Why good leaders little work

One of our investors once told us: "As soon as you collect management team, you will have so much time that you will not know where to spend it! "It was 2012, and we have just received a $ 20 million investment round in the series B. "Yeah of course! Now we have no time for anything but work, and no change is not expected "- so we thought with the CFO Eddie (Eddie).

In our management team then consisted of three people: me, Eddie and Rob (Rob) - CEO. We were a force to be reckoned with, but there were only three. From 2012 to 2014, we have worked hard to gather a large and abrupt command to Bigcommerce. We decided on the positions on which we want to find people in the first place: the developers, technical support. Then we need the product managers, sales managers, marketing, business development specialists, communication and, finally, Corporate Development.

We have been working with recruiting agencies, attracted by our friends, especially investors, are actively engaged PR companies increased level of corporate culture and began to often win as "the best place in a competition for work. " Noise that we have raised, of course, it helped, given the fact that a couple of years ago, the company employs only 12 people in a small office in Sydney. Our energetic campaign in 2014 had a wow effect.

For two years, from 2012 th and 2014 th, we assembled an excellent team leader, Which were amazingly talented people from Google, Salesforce, PayPal, and Twitter. There were a few failures, but when employees are drawn into the work and began to implement its strategy, we felt that we could trust them with important decisions.

Great leaders - "editors" rather than "writers". And if "write" is necessary more often than the "edit", then you have hired the wrong people.

Jack Dorsey (Jack Dorsey)

Your job as a leader - "edit". If you sometimes something "write" - do not worry, but if it becomes a tradition, you have serious problems with the team. Each time, solving a workload, ask yourself, "write" you now, or "edit", and always try to go to the "Edit" mode. Do not you have to come up with solutions and strategies, and your employees.

When we started to delegate our new leaders, in my mind did not go our investor word that we will release a lot of the time when we find a good team. And he was right! To expand the company and hire people who are smarter than you, it is terrible, but it brings freedom. You begin to spend less time in business and more work on Business: have the time to think through a global strategy for development of the company, look for key partners.

I'm still very busy, but in a completely different plane. When I walked away from Bigcommerce at the beginning of last year to start a new project PeopleSpark, I spent some time thinking about the six years the company Bigsommerce. Finally I realized that I was referring to the investor when he said that I will not be so busy.

Good leaders work in first few years of business. they play multiple roles in these years: in the morning answering calls to technical support, and in the evening to conduct interviews for the position of Director of Marketing. I went back in this cycle, when opened PeopleSpark, and it is wonderful, but it's almost hourly switching from one role to another is fundamentally different from the management of the company from 500 man.

When you start from a small company to turn into a big, your main task - to surround yourself incredible leaders who will be able to do the work in their place is much better than you ever We did. And you will be more and more often nod in agreement with their decisions, begin to trust the team and will be thinking to himself: "Oh wow! That's the team we hammered together! "You will no longer be delegated, to ask fewer questions and will be able to see the global picture of your business. Here's what it means, "You'll be busy less." But you will always have a lot of work on business. After the fact, you and the manager.