Give away ownership of growth
From founder-led to a growth team
Hi there,
The moment is finally here. You can hire a team (or even just a team member) to help with growth. But….wait.
Why do you feel busier and more frustrated than ever?
Why does it feel like growth is going slower than faster?
As tempting as it can be to blame and fire that hire, they aren’t the problem.
Here’s what goes wrong when switching from founder-led growth to a growth team, and more importantly, how to prevent it.
You’re not giving ownership away
Just because the team members are working on growth, that doesn’t mean they are owning it.
You’ve got a problem if they:
Continue to come to you with problems
Don’t proactively update you on growth
Ask for approval of everything
The issue is likely that they don’t feel a sense of ownership. We will discuss how to solve this, but there’s a second part that makes it worse.
The growth process is going to feel slower
While this is actually a good thing, it can feel tough when it’s happening, especially as more people lead to natural inefficiencies.
When you ran the growth process, much of it was probably based on a sense of founder’s intuition, aka your gut feeling. Many founders build a solution to a problem they’ve had or know people have struggled with.
This intuition drives them, but you need to switch to the data at a certain point. Your one experience doesn’t override everyone else’s.
This takes more time, but the end result will be a higher success rate and a better understanding of growth and what is and isn’t working.
So, focus more on the ownership side, which will, in turn, speed things up a bit. But speed isn’t your end success measure.
How can you create a stronger sense of ownership?
As previously mentioned, your growth team [member] needs to feel a sense of ownership.
Once you’ve ensured someone else in the team knows and understands they own the growth process and their goals, you also want to ensure they are clear on what they should and shouldn’t check with you.
The RACI model is popular for this but underutilized in startups. I really recommend implementing this setup if you haven’t already:
From there, you want to make sure there is a regular reporting/accountability moment, your growth meeting, and a clear framework to prioritise experiments.
Now it’s time to change your behaviour. You want to ask more questions rather than give answers:
What do you think we should test next?
What do you think we should focus on?
What did we learn from this experiment?
This helps them stop relying on you and provide more of their own solutions. You hired them for a reason, make sure they know that.
Post-mortems are crucial
At the start of my career, I used to work at a growth agency. When a project went wrong, Chris (my direct manager) never got mad. Instead, he herded us into a room and set up a post-mortem.
We’d reflect together on the learnings and lessons from the project. The goal was not to point fingers but to each think about what we could have done differently.
When there is inaction, ask, "How could we have taken action sooner?” This will help you understand the blockers.
When an experiment isn’t set up correctly, ask, “How could we prevent this next time?” This will help you to understand what needs to change.
And when growth isn’t happening, and things are slow, ask “If we could go back three months and approach growth differently?” This will provide powerful and surprising insights.
With both aspects, it boils down to the questions you ask.
Recommendation
In every edition of Growth Waves, I also share a related resource to check out related to the week's topic.
As a founder, you’ll likely feel conflicted. You want to give your new hire a strong onboarding but lack the time to figure it out extensively.
As a new growth hire, you want to be successful, but there is so much to do. What’s the priority? What’s the best road to follow first?
You’re not the only one feeling this way. That’s precisely why Rosie Hoggmascall and I created a 12-week onboarding checklist to cover those crucial first three months.
We outline what to do weekly to remove all the noise and focus on what matters.
As a founder, you can give it to your new growth hire (or use it yourself). As a growth hire, you can use it to come prepared for success.
I know it’s a cliche, but I’ve found it to be so true: fail to plan, plan to fail.
It’s just £95, and there's a 365-day money-back guarantee. Our goal is to help new hires succeed.
I’ve gone through this transition with many startups, helping the founder and/or the new Head of Growth adjust.
I’ve also been that Head of Growth myself, struggling to carve out my own space in the brand.
The best (and most annoying) advice I can give is to give it time.
Organisational change is tricky at any scale, but trust in why you hired those individuals and try to understand how you can change and grow your approach to set them up for success.
Until next week,
Daphne
This is such a thoughtful breakdown, Daphne. The hardest part I’ve seen is trust. Founders often want to let go but haven’t set up the structure for someone else to really own growth. I recently wrote about this shift too, from PMs as feature owners to growth owners. The mindset change is real and so needed.