Growing Beyond the Founders

This week's topic for the Forbes America's Most Promising Companies:

 

How can I prevent my business from being too dependent on one or two key personalities (e.g., founders) so it can continue to grow after their departure?

The biggest roadblock to building a team that sustain a business even after the departure of the founders is their hesitancy to delegate. 

Letting go is tough for most of us. We have been with our business all the way through its growth, through the good and the bad times. But at some point, if we want our business to grow successfully, we have to begin to delegate. At first it will seem that no one can do what you do as well as you can. But just like raising a teenager, at some point you have to begin to let go so they can learn and grow up. Your business will go through this same difficult transition. If you don't begin to let go, you business may never successfully move into its next stage of development.

Out of the challenge of delegation comes a second issue -- "What exactly is the job description for a CEO, any way?"

For many entrepreneurs, this may be their first time as a CEO. That title means very little in the early days, but as the company grows it takes on more meaning. Defining your role and your style as the CEO of your company takes planning and specific effort on your part. It may even feel a bit awkward at some point, but you have to establish what your role will be as the CEO. Play to your strengths.

This is often due to the fact that many entrepreneurs start their businesses because they like the hands-on part of their business. Engineers like to engineer. Furniture makers like to build stuff. As some point in the growth of the business, the entrepreneur begins to move away from the hands-on part of what they company does. This can be a painful and frustrating period. Keep this in mind when you decide how far you want to grow the business. It is OK to keep it at a size that allows you to stay in the hands-on part of what you do.

When building the management team that will take over much of the running of the business, the most common mistake is to hire solely based on people's skills and experience.  The technical ability of the person to perform the job should be the minimum criteria that get them to the first interview.  After that, pay most of your attention to their fit with your culture and their ability to continue it into the future.

This requires that you have a clear and concrete understanding of what makes up your culture.  Then use this to develop several open ended interview questions that can give you insight into how well they fit with your culture.  Don't asking questions that lead them to answers.  Make them vague enough so they have to use their own values to build their response.

For example, assume that bootstrapping is a key part of the culture of your business that you want to ensure will continue into the future.  You might ask them the following: "Tell me about a time when you had to accomplish a task when limited resources were available."  If the interviewee answers the question by saying that she always had more than enough budgetary support in her old job, it might be difficult for her to adapt to a bootstrapping environment not having worked that way in the past.  Or, if she answers by complains about the availability of resources in her old job, or about how her old boss was always cheap, that is a good signal that the employee is not have bootstrapping as a part of her work ethic.  On the other hand, if she speaks with enthusiasm and pride about how she got the job done within the limited resource available, she would more likely fit into the bootstrap culture.