When to Fire Your Company’s Founder and Hire a Visionary

Imagine you’ve founded a service business with about 100 employees. When asked, you explain your role as being involved with everything, especially Sales and Marketing, and Operations. One day, as you arrive at your weekly meeting, your right-hand man tells you, “You’re fired.”

You’re surprised, upset, confused, and angry. And to add more salt to the wound, he believes that this is a good thing for you and the business. How so? You built the business to what it is today.

You’re also the reason why the business has hit the ceiling.

This actually happened in one of my client sessions...sort of.

Discovering the Right Leadership Role

As we built out the company’s Accountability Chart of roles and responsibilities, the founder began to realize that he was really the company’s Visionary, and shouldn’t be in the Operations and Sales Seats too. So he was fired from the Sales, Marketing, and Operations seats. And as the team began to clarify and define two critical seats at the top of the Accountability Chart—Visionary and Integrator—they could finally see how they were going to take the company to the next level.

Are You a Visionary or an Integrator?

Here’s a sample of what the Visionary and Integrator roles typically look like.

Visionaries are typically great at:

• Generating new ideas, research and development
• Creative problem-solving
• Managing major external relationships
• Nurturing culture
• Selling big deals

Integrators are great at:

• Leading, Managing, and holding the team accountable
• Executing the business plan
• Integrating major functions
• Resolving cross-functional issues
• Communicating throughout the organization

Clear Roles Lead to Clear Direction

As the roles and responsibilities became clear for my client, the Visionary / founder felt a tremendous sense of relief and excitement because he was now able to spend his time focusing on things he loved doing, was great at and, more importantly, add the most value to the business. The rest of the team had a renewed sense of energy, knowing what they were now accountable for going forward.

It was uncomfortable to fire the founder from the roles of sales, operations, and finance, and hire him into the visionary seat. But it gave the team significant momentum moving forward and enabled them to break through the ceiling to the next level of their business.

Next Steps

• Watch this video to learn more about the Visionary
• Download the Accountability Chart to define your team’s roles and responsibilities
• Are you a Visionary or an Integrator? Take this quiz!
• Find out more about the Visionary and Integrator—download chapter 1 of Rocket Fuel

This article originally appeared on the GPS for Small Business blog on May 4, 2016.