Overloaded founder? How to organise smarter in five steps

Why you are overloaded

At Glasnost I thought for years that being busy was part of being an entrepreneur. More clients, more people, more pitches, so more hours. Until I noticed that the company came to a standstill when I was away for a week. Not because my colleagues could not do it, but because everything went through me: every quote, every decision about a client, every conversation about money. That is not a time problem. That is a design problem. A founder who sits in the middle of everything drains the sense of responsibility from the organisation without noticing. And the more you catch yourself, the less others pick up.

Step 1: a rhythm that does not give way when it gets busy

It starts with a weekly leadership team meeting. Weekly, not every two weeks, with an agenda that is the same every week. Next to that, a monthly update to the whole company, every month at the same moment, even in the busiest week of the quarter. And every quarter a fixed review: what do we start, what do we stop and what do we keep.

I regularly hear from founders: the leadership team meeting did not go ahead, we were busy with a client. A meeting that gives way as soon as it gets busy is not a meeting. It is a good intention. Rotate the roles too: the chair, the minutes and the timekeeping change every week. Otherwise you automatically end up as the chair every time and the rest feel like note takers. See what happens when that runs for a few years. The meeting starts on Monday morning, whether you are there or not.

Step 2: roles and core processes on paper

Founders are jacks of all trades and love to decide. That is exactly why others stop doing it. So put on paper where responsibilities begin and end. And then the step that really chafes: describe your core processes. How does an assignment run from order to invoice? How does sales run? Who sits at the table in which phase? When you map that out, you are often shocked by how often you sit in between unnecessarily. In our case, a large part of my working day turned out to consist of steps that could also be done without me, as long as they were described.

Step 3: numbers on the fifth of the month

The mistake I see most often at growing companies, and one I made myself for too long: only a bookkeeper, no business controller. A bookkeeper looks backwards. A business controller sets the numbers against the plan every month and tells you what is going on. The first time we did that, I thought: what peace of mind. I had a dashboard and could go on holiday for a week as long as those numbers stayed good. The standard: on the fifth of the month the numbers for the previous month are on your screen, and not just yours but those of the whole leadership team.

Step 4: discipline in hours and projects

In services, time is your stock. Without time tracking and project management you do not know which client makes money and which one wears you out. The rule that changed everything for us: the management team is the first to log its hours, every day, visible to everyone. Only then can you ask it of the rest. Link it to step 3: whoever keeps track of hours and projects sees in the monthly report exactly where the margin leaks away.

Step 5: the second chair

The biggest lesson from my own company came through an anonymous survey, five years after the start. I scored a six out of ten on our own core values. A colleague wrote: you sit with the client as strategist, as creative and as account manager at the same time, I need to be able to do my thing too. I could grind, but for too long I did everything myself and got in people's way. Only when I hired people who were better than me, and gave them the trust to decide, did the company speed up. That is the second chair: not an assistant who takes over your work, but someone who takes your place at the table in the area where they are better than you.

In which order, and when to bring in help

Start with step 1 and step 3. The rhythm costs no money and forces the rest. The controller costs money and earns it back within a quarter. Steps 2 and 4 follow naturally from the questions the leadership team and the monthly report raise. Step 5 is the hardest, because it is about you. If you notice that you know it but do not do it, that is the moment for someone next to you. Not a coach on the sidelines, but someone who puts it in place with your leadership team and stays until it runs. What that looks like is on the page about the growth program and, for the comparison with coaching, on business coaching in Amsterdam.