How to grow from a 5 person company to a 500 person company.
I remember hearing Jack Dorsey’s now-famous quote that great CEOs are “editors”, not “writers”. And if you start to “write” more than you “edit”, you’ve hired the wrong person.
Your job as an executive is to edit, not write. It’s OK to write once in a while but if you do it often there’s a fundamental problem with the team. Every time you do something ask if you’re writing or editing and get in the mode of editing.
Simple translation — if you start to do the work of your executive team, you’ve hired the wrong people. They should share their decisions and strategy with you, but you shouldn’t be creating it for them.
As we started to “hand over” the reigns to our new executives, I kept hearing that quote about being less busy in my head. And funnily enough, our investor was right. As you scale your company and hire people who are much smarter than you, it’s scary at first but eventually it becomes liberating. You definitely spend less time “in” the business and start to work more “on” the business, which means a lot more time on strategy and helping to reel in the “big fish” for important roles, key partners, etc.
Read more: Good CEOs aren’t busy [MEDIUM]
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