How successful leaders hire and delegate

Silicon Valley would have you believe that founders have to do everything themselves. While founders should take responsibility for everything, if you think this through to its logical conclusion, it is ridiculous. Would any VC tell a founder to do their own incorporation and write their own bylaws? Would you expect a founder to file all of the paperwork for a PERM or H-1B visa? Draft an office lease? So why expect them to write sales decks, code, and HR manuals?

The most successful founders are self-aware. They know what they’re great at, and they outsource everything else to experts. Then they set those experts up for success. If you don’t trust someone to do the work for you, that’s a sign you need to find someone else. When you find the right person, you unlock a new level of productivity in yourself and your company.

Here are 10 tactics to succeed in delegating to experts:

1. Know what great looks like. Meet great people before hiring anyone. Ask your investors, advisors, or others in your network to introduce you to people who are great at fields where you are unfamiliar. For many technical founders, that can be sales and marketing. For business-oriented founders, that can be technical roles.

2. Outsource finding candidates as early as you can. There are firms who will recruit for you on an hourly (rather than contingent) basis, which is the best model. AI is increasingly being turned on the “Sourcing” problem, by companies like talentlabs.ai.

3. Interview at least 3 candidates for all roles. It’s easy to fall in love with your first candidate, especially if you are doing a good job sourcing candidates. Be sure you interview enough to know that you’ve found great in that role at that time.

4. Use consultants early. Only very rarely will a great sales and marketing person join a startup. The payoff matrix is lousy, the career risk is high. Consultants fill this gap, whether fractional CFO, CRO, CMO, or another appropriate title.

5. Have clear, explicit expectations on who is going to do what and when. Too frequently founders expect things from their investors, advisors, or teams without making those expectations explicit. Later, when expectations aren’t met, trust is threatened. For employees, the “30-60-90” plan is a great tool. 

6. Let the expert do the work they agreed to do. If you have clear agreements and expectations, you will see the best results by letting experts do their thing. Would you rewrite your by-laws because you didn’t like how your lawyers did it? If the work product isn’t meeting your expectations, address it directly.

7. For unproven hires, begin with smaller projects to enhance their chances of success, reduce anxiety, and reduce the risk of them not performing. Only when they have proven themselves can you entrust them with more responsibility. This is especially true in sales.

8. Keep taking responsibility. Just because you hired someone to do marketing does not mean the results driven by marketing are suddenly not your responsibility. Have your leaders propose the metrics, be thoughtful about those metrics, and then create a culture of responsibility. 

9. Listen. Stay curious. Experts who are truly experts have a way of doing things. Would you tell a surgeon how to do your surgery? Your lawyer, how to try your trial? A true expert at sales, marketing, pricing, or some other seemingly simple GTM task might be meek and go along with a client’s or boss’s uninformed ideas, but this only leads to bad things. 

10. Fire quickly. Do not cling to people who are not performing. By the time you have thought to fire someone, the rot is almost always deeper than you realize. Firing them will be a relief to yourself and the organization. 

Delegating requires finding competent people you can trust, and trusting them. Trust will create a culture of appreciation, and empowerment, which will lead to more positive risk-taking and more success. 

What are roles or tasks that you can delegate to help you focus on what you’re inherently great at?

We at Silverwood Advisors are committed to supporting Founders in their journey to building successful startups.

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