Your company has grown, but every decision still depends on you. What should you do?
Understand why founders become bottlenecks in growing companies and how to improve decision-making without centralizing everything in one person.
Koinz Capital··4 min read
Growth is good news.
But there comes a point when growth creates a new problem: the company gets bigger, there are more people, customers, teams and decisions, yet almost everything still depends on the founder.
An important hire needs the founder’s approval.
A major commercial negotiation depends on the founder.
A decision about expansion comes back to the founder.
A strategic partnership requires the founder’s involvement.
A problem between departments eventually lands on the founder’s desk.
The company has grown.
But the organization’s ability to make decisions has not grown at the same pace.
When the founder becomes the bottleneck
In the early stages of a company, it is natural for the founder to concentrate many decisions.
The founder deeply understands the product, the customer, the market and the company’s history.
For some time, this centralization can even be efficient.
The problem begins when the complexity of the business exceeds the ability of one person to analyze, decide and follow up on everything.
Some common signs include:
important decisions keep waiting for the founder;
the team avoids making decisions without approval;
similar problems keep coming back;
strategic decisions are made with few external references;
the founder feels there is no one to discuss certain issues with;
the company starts facing challenges no one on the team has experienced before;
the founder’s time is increasingly consumed by operational decisions.
At this stage, working longer hours usually does not solve the problem.
The company needs to increase its decision-making capacity.
The challenge is not simply delegating everything
Delegation is part of growth.
But simply distributing decisions without increasing the level of experience available inside the organization can create new problems.
The real challenge is to build a structure in which decisions can be made with more context, knowledge and autonomy.
That usually requires three elements.
1. Experience
Growing companies start facing situations that are new to the team.
Expansion.
Management professionalization.
Leadership hiring.
Fundraising.
Governance.
Entering new markets.
Building a stronger sales structure.
Acquisitions.
There are people who have faced these challenges several times before.
The experience of people who have already gone through similar situations can significantly reduce the learning curve.
2. External perspectives
People inside the business have a great deal of context.
But they can also lose distance when evaluating certain decisions.
Someone from outside may ask different questions.
They may challenge assumptions.
They may identify risks the internal team is not seeing.
They may bring references from other companies, markets and situations.
3. An environment to discuss important decisions
Many founders have people they can talk to.
But relatively few companies create a structured environment to discuss their most important decisions.
Having recurring access to experienced executives, founders, investors and specialists can significantly improve the quality of those discussions.
Do you need to hire more executives?
Not always.
This is one of the most important changes in how growing companies access experience.
Not every strategic need requires a full-time hire.
There are different ways to bring experience closer to the company:
advisors;
board members;
mentors;
specialists;
fractional executives;
consulting firms;
investors;
founder communities;
executive networks.
Each model solves a different problem.
In some cases, the company needs daily execution.
In others, it mainly needs experience around specific decisions.
The company needs to increase its density of experience
Imagine two companies with the same product, the same amount of capital and similar opportunities.
One makes important decisions using only the experience available within its internal team.
The other can access people who have already built larger companies, entered new markets, raised capital, created sales channels or navigated crises.
Over time, these differences compound.
The ability to access experience becomes a competitive advantage.
Financial capital is not the only scarce resource
When a company wants to grow, the first discussion is usually about money.
How much capital do we need?
How much will hiring cost?
How much do we need to invest?
But there is another resource that can be just as important: intellectual capital.
Intellectual capital is the practical application of knowledge, experience, strategic perspective, relationships and lessons accumulated over a career.
When this experience is connected to a company at the right moment, it can improve decisions and reduce mistakes.
How Koinz Capital approaches this problem
Koinz Capital connects growing companies to a network of strategic minds made up of executives, founders, investors and experienced professionals.
These people contribute intellectual capital to support companies on challenges related to growth, strategy, governance, sales, fundraising, expansion and other important decisions.
The idea is not to replace the founder.
It is not to replace the team.
It is to increase the amount and quality of experience available around the decisions that matter most.
The founder does not need to decide alone
As a company grows, the founder’s role must evolve as well.
The goal should not be to keep making every decision.
The goal should be to build an organization capable of making better decisions.
And one of the ways to do that is to bring the company closer to people who have already gone through the challenges it is beginning to face.
Join the network
Bring experience to the decisions that shape your company’s next stage.
