Harvard sophomore Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook in his dorm room and has overseen its development into the most popular social networking site, with nearly 500 million people using the service worldwide. As the number of users and their demographics are expanding, so too are the complaints about Facebook’s privacy policy for users.

A class action lawsuit was filed against Facebook because of changes the networking site made to its privacy settings. Some think those changes reduce user protections rather than improve privacy, as the company claimed.

The privacy controversy at Facebook raises the familiar question of what to do when fast-growing start-ups threaten to outgrow the management abilities of their creative young founders.

The Google guys got kudos for bringing in industry veteran Eric Schmidt as chief executive. But things didn’t work out as well when Pepsi’s John Sculley took the reins from a young Steve Jobs at Apple. Are changes needed at Facebook’s helm? What’s the leadership wisdom here? Here are some thoughts by people who ought to know as reported in the Washington Post:

Michael Useem is a professor of management and director of the Center for Leadership and Change Management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

Some who are called to lead in new ways have risen to the occasion. Others have properly stepped aside.

Consider a moment of decision for Union Gen. George Meade during the Civil War. On June 28, 1863, he commanded a corps of 10,000 soldiers in the Army of the Potomac as it pursued the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia during its move north toward Pennsylvania.

A federal courier arrived at Meade’s corps headquarters near Frederick at 3 a.m. “I thought that it was either to relieve or arrest me,” Meade later said, but the courier’s message from President Abraham Lincoln instead ordered Meade to take command of the entire Army of the Potomac, a force of 95,000.

Meade fully embraced his promotion into a far larger game. Just three days later near Gettysburg, Meade’s Army of the Potomac engaged and then defeated the Confederate Army, commanded by Gen. Robert E. Lee. Meade’s victory at Gettysburg offered compelling evidence that some people can successfully move up to a far more demanding and complex leadership calling.

Creative young company founders have sometimes done just that, rising to ever greater leadership responsibilities without faltering as their firms have prospered. Frederick Smith founded Federal Express in 1971 – and he still runs it, with 280,000 employees.

Others have opted to hand over responsibility to seasoned managers, as eBay founder Pierre Omidyar did to Meg Whitman in 1998, and as Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page did to Eric Schmidt in 2001.

Here’s the leadership wisdom for a creative young founder: If you think you can master the next levels of leadership demands and complexity, embrace them, as Meade and Smith have proven can be done. But if you are ambivalent about your capacity – or taste – for ever-rising responsibilities, stay engaged but get out of the corner office.

Amy Fraher is a retired Navy commander, naval aviator, former United Airlines pilot and director of the International Team Training Center at San Diego Miramar College.

My issue is not with Zuckerberg’s age or business experience, per se. What I wonder is whether he possesses the team-building skills required to elicit the leadership qualities from his employees needed to run the business long-term.

How did Facebook – or its leader – become fixated on such a complex non-user-friendly solution as the only possibility? Like the organizational culture at NASA in the 1980s, when managers overlooked potentially catastrophic flaws in the Challenger’s O-ring design, has Zuckerberg’s near-missionary zeal to create a networked world created a groupthink mentality, one that supersedes the transparency and open communication that Facebook cites as its core values? And has its brilliant co-founder been so seduced by his vision that he has forgotten the most important leadership lesson – always question your own assumptions?

John Baldoni is a leadership consultant, coach and regular contributor to the Harvard Business Review online.

Leadership wisdom is something that accrues with age and experience. And so it is no wonder that Mark Zuckerberg is struggling with large issues. He’s still in his 20s.

Youth does not preclude effective leadership. Our military is led from the front by a very capable core of junior officers. They are supported by equally youthful non-commissioned officers. Both may lack the wisdom of years, but they make up for it with experience and a focus on mission. These men and women have learned to lead through their people, not over them, and in doing so they provide a strong leadership example for the rest of us.

“Life,” Soren Kierkegaard wrote, “can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward.” The same holds for leadership. Lead going forward, but pay attention to where you have been.

Yash Gupta is professor and dean of the Carey Business School at Johns Hopkins University.

The typical entrepreneurs generally don’t ponder what their future management structure is going to look like. They’re the kind of people who aren’t happy dealing with bureaucracy, so they’re not likely to envision how the bureaucracy of their own companies is going to be assembled. They tend to be people with big ideas and big passion; they’re not very interested in maintenance. They’re seed planters, not bean counters.

In fact, research has shown differences between the brains of entrepreneurs and the brains of other kinds of business people.

The transition from the more entrepreneurial style of leadership to the more managerial is inevitable, and it must be handled properly. If it’s done too soon or too late, then problems occur.

Knowing when to make the shift isn’t an exact science. Otherwise, there’s a risk of ruining the brand.

Cadet Megan Snook is one of 13 cadets and four instructors from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point who take on the weekly On Leadership questions.

Although Facebook has sustained success, perhaps what Mark Zuckerberg needs now is a mentor. Bringing in a different set of eyes and ears may provide him the wisdom he needs to maintain “command and control” over a company that is still growing exponentially.

Having a veteran leader on board can offer multiple benefits to a younger chief executive as far as time management, personal support and the devil’s-advocate position that so many of us sometimes need.

Kathryn Kolbert, a public interest lawyer and journalist, is director of the Athena Center for Leadership Studies at Barnard College.

Consider the human pyramid – a favorite of the pep squad. They work well with 10 people. Those on the bottom do the hard work and provide the most support. The person on top has the best vision. Communication from level to level is key, particularly when any one link is wobbly. But try building a pyramid with 100 people, and the fragility of the enterprise is immediately apparent.

To go from small to large, founders need to focus on finding ways for employees at all levels to stabilize the venture.

Good advice comes not only from those at the top. Middle managers, particularly those who are closer to customers and clients, have a lot to add. As we’ve learned from the cheerleaders, it’s the people at the bottom and middle who do the heavy lifting.

Jonathan Cowan is president and co-founder of Third Way, a think tank of the progressive movement.

Great leaders recognize that what it takes to get an idea off the ground is dramatically different from running and growing an organization.

Yet all too often, start-ups fail to make the shifts necessary to prosper and compete in this middle stage. Who knows? Perhaps the next leader of Facebook has “friended” the current CEO – and he or she is just one click away from better navigating the company’s meteoric but challenging rise.