Built To Break: They Did Everything Right. It Cost Them $76 Billion.

Introduction

Every founder knows the feeling of designing something that works. The harder question that rarely gets asked early enough is whether it will still work when the business is ten times its original size.

In Nigeria, we see this tension play out regularly. A family business structured around founding-generation control becomes an obstacle to outside investment. A joint venture agreement drafted for a $5 million project starts to strain when the parties are negotiating a $200 million expansion. An incentive arrangement that motivated a management team in year one becomes a source of conflict by year five. The structure was not wrong. It simply was not built for what the business became.