Dear Leah,
I'm Chief Technology Officer at a scale-up that's grown from 20 to 200 people in two years. Our founder is brilliant but increasingly becoming the company's biggest bottleneck.
She insists on approving every technical decision, reviewing all code personally, and sits in on client calls that don't require her input. Last week, she overruled our entire engineering team's recommendation because "it doesn't feel right to me." The team is getting frustrated - our best developers are starting to look elsewhere, and we're missing crucial product deadlines because everything gets stuck in the "founder approval" queue. She says she's "maintaining quality standards," but she's actually slowing us down. When I suggested delegation, she said I "don't understand the vision like she does."
How do I help her transition from hands-on founder to strategic leader without crushing her spirit or triggering a defensive response?
- Caught between Genius and Gridlock
Dear Caught between Genius and Gridlock,
You're watching a classic founder evolution crisis where someone who built the company is now accidentally strangling it. The good news is she cares deeply about quality. The bad news is she's confusing control with leadership.
DIAGNOSIS:
Your founder is struggling with the hardest transition in business - moving from being indispensable to making others capable. She's holding onto technical decisions because it's where she feels most confident, even though strategic leadership is what the company actually needs from her.
THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM:
She's trapped in founder identity - the person who could do everything is now the person preventing everyone else from doing anything. Her "maintaining quality standards" is really fear that letting go means losing control of her life's work.
THE PATH TO RESOLVING IT:
Help her redefine success from "doing everything well" to "enabling others to do everything well." Start with small, low-risk delegation wins that build her confidence in the team.
Create structured handover processes so she feels involved without being hands-on. Most importantly, help her find new ways to add unique value that only a founder can provide - vision, culture, external relationships.
YOUR ROLE GOING FORWARD:
Frame delegation as multiplying her impact, not reducing her importance
Create transparent processes that give her visibility without requiring her approval
Help identify which decisions truly need founder input versus technical team expertise
Try to be patient: transitions take time, and she'll need emotional support alongside any practical changes
Sometimes the hardest conversation is the one that saves everyone from a brilliant person's worst instincts.
