities we accept and which we refuse.
Epilogue: return to oneself
Six months after this famous meeting, Marc Lefèvre made a radical decision: entrusting the operational management to a general manager and focusing on product development.
“I was afraid of losing control. But in reality, I had already lost the mind of what we had built. Today, I sleep better, and the team speaks to me again. »»
Marc did not find the garage atmosphere of his beginnings – and probably never can. But he chose not to be the boss he had fled. And in a world where paradoxes are often tus, it is already a victory.
Morality: In the life of a business, the danger is not only outside. It sometimes nestles in the mirror that we refuse to look.
