Learning To Let Go

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

 Hey Founder,

 I understand that your CFO wants to hire a new controller for your company. That’s a smart move given where your business is in terms of growth. I’m sure your CFO will do a great job finding the right person.

What? You say you told her you want to be closely looped in with this important hire? And you asked her who was being “let go” to make some salary room for the new position?

I’m not sure that’s the right way to think about this moment in the lifecycle of your business. Your business is in corporate adolescence, which means that you have raised the bar on the kind of leadership talent you want to attract. The good news is that you are attracting them. But your challenge will be to be in keeping them—especially and specifically if you don’t give them room to do their business.

In other words, you need to let go of the tight grip you’ve had on your baby and figure out how to go from spending your every waking moment in the business, to devoting your time and energy to working on the business. This controller isn’t going to report to you, but rather to your CFO. Coach her? Absolutely. But try to control the hire? Take a pass.

Ditto for your new vice president of marketing who wants to go in a different direction from the marketing firm you’ve worked with for many years. He gave the relationship an earnest go, but it hasn’t been a good fit and he’s struggling. It would be one thing if he didn’t have any other ideas. But he does. So let go of that history and delegate this big decision to him. That’s what growing through adolescence means.

And while you’re at it, if your new vice president of sales wonders whether your $30,000 client really needs to go through a distributor now that you’re a $15 million business, well, that’s her call, too, isn’t it?

I know. Letting go is easier said than done, but let me offer a word or two of advice for taking this important step. First, think about adopting a new persona. Every founder has a persona. When I’m “in” the business as a relatively new founder, I’m doing marketing, business development, sales, strategic planning and hiring my team. My persona is “Ricky Bobby” because it sounds like a racecar driver going really fast, with me at the wheel. But once I decide to work “on” the business, I become Robert, the visionary and steadfast presence among my team — the one who puts his arm around his teammates and coaches them.

After you have made yourself aware of your role by naming your changing personas, devote yourself to curiosity rather than being right. Go deep with your new leaders on what they want to do and how they want to achieve it. If you have certain fears that have influenced your decision making in the past, be transparent about them. Tell him or her, “You know, I tried that five years ago and here’s what happened.”

Now that you know each other a little better, you can take the next step of empowering them by delegating. I wrote about a great empowerment technique here; the basic point is that you want them to know they get to make the call and you get to hear the report from them.

When delegating, consider the size and scope of a problem. For example, in the case of the founder who is getting between his sales leader and a small customer, given that the stakes or risks are not especially high, can you just go ahead and give complete autonomy to the sales VP? I think you can and should. When you wore your Ricky Bobby hat, everything was pedal to the metal — an emergency. Now that you’re the long-term and big-picture Robert, however, maybe you turn over that small customer if that’s what the sales leader wants.

As the visionary leader and coach, you want to be widening those guardrails by allowing your leaders to flex their decision-making muscles and become better leaders in their own right. Get out of the how and keep yourself focused on the what and why of your business. And if that means your new leaders experience failure now and again, embrace it, learn from it and coach them how to learn from it as well. Besides, they are less likely to fail than you think they are, so your fear will be both dampening and unjustified in many if not most cases.

So, go out there and take a small chance and then a bigger one and delegate. It won’t hurt. I promise. And if it does, ScalePassion is here to help.

Sincerely,

Rob Craven, ScalePassion

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