If you want to grow: let it go
One of my first jobs was working as a consultant helping companies publish CD-ROMs (ask your mum what they were) and online. Most of my clients were small businesses of less than 20 people. When I talked to the owners of those firms what struck me was that they were obsessed with the same problem: ‘We just don’t seem to be able to grow any bigger’.
Some businesses were just a few years old, others had been going for decades. Some of the owners were young, some were old. Some relied on one big client, others had many. They were all investing in the latest technology, but each one had stalled. For the owners this was a frustrating mystery.
My job was setting up software and workflows, not offering management advice, but it was interesting talking to people. After a few months of driving around and listening to the owners and their employees I came to realise what the problem was: the companies were exactly as big as the owners allowed them to be.
While the owners would talk about how their businesses had hit a wall, their employees would tell me about the things they were or weren’t allowed to do. The more responsibility the owners had handed over, the bigger the business had become. But one day the owner had stopped giving responsibility and the company had ceased to grow.
I helped them with their publishing systems and went on my way, but the lesson stuck: if you want to grow, let it go.
When Richard Caddick and I set up cxpartners we discussed this idea often. Sure enough, every time we’ve handed over a major responsibility we’ve seen a growth spurt. Handing over responsibility helped us break through the brick walls that many small businesses hit as they reach 12, 25, 50 people. We’re 60 people now and growing at exactly the pace we want.
Knowing a lesson in theory doesn’t make it easy in practice. It’s not as simple as delegating a bunch of tasks. What I didn’t understand when we started was that the thing you have to give up is the thing that makes you different from everyone else in the company. You need to let go of the thing that defines who you think you are. It’s scary.
First, it was giving up responsibility for cashflow and payroll. Rich and I were the ones who made the money add up and paid people’s wages. Handing those things over to the woman who became our Operations Director meant putting her in charge of our security and sensitive information. She was (and is) way better at it than we were.
The change surprised us. We got rid of a major worry and were able to put more energy into making sure the business delivered great work.
Next we had to give up responsibility for relationships with our most important clients. Again, this felt like we were giving up part of ourselves. The key clients were people who trusted us personally and in whom we’d invested a great deal of time. But our lead consultants were smart people with more time so they earned glowing reports from our clients.
Then we had to hand over responsibility for winning new business. We were used to being the ones who brought home the exciting new work. It’s what chiefs do: put food on the table. But we’d been trying to squeeze it in between all the other tasks we had. Our Planning Director gave it his full attention and we saw the benefits.
Handing over responsibility doesn’t stop being scary – in fact, it gets worse. You always find yourself asking: what is my job now? (Answer: you look a little further ahead.) You need to develop new skills and let go of old ones. You go from being the person who can do everything best to managing a team of people who have specialisms that you don't have. Plus you may be managing someone who has deep skills that you don't share at all. But for Richard and me this is what makes growing a business fascinating: we have to re-think our roles and identities every couple of years.
Not everyone wants to grow their business. I know and admire plenty of people who enjoy dividing their time between the roles of craftsperson and manager and who are happy to keep their business at the scale of a handful of people. I understand the satisfaction that brings.
Growing for it’s own sake is a poor decision: bigger isn’t necessarily better and I never trust someone who chases money. For Richard and me, growing enables us to work at a bigger scale, to touch the lives of more people, and see more of our teams ideas get released into the real world. Growing also allows us to create careers and new opportunities for the people who work at cxpartners. These things are satisfying.
Handing over responsibility isn’t the only reason that businesses grow. But I feel that businesses are social organisms that depend on the energy of individuals to grow. If you depend on just one person then that energy is spread too thinly to have an effect.
Today, it’s become clear to us that we (Richard, me, and our management team) are going to have to hand over responsibility for defining how we work. I know that by doing that, we’ll increase the pace of innovation in the business and amazing things will happen. It won’t be easy. But if you want to grow, let it go.