<i>"The founder makes all decisions, big and small, without a formal process or input from others. Decisions are made in crisis mode, with little forward planning. Staff meetings are held generally to rally the troops, get status reports, and assign tasks. There is little meaningful strategic development, or shared executive agreement on objectives with limited or a complete lack of professional development."</i><p>This is meant to sound negative, but there are a lot of upsides to this. Design by committee, analysis paralysis, lack of agility, diffusion of responsibility and many more problems plague organizations that attempt to achieve the opposite of this "cowboy approach".<p>For instance, "Founder's Syndrome" would apply to Apple with Steve Jobs at the helm - as opposed to IBM, which is run "by the book". Most people don't even know who runs IBM, nor do they care about IBM products.<p>If you have a charismatic founder, you have to ride that wave, because it's a unique opportunity. Having somebody with the ability to "rally the troops" is invaluable. You can't just hire somebody to do that for you. If you have too many concerns about this, take your money (or your labor) elsewhere, but keep in mind that "playing it safe" is risky as well.