At some point in your founder journey you will need to become a manager. I can remember exactly the moment when I accepted that in order to go to the next level in business I’d have to go all-in and become a manager. I really did not want to be a manager but as a founder you’ll have to grow in whatever direction your business needs you to.
I was a terrible manager for a long time, even after my decision to change, it took me about 5 years to achieve a basic mastery of management.
What is the definition of a great manager? Looking back I’d say that in my case it was becoming a leader of a team of highly productive, happy people.
What’s a horrible manager? I’d say the best indicator is hearing that one of your staff said they would like to kill you. Yep, that for me indicated a slight little problem with my style!
A Founder is a creator
In the history of human civilization, things have gotten done because a founder decided to do them. If you imagine a future with flying cars then someone has to be the one to make it a reality, it isn’t going to happen by itself. That’s the excitement of a founder. A founder is like an Artist, their fulfillment is obtained in the creation of the product. Every first-time founder starts out with this Artist mind.
This is important to realise because the skill-set of a great manager is different than that of a founder. A good example of this in practice, is a Chef who owns their own restaurant. Gordon Ramsey has made a fortune by filming them. I recall such a Cafe I often frequented for lunch. The Rose cafe was owned and managed by the resident Chef. He produced really really great food, a true artist of his craft. I never went there once but had really tasty, quality food. On the flip side I never went there once where there was an ounce of organisation. The staff seemed to flip more often than the burgers and the employees that stuck it out were either untrained or just doing their best with the abysmal organisation. This is all to common and I tell you this story about the Chef, because I was exactly the same.
Founders become a managers out of necessity
A startup may not have the resources (or need) for a professional manager at the beginning, so the founder often takes on the management duties. They become the chief bottle washer, literally in-charge of everything, important to menial. If a business wants to stay small and be a lifestyle business then there is no problem, it’s when a business starts to grow and keeps this practice that the problem begins.
As a young busy founder in a growing company I created systems and processes and explained them to my staff. I really thought these were good things to do, some were not bad – but when your staff want to kill you then maybe, just maybe your skills need a little polishing. If you find yourself raising your voice and threatening to fire someone over and over, then that’s a good clue that all, is not well. Yes, I’m describing my own journey again. Experience is the only teacher.
The problem occurs because you are still the creator, you are still developing your product you are putting full focus and energy into that, most of what you are doing is coming from your head so things can change rapidly. You don’t have time to write things down, document how things work or train people – because everything might be different next week!
You’re just like the Chef who is focused on producing great lunches, he does not have the time to check that, all the tables are cleared, the people standing at the door are being seated, the toilets are clean, that the card machine is working and the soup of the day is known by the waiting staff. He is busy creating, when he’s not creating he is busy ordering food supplies, marketing, doing tax returns. He works 12 hours per day and is exhausted. The tiredness makes him impossible to deal with so he snaps and shouts at this staff. His staff no longer respect him. The service never improves, all it will take it an unexpected event (like a pandemic!) and he will be another founder who’s dream gets extinguished.
Avoiding disaster
One answer for any founder is that they can become a manager. They can at least gain some of the skills that a great manager has. There’s many management skills, business, operations, sales & marketing, finance, people. In a small company the two that you should begin gaining skill in, are business and people management.
Before you begin you must make the mental shift. If you are to become a successful manager, then being a manager must take precedence over being an artist. This was a hard thing for me to accept. In order to accept this, I told myself that becoming a great manager would eventually allow me to become a better artist. (It did)
The core skill you will develop as a manager is the ability to operate many things at once. This is not the same as having many spinning plates that are all waiting to crash without your input. A great manager decides what the output they want is and then uses all the resources available to achieve that output. That’s called productivity. Efficiency will come later, don’t focus on that at the beginning.
After you decide that you are now a manager the thing you must change is this.
Instead of working 80% in your business and 20% on your business, you will flip it and work 80% on your business and 20% in your business. That won’t happen over night, like everything becoming a manager is a journey (It took me years) but the mental switch from IN to ON is a beacon on the horizon as you navigate.
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