You have to get good at ceding control in a Startup!

Ceding control in a startup: As a founder, it is often one of the hardest things to do – to dissociate oneself from the product. However, a startup is more than just an idea and product. and handing it over to a few specialised experts with dedicated chunks of work.

This discussion focuses on managing control as your startup is growing. It touches upon the familiar dilemmas and concerns about quality, trust, speed, knowledge transfer and a lot such related issues when it comes to growing your startup.

“You have to get good at ceding control and not taking things personally. Even seasoned entrepreneurs have struggled with that. I think it’s about not taking failures personally and also not taking successes personally.”

–Leila Janah, Founder of Samasource and LXMI

Ceding control in a startup

As a founder, you’d tend to know everything about the product. However, after you’ve achieved the product-market fit, your priority is about scaling. Recall the definition of a startup – it is about expanding the reach. Otherwise, the danger is that you might end up as a small business.

How do you transfer this skillset into a team so that the product develops in your absence. The most important thing about scaling a startup is eliminating dependencies to create scalable processes. This will invariably involve ceding control in a startup. It will also enable you to bring in additional talent that can help grow your business.

Things to remember while scaling a product

Transfer your knowledge

Make sure that you create solid channels for knowledge transfer. This should enable new employees to join your company without losing the essence of the product value. You should be able to attract best talent to create and develop your initial idea further.

Trust and offer creative liberty

The worst thing to happen for a talented person is unnecessary boundaries. You must ensure that you don’t micromanage. Or else you’ll risk losing the most important value of team working. Get good people, make sure that you strategise with them. Most importantly, let them do their job and trust them with it. Create good metrics, but make sure that you maintain your distance. Related: What is micromanagement?

Lead with vision

This is something most entrepreneurs get wrong. They’re so involved in the product or their specialisation that they gravitate to the same role. However, your role is to lead with vision and future. You must elevate yourself from the role of an idea generator to a visionary leader. Related: Leading with vision in a startup

Commitment

The employees will never have the same commitment as a founder does. As a founder it is a vision, idea coming into life. My previous business partner made the mistake of expecting everyone to be as committed as himself to the business. Although this would’ve been a brilliant thing to happen, it just wasn’t smart enough.

After all, this is merely a job and an entrepreneur is expected to know that. If you’re in for the long run, you better think of this as a dedicated company from the start.

Stock options: Some startup’s tend to attract young employees with the lure of company shares. They do offer a good motivation for someone to stay, but it shouldn’t be mistaken for an alternative for quality of work.

Expectation setting

Everyone likes a bit of certainty, most people like to know what they are employed for and the value addition they are expected to offer. If you keep it very fluid, very soon they’ll lose interest to perform.

At the same time expectations cannot be unrealistic. They will not be able to know the product as well as you do in a short span of time. You’ll need to plan for onboarding time and provide enough leg room to add value.

Collaboration is the key

The most important thing to constantly remember is about achieving the goal together. Yes as a founder you’d tend to know more than anyone else about the business. But you’re hiring specialists for a reason and help you build a business which can grow. If you’re expecting them to be as good as you, then you’re quite certainly making one of the biggest mistakes a startup goes through on its journey of being a scale up.