The 4 vital steps from Founder/owner to CEO 

Every founder/owner reaches a point when they begin to feel stretched by the demands of their growing – and hence increasingly complex – organization.

Because of this growing complexity, important decisions can no longer be made on the fly, pure gut instinct is no longer invariably correct, and past indicators of success no longer necessarily hold true.

At this point, the founder/owner has two choices: either press ‘pause’ on growth, keeping the business at a manageably simple level – or change the way they manage, reflecting the needs of their newly complex organization.

Here are the four main challenges I see founder/owners face in taking the second route:

1. Building A Truly Empowered Senior Leadership Team.

Until this point, while the founder/owner may have had a senior team in theory, the reality is typically that the team exists only as a conduit between the founder/owner and the functional silos they represent:

• The sales manager is there representing the sales function,
• The ops manager is there to report on operations,
• The admin person is there to talk about finance.

While each has a one-way relationship with the founder/owner, and in turn, with the people who report to them, the real decision-making power rests with the founder/owner.

A key part of the transition to CEO is the transformation of this group of individuals into a true team – a group that communicates primarily laterally, with each other, rather than just vertically, with their own team; a group that makes real decisions – a group that can manage the organization, albeit under the oversight of the CEO.

2. Embracing Systems And Processes.

The primary reason growth leaders start their own organizations - whether for-profit businesses or not - is for autonomy: the freedom to do what they want, how they want (financial return comes second, and though it’s important, for most successful entrepreneurs monetary reward is more of a scorecard than the end result).

Because of this almost-all-consuming need for autonomy, while understanding the need for systems and processes, many founder/owners exempt themselves from personal compliance – in other words, as far as they’re concerned, the systems and processes exist for everyone else in the organization.

One of the biggest challenges a founder/owner faces in the transition to being an effective CEO of their now-larger, growing organization is to suppress this urge to exempt themselves from needed process.

Whether it’s strolling late into meetings and hijacking the agenda, or changing strategic direction on a whim without consultation – or a host of other ways they can express their need for autonomy and independence – it’s vital to recognize that ‘what got you here won’t get you there’ – the old, visceral, independent, way of managing isn’t right for the next stage in your organization's growth.

3. Letting Go A Big Dog (Or Two).

Perhaps the hardest thing for any founder/owner to accept is when one or more of their superstar ‘big dogs’ – those hard-charging high performers who helped grow the younger, simpler organization into the success it now is – are no longer a huge asset for the organization, and have in fact become a barrier to its further growth.

And this inflection point – when the smaller organization managed by the founder/owner becomes a larger organization needing CEO-style management – is precisely when that change in the big dog’s status occurs.

As the founder/owner embraces systems and processes and builds a truly effective senior leadership team, the superstar big dogs in turn see their sweat equity erode: their relationship to the founder/owner-turned-CEO is no longer as close, they are less able to work independently outside accepted systems and processes, and their perceived influence and status in the organization wanes.

In the worst case, a big dog longing for a return to the previously free-wheeling, loosely managed environment in which they ruled the roost will try to undermine the shift to the new CEO-style leadership, building a cabal within the business and starting a whispering campaign that “we’re not who we used to be”, and that “the business is losing it’s soul” (read: “I feel personally threatened by the changes that are being made”).

Eventually, the founder/owner-turned-CEO faces a challenge: let go of one or more big dogs who don’t share the vision for the next stage in growth, or change direction and return to being a smaller-sized business in which the big dogs regain pre-eminence.

4. Institutionalizing Vision.

Finally, there is the challenge which most cuts at the heart of the founder/owner’s sense of identity: de-personalizing the organization’s vision.

Until this point, the founder/owner is typically the personification of the organization's vision – they are the business, after all, and so whatever their personal vision is, is the vision of the organization – the two are identical.

Moving from a founder/owner- to a CEO-style of leadership means separating the two: recognizing that the business is now an entity in its own right, and beginning the process of developing a vision for the business (primarily through the newly empowered senior management team) which is separate from, and independent of, the CEO as an individual.

(Think of Howard Schultz at Starbucks, Michael Dell at Dell, Ted Waitt at Gateway and Steve Jobs at Apple, all of whom left their business at one point, only to realize that they had failed to institutionalize a vision for the company, and that once they left, the business faltered – all of them returned to de-personalize their business’s vision.)

What about you? What actions have you taken when stretched by the demands of a growing organization?

  Let Me Know In The Comments Below!