The 4 key shifts that a startup needs to make, in order to be successful for the scaling-up journey. 1st Shift is from Founder(s) competence & expertise to a Strong, Effective & Cohesive Leadership Team
Qn: If your Leadership Team is under performing, how are you contributing by over/under-functioning? Is the monkey on your back? or is it time to learn new tricks?
Watch this 2 mins video that talks about this shift.
Transcript:
Shift 1: From Founders’ competence to Strong Leadership Team.
When you are a startup, success is all about the Founder(s), their expertise, network, productivity and competence to bring people together to birth a new commercial product.
As a scaleup, your next stage of success depends on an effective and cohesive leadership team. Most hired these competent team members and then go back to the same way of working. Instead, these Founders need new skills to actively shift from “doing” to delegating, empowering, building healthy team and holding them accountable for the operations.
This transition is not easy to shift because it’s counterintuitive and require a change in habit that has contributed to its initial success.
Most CEOs out of good intentions and in the interest of time, constantly stepped in to put out the operational fire. The irony is, very often, most of these urgent fires were symptoms of this important but subtle shift not happening. (Urgency always overrules the important)
An overfunctioning CEO will definitely guarantee a underfunctioning team. (closed loop system) The monkey is always on the CEO’s back. As for an underfunctioning one, either lack the skills or is unaware of what is required, for the team to be performing effectively and cohesively.
If you are busy doing your team’s work, then you are not performing the CEO’s job of setting direction, making decisions, leading, extracting and resolving conflicts.
So, if your team is underperforming, ask how are you contributing by either overfunctioning or underfunctioning? Is the monkey on your back (overfunctioning) or is it time to learn new tricks (underfunctioning).