Founders: can your business tell its story without you?

Bloomsbury is one of the world’s great storytelling businesses.

Over 40 years, it has grown from a new independent publisher into a substantial international company, with a portfolio that stretches from Harry Potter to academic and professional publishing.

Nigel Newton has been a constant throughout that evolution, serving as chief executive since co-founding the business in 1986.

Now, Bloomsbury is beginning a carefully planned leadership transition. A new chief executive is expected to be appointed within two years, with Newton remaining as executive chairman before eventually moving to a non-executive role in 2031.

Bloomsbury is a mature, listed organisation with experienced leaders, established structures and a story far bigger than any one individual. It has long been working to ensure that the principles that Newton brought to the business are conferred on the business and its broader executive team.

Yet the transition offers a useful prompt for founders at every stage of growth:

Can your business tell its story without you?

Succession involves the transfer of authority, relationships and knowledge. It also raises important questions about narrative ownership: which parts of the founder’s influence should endure, who gets to shape what comes next and whether the wider organisation can carry the story forward with confidence.

When an asset becomes a dependency

A great founder story is an incredibly powerful thing.

Through my work with scale-ups and larger organisations at LOOK UP, I have seen founder stories become both one of a business’s greatest assets and, over time, a weight on its growth. The difference lies in whether the wider organisation can carry that story with the same clarity and conviction.

In the early years, the founder naturally carries the story. They use it to recruit people, win customers, persuade investors, and keep everybody moving when the future feels uncertain.

Founders can create extraordinary clarity and momentum. People understand where the energy comes from. Decisions happen quickly because the person who holds the original vision is usually in the room.

As the organisation grows, however, that concentration creates risk. Employees might know the company history, while struggling to explain where it is going. Leaders might repeat the founder’s language without feeling able to adapt it. Customers and investors can remain more attached to one charismatic individual than to the wider business.

Important decisions then keep finding their way back to the founder, who is still seen as the only person with a complete understanding of what the organisation stands for.

The business gradually becomes trapped inside its founder’s version of the story.

Your origin story is only the first chapter

Founder stories tend to begin in the past.

I started the business because…

I could see a problem that nobody else was solving…

I believed there was a better way…

These stories give an organisation its roots. They often explain the values, choices, and instincts that continue to make it distinctive.

From breakthrough consumer brands, to disruptive B2B technologies, every growing business eventually reaches the same point. It needs a Future Story: a clear account of where the organisation is going, why that future matters and the part other people can play in creating it.

The language begins to shift from “I started this business because…” towards “This is what we are here to do, and this is where we are going together.”

The origin story becomes the first chapter in a much longer narrative.

This transition can be difficult because founders have lived every twist and turn. They carry years of decisions, conversations, mistakes and instinctive knowledge in their heads.

The rest of the organisation has had a different experience.

They can only represent the story confidently and build a sustainable culture around it once they understand which elements remain essential, what has changed and what needs to happen next.

Give people a compass

Transferring a story requires more than producing an approved set of words for everyone to memorise.

People can always tell when someone is reciting a script. The energy disappears. The language becomes corporate and the story loses the humanity that made it powerful in the first place.

A shared story needs a few clear truths to hold it together.

What change are we trying to create, and why?

What part do we want our employees to play, and how?

Why do our current and future customers need us?

When people understand those essentials, they can adapt the story for different situations and audiences while protecting its integrity.

A salesperson will tell the story differently from a product leader. A new employee will bring another perspective from someone who has been with the business since the beginning.

A strong organisational story gives people a compass. It creates a shared sense of direction and gives them the confidence to find the most relevant route for their audience.

The founder cannot remain the hero of every chapter

The transfer can be emotionally difficult for founders.

A business is often one of the most significant stories of their life. They may have spent years fighting for it, explaining it and protecting it.

They can therefore feel compelled to correct people who tell the story differently. A future leader’s choice of language can feel like a challenge to the company’s identity.

The founder’s role needs to evolve. Over time, they must become an editor, enabler and custodian of the story. They need to listen to how other people understand the business and create opportunities for them to shape its next phase.

That means allowing other leaders to speak externally, lead important meetings, recruit people and explain the company’s direction.

It also means giving a successor the authority to add a new chapter.

Start long before succession

This work needs to begin while the founder is still actively leading the business.

Start by listening.

Ask employees, customers and partners what they believe the organisation stands for. Ask them where they think it is going and what makes it different.

The gaps between their answers will reveal where the story has become unclear, overly dependent on one person or disconnected from the present-day business.

Then distill it.

What is the enduring idea at the heart of the organisation? Which qualities from the founding story still guide decisions? What has changed? What future is the business now trying to create?

Test whether other people can carry it.

Can another leader explain the direction without the founder stepping in? Can employees connect their work to the wider story? Can a customer describe what makes the business distinctive?

Then distribute ownership.

Let other people lead the pitch, represent the business, and make the decisions. Give them the confidence to find their own language.

A story strong enough to evolve

Bloomsbury’s extended transition creates time for knowledge, relationships and leadership responsibility to pass gradually to a new chief executive.

The business, and its founder, has had a long time to define its next chapter.

Most founders will spend far less than four decades at the helm. Few businesses will have the space for a five-year succession plan.

So every growing organisation should consider what would happen if its founder stopped being the person in the room telling the story.

Could its people still explain why the business matters?

Would its leaders know which parts of the story should endure and where they have the freedom to take it next?

Could a successor honour its history while creating genuine excitement about its future?

A founder’s legacy ultimately lives in the clarity they leave behind: an organisation that understands what has shaped it, knows where it is going and has the confidence to write its next chapter.

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