Off-Centered Leadership

Chapter 5Preparing for Success

Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success.

—Henry Ford

The Monday Team was understandably skeptical when I agreed with them that the company needed a more collaborative approach to leadership. For almost two years I had been telling them I wanted to be more inclusive with our leadership team but it hadn't really happened consistently. To some degree, they regarded me as the boy who cried wolf once too often when it came to my capabilities at sharing strategic direction. When it came to choosing how Dogfish Head would deploy its resources, the decision-making process remained decidedly Sam-centric.

Those earlier promises had been sincerely made. I hadn't been acting in bad faith. I have always believed collaboration is important in theory, but I had failed at the execution. When it came time to go all in, I found it more challenging than I expected. I have since learned through my travels, interviews, and casual discussions over pints that many other entrepreneurs at growing companies have faced similar challenges. There is a muscle memory factor to a founder's tendency to make decisions based on gut instinct. My personality, my capacity for trust, my reflexive compulsion to cast Dogfish Head according to my vision for our brand, all kept me from pulling the trigger. Now, though, I was truly ready to commit. My journey over these past several years had given me a new perspective. It was more ...