THE FOUNDER SYNDROME....CHILD AND YOUTH CARE IN SOUTH AFRICA

Having worked in and for organisations and programmes where the founder is the Director, Manager, Chairperson or the mother -body Head, a social media comment last week rang bells . 

The styles of management of some founders I experienced, showed patterns, which I am calling the "founder syndrome". 

It must be said that founders, especially in the smaller communities appear to have founded projects with genuine good intention. Then the programme attracts funders and donors, diversifies, employs a body of staff and or volunteers. It was then I often experienced what I am calling the founder syndrome 

One such township project called itself "Love". A group of three, with a dominant leader. established a project to help the poor. As it attracted goods for distribution, they said "We are the poor". "We need help as much as any other". No registration as an accredited non government organisation, a savings account and no receipted record of incoming donations or goods masked the very worst organisational symptom of "founders syndrome". It has to do with "ownership". If I/we own it then I/we have some kind of right to possession.

In small communities, founders as leaders of "welfare" projects are almost invariably respected and  highly regarded as community leaders and benefactors. This too contributes to the complex set of founder syndrome symptoms. The intention to do good does not necessarily need qualifications more than an ability to influence others, to have the power to mobilise and convince others of the value to the community. I worked in and for a "lead from the get go" founder directed initiative which expanded into a range of projects, one of which was a well funded child and youth care programme compelled to employ qualified and registered child and youth care workers,  Now founding skills were no longer enough. The professional knowledge and specialised skills, philosophy, approach and language of the child and youth care field was not only a,threat but exposed management approaches which child and youth care workers frequently challenged. An oftfound symptom of the founder syndrome is that founders hold onto ownership for as long as they can. They sometimes appear to resort to "for as long as you are employed in this organisation, you will do it this way.....we have always done it this way". In the very worst scenarios, child and youth care workers complain that they have experienced founder syndrome leadership vs professional practitioner power issue. Child and youth care workers in these situations tend to leave or spend a lot of time hankering to leave

Other contexts is when the founder is a church or faith-based structure. My experience, again in the worst scenarios....as much as we may want to think differently, many church structures are hierarchical, top down structures. If this has a trickle-down effect into child and youth care programmes, then church dogma, objectives and belief systems can, by child and youth care professionals be experienced as symptomatic of the "founder syndrome".  Actually, now I come to think about it, there can be a risk of the syndrome showing itself in any top down management approaches if , for example, founded by National Organisations or Government when the founder structures determine policy and compliance. It's the "ownership" thing and again maybe, the being out of touch with the field of child and youth care.

I worked in a facility where the Chairperson and the Board of Management had been in office so long, that they regarded themselves as the founders. They followed the founder syndrome symptom of becoming a fixture and frequently again out of sync with the child and youth care field and it's status. When the Act was changed to regulate the limit on the term of office of Board members. I had to inform them that they were required now by law to step down . This would then also allow for a body of different fields of expertise to sit in Management. They wrote to me saying that I had "fired" them and as in "unfair dismissal" they employed the services of a lawyer. he lawyer had to support the rotation of these founding members. He was very diplomatic with them saying that the "intention" was not that they fired. Such is the engagement and emotional connection that founders have with the organisation. It's part of the syndrome.

In child and youth care there is only one ting you can expect and that is change. This is where founders with good intention often tend to get stuck. 

Then there is the good news.

Recently I renewed acquaintance with a Director of a child and youth care facility after decades. Her comment was " Every time I think I can rest, things change"....Music to my ears. What she said brought back a memory of a planning meeting of the "welfare" arm of a church at Provincial level. The head of the Welfare section lead a breakaway group to discuss child and youth care. Two of us in child and youth care leadership positions had to correct misinformation and misunderstanding to bring child and youth care thinking, philosophy, language and practice up to date. ( "re- unification" for example). Next day he called for a plenary meeting. I was made out to be ignorant, put down, insulted" he said.......founders syndrome !  

I have been describing worst case scenarios. In doing Quality Assurance visits I encountered the founder syndrome and equally I encountered founders who were from the very beginning open and respectful of the professional growth and practice of child and youth care in a fast changing world.

Yet some child and youth care workers in South Africa do say that they feel they are pushing against an immovable force.

There was a "housefather"who called me "an educated idiot"He regarded himself as the founder of his group home. Educated idiots we are not.When the ground shifts, the playing field shifts, the goalpost shift and the game changes.


The social media outcry was that some child and youth care workers in some settings feel trapped in systems held static by the founders syndrome.