When founders run into difficulty in scaling their company (and scaling themselves), they tend to fall into one of two buckets.
The dreamer. They tend to be clear on the big picture. They like surrounding themselves with smart expertise and thought partners. They struggle in communicating the vision, holding themselves accountable to results, and the myriad of tactical “tasks” that come with entrepreneurship. This archetype is typically “stuck in the day to day” and feels distracted. Maybe they secretly doubt themselves a bit.
The expert. They have high attention to detail and are clear subject matter experts. They know exactly what to do and how to do it, which leads to a level of perfectionism and leads to them being extremely ingrained in the day-to-day operation. They struggle in letting go, building a team, and delegating. This archetype is typically someone who “knows best” and been doing “the work” for much of their career. Maybe they secretly distrust or resent others.
Do either of these sound like you?
Well, there’s good news. And there’s a way out.
For these two archetypes, the dreamer and the expert, the core challenge is removing yourself as a bottleneck.
For the dreamer, this means clarifying and communicating your vision, aligning your leadership team to common goals, developing a plan to achieve those goals, and delegating accountability to drive execution. This allows the dreamer to focus more on growth and the big picture.
For the expert, this means recruiting a talented team, clarifying their responsibilities, delegating decision-making, setting clear expectations of success, and building accountability systems to drive performance. This allows the expert to dramatically free up their time.
This week, I go into heavy detail on how either the dreamer or the expert can design execution systems that work for them and the business.
My Take
📈 To see our businesses really grow and thrive, leaders need to focus on doing our roles, not those of our direct reports. To do that, we need to empower our teams and take their (and our) operations to the next level.
In this week’s article, I walk through how to elevate your own leadership, align and engage your teams from the get-go, build an accountability system, and automate your business—all leveling up your team’s capabilities and your own to bring your company to its healthiest and most effective stage yet.
Research Take
🔬Coach Josephine Too, with more than 20 years of experience in strategy consulting and executive management, shares the four key shifts that must happen as you lead a growing company: 1/ transition from founder to strong leadership team, 2/ transition from driving sales to a differentiating strategy, 3/ transition from individual productivity to scalable execution systems, and 4/ change the financial driver from revenue to profit and cash.
Founder’s Take
👁William R. Carey Jr. of Corporate Resource Development Inc., in Atlanta shares a personal, vulnerable take on his experiences in the Vietnam war and entrepreneurship—and how he came to admit to himself he was not “omnipotent, omniscient, clairvoyant, perfect” and in fact, simply real and human.
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