Founding CEOs are not the same as professional CEOs.
This question is for founding CEOs.
That’s you – the guy or gal that had a great idea for a product or service and then through sheer will power and determination brought it to life.
In the early days, it literally was your job to interfere …
To involve yourself in every aspect of the business …
To ensure that your vision was realized and things were done the way you wanted them done because you knew that was the way it had to be done to realize your vision.
That herculean effort grew the company beyond the limitations of just one person.
Each new hire had your personal attention and you were able to imbue them with your vision.
Then somewhere you read an article that said you should delegate.
This is probably at about the same time that your employees start complaining that you are interfering.
As they see it, you hired them because they were able to do something better than you … but you still want to tell them how to do it.
Because from your point of view it’s not being done the way it needs to be done.
It’s at this point that a smart CEO stops meddling in the ‘how to do it’ and doubles down on interfering with the ‘why we do it’.
Because, if you are hiring the right people and things still aren’t being done the way you want them to be done, it’s almost certainly NOT because they don’t know how to do it.
And it’s almost certainly because they don’t understand ‘why it needs to be done a certain way’.
So let your people get on with the HOW to do it …
And you feel free to interfere at every opportunity with conversations about WHY it needs to be done a certain way.