There comes a time in the growth of every startup when you overhear two employees (non-founders) talking about the business, or a procedure, or discussing the best way to do something and arriving at a solution… without you. To a first-time founder, this seems almost unreal. You think, ‘Wow. Work is happening without me.’ Real decisions are being made without founder input.1 And it’s fantastic. I remember the exact day I noticed this at my company. You feel, for the first time perhaps, that the company might just make it.
With this, the company begins to assume a life of its own – an organism that melds into a combination of all the pieces and personalities pouring into it, assuming the aroma of each, yet like none of them exactly. This is a good thing.
- Later, you realize that not only is work happening without you, decisions are being made without you and sometimes you don’t even get told that it happened… until you step in to do a job and find out from your employees that you are now doing it wrong (because you are doing it “the old way”). This is also wonderful.
