As a leader starting out, there’s often the prevailing pressure of having the right answer to an inquiry at every corner. Teams look to you for guidance, knowledge and insight. I’d argue, however, that as you begin to truly scale your business, the reverse becomes true: You ask more questions and answer fewer ones.
Instead, you hire subject matter experts that specialize in various disciplines: finance, operations, technology and people. That’s not to say the CEO’s role becomes less pertinent; if anything, it becomes more vital that people have the vision, resources and context to move quickly, solve critical problems and reach business objectives.
I can admit that I’m rarely the most knowledgeable person in the room on any given subject, but that’s by design.
When To Step In—And When Needing To Is A Red Flag
Stepping in may be perceived as a sign of leadership, but often it’s a signal indicating something deeper. If I ever find myself entangled in a tactical discussion, I ask myself a few questions:
• Is the expert in this role set up for success?
• Do they have the clarity and support they need?
• Am I filling a gap that should be addressed structurally?
Of course, sometimes stepping is necessary, particularly if there’s a conflict in values or the stakes are unusually high. However, if this becomes a pattern, there may be a larger issue at play.
Unlocking Scale With Specialization
Over the years, we've hired executives who are masters in their respective fields. Building a company inherently generates complexity, so you need people whose full-time focus is their function. Yet simply hiring them isn’t enough.
The mark of a true leader is what happens next: Can you create the conditions where their expertise leads to better outcomes across the organization? This is where I come in. When someone joins at the executive level, it reshapes how the team operates. You don’t just onboard the individual; you onboard the organization around the individual. Team members need to understand why they are here, what their responsibilities are and, ultimately, how progress will be measured.
Clarity Scales, Control Doesn’t
As your business grows, clarity becomes increasingly imperative. At times, leaders can earnestly centralize decision-making to the point of creating a bottleneck—and this type of control will hinder progress. Alternatively, try building systems that clarify decision-making rather than centralize it. You can do this by:
• Connecting team and individual wins to platform-wide goals so employees understand how their contributions are truly moving the needle.
• Codify ownership so people know where their authority begins and ends.
• Repeat the vision enough so it becomes second-nature and a shared language across disciplines.
In the end, clarity shows up in communication, decision-making and the systems that move the company on a daily basis. When teams have clarity, they move quickly and with precision. When they don’t, even the best teams can grind to a halt.
Why True Leadership Is About What You Unlock In Others
The defining characteristic of all my best mentors and managers was their ability to not just uncover the strengths within me but also help me in seeing it for myself. In turn, my effectiveness as a leader doesn’t come from always being the smartest person in the room, nor from signing off on every decision. Instead, it comes from creating an environment where the experts we've hired can make real progress while remaining curious, agile and inventive.
You can create this environment by making sure the right people are in the room, asking the right questions and rowing in the same direction. Leaders who make the shift from proving their value through pure execution to creating value by empowering others unlock scale at every level—not just for themselves. Expertise remains critical, but your job is no longer to hold it all in. Your job is to create the system that brings it all together.
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