Instinct

It’s always important to do the job yourself before hiring someone to do it for you.

Then, as you scale, you hire someone to do that job. In your mind, you might hold a clear picture of the task at hand.

You may have some hypotheses about how to proceed; sometimes, you even have a fully mapped, written down process of what needs doing.

Then, you go ahead and decide to hire a person.

You’ve added one layer of complexity. Now the formula contains two variables, not just one: there’s a manager and the hire. Even worse: their views might be very different.

• The hiring manager has the business perspective and business interests at heart
• The hired person has the expertise and a strategy to succeed

But are they both in harmony? Can they work efficiently?
The hired person and the hiring manager have their own views, interests and goals - do they align?

It’s like a big game of Monopoly. One side is the bank player; one is the businessman player.

They both have critical roles to play, but they need to find common ground to meet and share what they expect from each other before they can play the game successfully.

If this conversation fails or isn’t done diligently, mistakes will be made; expectations won’t be matched. This will cause attrition to rise.

When attrition happens, employees usually grow uncomfortable and unhappy, while managers become grumpy and begin to micromanage.
This leads to discontent, inefficiency, slowing down, and wasting time and money.

As the company grows, layers get added, and people lose access to their managers because each manager has many employees to communicate with. There’s a loss of direct information and communication.

Back to the Monopoly analogy, everyone knows that as a player, when you go through the Start, the banks hand you $2000.

However, when the company grows, instead of receiving your expected $2000, multiple players are servicing that same money, all taking a little cut until you’re left with only $500. You lost $1500 to the process. You lost a big chunk.

Likewise, at a company: no more speed, gut-feeling decisions, and serendipity. No more “just ship it” mindset.

As the team grows, new processes and reliance on precise data occur at the cost of speed and…that costs money.

That leads to managers having to execute exact moves on the gameboard; you hire specialists, and as you work, strive to deliver little bits of perfection.

Your instinct fades away, but a complex system of levers replaces it.