Every business goes through different life stages. As with humans, the transitions between each life stage often involve big decisions. A child leaving school will need to make the decision of whether to go to university, become an apprentice, or find a job. Companies must do the same.

I faced the first of these major decisions when my company, Kitt, grew from employing 20 people to 50 in a very short period of time. I had always overseen the entire company’s day-to-day operations. I made all the decisions. But once the company’s workforce had doubled, I ran out of time. The company demanded more from me than I could give. And it wanted to grow.

That’s when I realised that I needed help. CEOs spend over a third of their time, on average, responding to external and internal issues. That time would be better spent making active decisions. Business leaders can, more often than not, delegate reactive tasks to less senior members of the business. So, I did that. I started creating ‘mini-CEO’ positions at Kitt.

Devising an accessible strategy

You’ll have a good understanding of your customer, your customer’s problems, and your company’s value proposition once you employ a workforce of about 20. It’s worth considering how this will affect your growth for the following two years. You should be creating a strategy to achieve that growth and, once ready, considering how you might explain that to other people.

The business might have once travelled on the back of your hard work. But from 20 employees onwards, you’re going to need help. Providing senior employees with their own objectives tied to the company’s top-level strategy will help you grow the business. Employees will feel more invested. And they’ll better understand the purpose of their day-to-day work.

Measuring your mini CEOs’ performance

It can be difficult to hand responsibility of your business to other people. It gets easier as your business grows. But the first time is always the hardest.

Creating a framework to measure your employees performance against their objectives can help to overcome this anxiety at the start. This will create opportunities for constructive feedback and also encourage employees to improve as time goes on.

Try not to waste too much time worrying about which metrics to build your framework on. Just go with something that looks like it should work. You can always change this further down the line, depending on whether it’s meeting your needs or not.

Letting go of an image of perfection

A bigger company means more complex challenges. Everything seems simple when you’re a startup founder, trust me. But once your company has grown, it’s no longer about providing the perfect product or service. There are other considerations to worry about.

A lot of companies have suffered over the past year from the so-called ‘Great Resignation’. Over half of employees at UK organisations feel that staff recognition wasn’t an integral part of their employers’ culture. And almost one in four resign because they feel that their employers don’t trust them. Giving employees more responsibilities, and rewarding them for it, can help address this issue.

Handing responsibilities over might mean you have to accept a lower standard of work. But that’s the nature of business. Like I said, business challenges become more complex as your company grows. It’s all about compromise. Retaining employees can be more important than serving a pitch-perfect product. Even Michelangelo needed help painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Finding the right mix of values and skill

You might need to hand some responsibilities over if you want your company to grow. But that doesn’t mean you should hand it over to just anybody. You’ll alleviate a lot of that anxiety simply by choosing really good people to take on those tasks. You must be able to trust your mini-CEOs to follow your strategy, even if their approach differs from the one you would take. Hiring the right people is crucial.

Your existing employees may lack the skills and experience to take on the new positions you’ve created. You may need to hire people in, and that’s not a problem. But you may also find that your current employees express the kind of values you’d like to see in your mini-CEOs. You should use a values-performance matrix to figure out who will work and who might struggle. 

Creating a group of ‘mini-CEOs’ has helped me step back from the smaller decisions at Kitt. Yes, sometimes this means I need to settle with operations that aren’t exactly how I would have them in an ideal world. But it’s the only option if you want to grow. Very good everywhere can be a lot better than perfect but nowhere.