Outbreak of Common Sense

There is a company that manufactures a widget called a “Gripple”. The founder of the company explains about his success in today’s Daily Mail.  It is an interesting article and flies in the faces of modern business practices.

Perhaps one of the most telling quotes is:

And then there’s the Hugh Facey doctrine on accountancy: “If you’re running a cricket team, you send in a batsman to bat and a bowler to bowl. You don’t send in the bloody scorer. Accountants are great at keeping books. But don’t let them run the bloody business”

Better still:

Accountants, for example, are banned from all key company decisions – on the basis that they throttle innovation.

This is entirely consistent with the Gorse Fox view that most great companies start with great entrepreneurs or innovators and as the company progresses the entrepreneurs and innovators slowly get replaced with “professional managers” and accountants – and with that starts the inevitable decline to mediocrity or complete self-destruction.