Why is profitable growth so hard to achieve and sustain? Most executives manage their companies
as if the solution to that problem lies in the external environment-find an attractive market
formulate the right strategy win new customers. But when Bain & Company's Chris Zook and James
Allen authors of the bestselling Profit from the Core researched this question they found
that 90 percent of the challenges to growth are internal: increasing distance from the front
lines loss of accountability and proliferating processes and bureaucracy to name only a few.
More crucial is their finding that companies experience a set of predictable internal crises
at predictable stages as they grow and that for even the healthiest companies these crises
if not managed properly can stifle the company's ability to grow further-and actively lead it
into decline. The key insight from Zook and Allen's research is that managing these choke
points requires a founder's mentality-an insurgent's clear mission and purpose an unambiguous
owner mindset and a relentless obsession with the front line (behaviors typically embodied by
a bold ambitious founder)-to restore the speed focus and connection to customers all of
which are lost as companies grow. Based on the authors' decade-long study of companies in more
than forty countries any leader-not only a founder-can use a founder's mentality to overcome
these predictable challenges and set their companies back on a path of sustainable growth. This
book shows how empowering leaders everywhere to control the destiny of their companies. --
