The Big B̶e̶a̶u̶t̶i̶f̶u̶l̶ Brand Boss Paradox
This week’s scalability paradox is about the paradox of scaling a team. And apologies for jumping on the Triple B Bandwagon. If you can’t laugh …
It’s easy to get starry-eyed with brand names and big titles. Global Business Unit Strategic Growth Vice Presidents from Fortune 100 Companies must be able to add multiples to your small business, right? That’s this week’s paradox.
Everyone who has tried to scale a startup of a couple hundred employees or less knows this.
A scaling startup needs people who have built things, not people who have managed things.
Leaders who have spent their careers at large companies largely take what has already been built, and manage it.
Startup leaders build it.
They aren’t yet at a scale where they need to maintain.
How can you tell if your big brand executive is a maintainer, rather than a builder?
They take a quarter to build a business plan for growth.
They like steering committees.
They want to hire a chief of staff.
They like using management consulting frameworks.
Their first project is redefining your vision, mission, and values.
Why Do They Do This?
It’s not that Big Brand Bosses are bad. They’re just trained differently.
The Business Plan Black Hole
When you’re at scale and making money, your main focus is not losing it. Management is measured by monthly and quarterly profits, and fired for taking action that reduces those profits. They become trained to tread carefully into new opportunities. So they plan. And plan. And plan.
All in the name of mitigating risk.
In the world of startups, the market has already moved past you by the time that business plan is fully polished. Your Series A is dry. And your best engineers have moved on.
When you have less than a two-year runway of cash, you don’t need a 35 slide business plan.
Steering Committee Love
So what do you do if you are asked to spearhead a bold new project but you know that you could get fired for taking risks that generate losses?
You share the 𝚋̶𝚕̶𝚊̶𝚖̶𝚎̶ responsibility. The corporate world has created a special vehicle for doing this - they call it the “steering committee”. That way, if when a decision is made, everyone is responsible — and therefore no one is responsible.
It’s a bit like Congress. Without the CSPAN coverage. And unlike startups, Congress always seems to find more funding even when they haven’t met / or even set targets.
More and More Executives
Executives who have spent their careers in large companies mostly manage. It’s been a long time since they have
written usable code
created a product roadmap themselves
built their own P&L
used a project planning tool
Sometimes, the most you can ask for is a personally created slide deck (see next section!).
Why? Because they have “people that do that”.
So instead of hiring them, just go hire the “people who do that”.
Frameworks and PowerPoints
The biggest of Big Brand Bosses often hail from the hallowed halls of Big Consulting.
There, they were lauded for stepping into a messed up operating company, analyzing the situation, telling management what it already knew, but expressing it in an elegant slide deck that made the problem statement coherent and visually pleasing.
They assign your chaos to one of four quadrants and design in the yellow brick road to your solution in the other three.
With the framework and the slide deck completed, the biggest of Big Brand Bosses have done their job. In a large company, there’s a team of operators they assign the implementation to. But everyone in your startup is already overloaded. That’s why you hired BBB to begin with.
Vision, Mission, Values
Big Brand Bosses like to start by reviewing and redefining vision, mission and values. It feels like leadership. It’s clean. It’s noble.
Before you cast aspersions, I’m all for implementing an authentic and inspiring vision, mission and values. But starting with this effort is putting the cart before the proverbial horse(sh**).
Because culture isn’t something you fix. It’s something that changes after you fix all the sh** that is broken. It’s an emergent outcome of how you act and the behavior you inspire (or ignore) from others.
You hire a Big Brand Boss because something terribly important is really broken and urgently needs to be fixed. Your best employees are stressed and desperate for someone who will come in and help them get things done. First, you need a builder. Let the Values, and then the Vision and Mission naturally develop.
In Defense of Big Brand Bosses…
I’ve been a bit harsh.
Big Brand Bosses can deliver a ton of value — to Big Brand Businesses. When they are great at their jobs, they can coordinate cross-functional chaos, motivate large teams, and see patterns across the organization that others can’t.
They have altitude — and that’s valuable in a company that’s already airborne.
But Still. If You’re a Startup, Don’t Hire Them
The best piece of advice I got early in my founder journey came from someone who had already sold a successful startup. He said:
A founder is like a parent to their startup child. They see all the potential the startup can grow into and realize that they have to let it take risks to reach that potential.
A professional CEO is like a babysitter. Their job is to make sure the child doesn’t die on their watch.
The tech landscape is littered with BBBs who have spent a year or two, max in a startup culture before being ousted.
If you’re a scaling startup, hire the parent-type. And beware the professional babysitter.
#startup #scaleup #scalabilityparadox #hiring #management #leadership