A cause carried by the founder's presence leaves with the founder; to survive succession it must be in words others can lead with.

The claim

A cause carried by a founder's presence rather than by words leaves with the founder. While the person who embodies it is in the building, people are reminded daily why they came, and the gap does not show; when they go, successors chosen for skill rather than for the cause run the business by its numbers and the cause fades. The cases offered are founders whose companies drifted after they stepped back and recovered when they returned, and an airline whose cause was so written into its culture and folklore that its successors could carry it. The remedy is to put the cause into words others can lead with, and to choose successors who already hold it. The book leaves a tension unresolved: it also says the part of the mind that holds a why does not control language, which would make the remedy hard in exactly the way its cases show.