One of the biggest responsibilities a founder has is deciding who will help build the company. It can be easy for founders to focus on the business idea, the product, or getting the first customers and treat hiring as something that comes later. However, the people a founder brings into the business can have a major impact on whether the company is able to grow. The founder plays an important role in building the team, but that role should change as the company develops.
Early employees are especially important because they help establish the culture and expectations of the business. A founder cannot simply hire people based on whether they have the necessary technical skills. They also need to consider whether those people fit the company’s values and whether they can contribute something the founder does not already have. Herrenkohl (2010) argues that building a strong team requires intentionally looking for A players rather than simply filling open positions. For a growing company, hiring the best person available for an important role can have a much bigger impact than hiring someone just because they are available or affordable.
This also means founders need to recognize their own weaknesses. If a founder is strong at marketing but has little experience with finance or operations, hiring another person who is also strong at marketing may not be the best use of that position. The founder should be thinking about what the company needs and what skills are missing from the current team. A strong team should make the company more capable than the founder could ever be on their own.
This connects to the idea of the “Me Incorporated” syndrome discussed in How to Hire A-Players. Founders often start businesses because they have a strong belief in their own abilities and vision. That confidence can be an advantage, but it can also become a weakness if the founder believes they need to personally control every decision. When everything has to go through the founder, the founder can become a bottleneck for the entire organization. Instead of helping the company grow, they can unintentionally prevent other people from taking ownership and developing into leaders.
I think this is one of the hardest transitions for an entrepreneur. When a founder starts a company, they may be responsible for almost everything. They may be the person handling sales, marketing, operations, finances, customer service, and hiring. At the beginning, that may be necessary. As the company grows, however, continuing to operate that way can prevent the business from reaching its potential. Wasserman (2012) explains that founders face difficult decisions about how much control to maintain as their companies grow. Building a strong team is one of the ways a founder can expand the company’s capabilities without trying to personally handle everything.
At the same time, giving up responsibility does not mean the founder should stop being involved. The founder still needs to establish the vision, communicate expectations, and make sure the team understands what the company is trying to accomplish. The challenge is knowing which decisions truly require the founder’s involvement and which responsibilities should be given to other people. I think a founder should be involved in the things that are most important to the identity and direction of the business, while trusting other people to lead the areas where they have more expertise.
This is something I would want to apply if I eventually build my own farm-to-table distillery and restaurant. There would be no realistic way for me to personally manage every part of that business. I would need people who specialize in agriculture and local sourcing, distilling, restaurant operations, food, finance, marketing, and other areas. I would want to establish the overall vision and standards of the business, but I would also want each department to have someone who is capable of making decisions and leading their area.
For example, if I hired an experienced restaurant manager, I would want that person to actually manage the restaurant rather than having to ask me about every staffing decision or operational problem. If I hired someone to oversee the farm and local supplier relationships, I would want to trust their expertise instead of constantly second guessing their decisions. I would still want to know what is happening in the business, but there is a difference between being informed and needing to control everything.
I also think this is where hiring the right people becomes especially important. If I am going to give someone significant responsibility, I need to trust that they are capable of handling it. That makes hiring more than just filling positions. I would want to find people who are not only good at their jobs, but who can take ownership, make decisions, solve problems, and eventually help lead other people. That is what makes the idea of hiring A players important to me. I would rather take more time to find the right person than hire someone quickly and realize later that they are not capable of growing with the business (Herrenkohl, 2010).
Ultimately, I think the founder’s job is not to become the person who does everything. It is to build something that can become bigger than what the founder could accomplish alone. The founder creates the vision, establishes the values, and builds the initial team, but the team is what allows that vision to become sustainable. If I eventually build my own business, I would want to be involved enough to protect the things that matter most to me while also giving talented people enough responsibility to make the business better. I would rather give someone the baton and trust them to run with it than hold onto it so tightly that nobody else gets the chance to lead.
References
Herrenkohl, E. (2010). How to hire A-players: Finding the top people for your team even if you don’t have a recruiting department. Wiley.
Wasserman, N. (2012). The founder’s dilemmas: Anticipating and avoiding the pitfalls that can sink a startup. Princeton University Press.