The Invisible Ceiling on Company Growth
|
Note: Scroll down to check out our new section How to Have Better Meetings. Hi Reader, A while back, I worked with a CEO who was brilliant, relentless, and exacting. His startup was breaking into its first $10M year. But every time they got momentum, something bottlenecked. Engineering wouldn’t ship on time. Sales didn’t close fast enough. Leadership hires weren’t stepping up. The problem? He had an answer for everything. In meetings, he’d jump in before the head of product could finish a sentence. He re-wrote client emails. He hovered over strategy decks like a stormcloud. After one executive offsite, I asked him a simple question: “What does your team have to do to win?” He paused. “I don’t know,” he said. Then, after a long silence, he admitted: “...I have to let them.” I was astonished and impressed with his self-recognition. It turned out that their growth ceiling wasn’t strategy or product-market fit. It was the leader’s unconscious belief that if he didn’t control the outcome, the company would fail. But here’s the paradox: If your team can’t grow, your company won’t grow. And your team can’t grow if you’re always catching the ball before it hits the ground. Mistaking control for competenceOne of the most common traps in early leadership is mistaking control for competence. On the surface, things run smoothly: Decisions get made, problems get solved, crises get contained. But underneath, something vital is missing: your team’s growth. High-functioning teams require room to fail, learn, and rise again. Without that space, talent withers and initiative dies. And when every important decision routes through you, the organization slows to your bandwidth. You end up burned out and alone at the top. Often, this pattern is fueled by the leader’s unconscious beliefs:
These stories may sound reasonable, even admirable. But they build an invisible ceiling on what your company can become. If success isn’t clearly defined and jointly owned, your team will feel unsafe to make mistakes, because they don’t have a way to measure success—outside of trying to read your mind. And if your team feels unsafe making mistakes, your team will stop taking risks. Without risk, there’s no innovation. And without innovation, your company won’t scale. In other words: You can’t build a championship team by constantly benching your players. Big Love, Joe This newsletter is brought to you by The Council. |
Art of Accomplishment
The AOA Leadership Newsletter Hi Reader, I had a client ask me this question recently: “When entrepreneurs are going through massive personal transformation, how do they integrate that with the intensity of running a startup?” Here’s what I told him: If you can’t handle transformation on the inside, you won’t be able to handle it on the outside. Every external breakthrough in a company requires a nervous system strong enough to hold the chaos and change it creates. Without that foundation,...
Note: Scroll down to check out our new section How to Have Better Meetings. The AOA Leadership Newsletter Hi Reader, I've seen this pattern in several of my CEO clients: They feel superior as a way to protect themselves. But in actuality, they're signaling their shame and shutting down their joy. Here’s what I show them to break the pattern: 1 - Superiority and deep joy are fundamentally incompatible. Try to name a single person who feels superior that is also deeply joyful. You won’t find...
Note: We’re always looking for ways to add more value to these newsletters, so we’re introducing a new section: How to Have Better Meetings. Scroll down to check it out! The AOA Leadership Newsletter Hi Reader, Last month, I worked with a founder who had just closed a Series B. To the outside world, he looked like a rocket ship. But inside, he was hollowing out. He told me he couldn’t shake the pressure that it was all on his shoulders. He’d stopped sleeping. He had to keep pushing. His...