Are You The Bottleneck Founder? 4 Ways To Get Out Of Your Team's Way!
It happens to every startup.
What worked — what was necessary in the early days — starts to slow you down.
In the beginning, the founder:
approves everything
attends every meeting
weighs in on product decisions
closes deals
replies to customers
leads presentations
trains new hires
manages every team member
aka does everything!!!!
But when you grow (yay!), if the founder is still doing these things, it becomes a bottleneck.
It happens slowly, a little at a time.
Then one day, you realize — you are the problem.
Your team is waiting on you.
You are bogged down, guilty, and behind. You’re in meetings all day and can’t catch up.
Speed is your startup advantage and you can’t leverage it!
How do you get yourself out of the middle and your team unstuck?
Here are 4 steps to resume startup hyperspeed and save your sanity!
1. Audit Your Time
Start with your inbox, calendar, and messaging apps.
Where are you spending time?
What decisions are being sent for your approval?
What meetings are you attending?
Take a step back and ask:
What should I be working on?
What do I no longer need to be involved in?
Who can handle more responsibility?
Here is a detailed list of 5 areas to audit.
You will usually immediately identify several things that you can hand off or edit by spending 30 minutes thinking it through!
2. Clarify Approvals and Decision Making
Once you realize that you can and should delegate, how do you do it?
You’re welcome: The Only Framework You Need to Delegate Like a Pro
I literally LOVE EVERYTHING ABOUT THE DECISION TREE FRAMEWORK.
But if I had to choose:
Clear language for yourself and your team on when/how to tell you about decisions and actions.
In the early days of Pardot, I pinged our COO every day with several questions about pricing or discounts. After a month or two, he said:
I trust you to make these decisions. Do what you think is best. Only run it by me if it’s more than $1000.
Boom. The approvals needed dropped from 15 per week to 1.
Estimated time savings = 1 hour per week.
Now, do that for 10 more small things that are bogging you down!
3. Create Documentation
The example above worked because I was trained through many scenarios. I got a feel for the “why” behind pricing and contract decisions.
Want to skip a step?
Start writing shit down!
Make some guidelines, put together training videos or presentations, and document institutional knowledge.
Guess what? You don’t even have to be the one to do this!
Repeat after me:
I will show you how I do this. Can you take notes and turn it into documentation as part of the learning process?
Or
I created a Loom video to explain what I do. Can you please add this to <Slack channel, Google Drive, Notion, whatever is your Wiki/Knowledge Base tool of choice> and share with others?
Look at you. You created documentation on your first try!
4. Say No, Prioritize, Avoid Meetings
Getting even more tactical — here are common areas that can cause recurring bottlenecks:
Struggling to say no → 4 Fresh Ways To Say No and Still Be Polite
Losing sight of what matters → Prioritize Yourself Out Of Chaos With A Simple Spreadsheet...Here's How
Too many meetings → 5 Strategies For Fewer Meetings & More Time
Fun fact: these are related!
When you know your priorities, it’s easier to say no to things including meetings!
Boom. Bottleneck busted!
Have you ever been the bottleneck? How did you fix it? Any other tips??
Great reminders for any leader – not just startup founders.