Year of the Builder: Why (and How) to Restore your company's Builder Spirit in 2024

CUYAHOGA FALLS, OH, December 2023 —For many companies 2023 was a doozy. Navigating a shaky economy, rampant inflation, labor shortages, and soaring interest rates have taken its toll. If your company is struggling and you’re not sure how to turn things around in 2024, Dan Adams has a suggestion: Set a New Year’s resolution to restore your Builder spirit.

“Every company was founded by a Builder,” says Adams, author of Business Builders: How to Become an Admired & Trusted Corporate Leader. “Yet too many end up putting a different type of leader—a Decorator, or Remodeler or even a Realtor—in charge later. From that point on, whether they know it or not, there’s a long spiral into mediocrity, irrelevance, or even nonexistence.”

Yikes. Could the root of your problem be you’ve got the wrong leader at the helm? That’s a good possibility, says Adams. His company did some research that yielded two key findings:

1. Only one-third to one-half of companies are still

led by Builders. The rest have leaders who are fixated on issues other than growth—say, presenting favorable financial performance to investors, improving operational efficiency, or pursuing external alliances. (Adams labels these non-Builder types Decorators, Remodelers, and Realtors, respectively.)

2. Companies helmed by senior leaders he classifies as Builders consistently experience faster revenue growth than those headed up by other types of leaders.

Adams says the C-suite must have a hefty dose of “Builder spirit”—a passion for driving organic growth by delivering differentiated value to customers, a focus on innovation, and an insistence on thinking in years rather than quarters—to stay competitive in a fierce marketplace. Lose that spark, and you’re prone to big leadership errors that squelch your own growth.

How can you tell if your company has lost the “Builder spirit” that no doubt burned hot in the belly of its founder? Adams’ book explains more, of course, but a few red flags are:

• Revenue growth is sluggish.