Behaviour & culture essentials in start-up land

With a fulsome media fawning on start-up leaders, Indian founders are exposed to a dangerous combination of de-railers

The narratives of super ego and toxic behaviour among the CEOs of large companies are disturbing and increasingly prominent. They have a pattern. After ascent, the CEO is powerful, power damages the brain, and the CEO’s behaviour changes visibly. What people see is loss of empathy, arrogance, poor treatment of people, and inability to listen. I refer to these as de-railers in my book, CRASH: lessons from the rise and exit of CEOs. The de-railers become the sword on which several CEOs fall. The CEO’s downfall become “breaking-news” for the media, for example, Thomas Middelhoff in Germany, Martin Sorrell in