Should I hire one heavy hitter or three juniors?

Dear Aunty B,

I have a problem with my senior management team. They are extremely good at their jobs, highly efficient, dedicated, loyal, hard working and I love them to death. They have been with the company since day ONE and have our DNA imprinted on their brains.

But we are now a medium-sized business and as we expand I worry they are going to implode under the workload. They are working incredibly long hours and are getting quite snappy. I keep telling them to hire more staff but they say that is more bother and they have to do it themselves. But then they get cross with me when I ask them why something hasn’t been done. One of them just told me that he had a long list of things to do and he would add my request to his list!

I am thinking that I should expand the leadership team but that would mean I have too many reports. I also don’t want to take on the expense of hiring top heavy people when I think we need to be building underneath. Am I right?

Should I be thinking another big heavy hitter or three juniors?

The big question,
NSW

Dear The big question,

Don’t do either. Sit your senior management team down for the day for some leadership training. Start off explaining how a company grows. You don’t know? It grows like this. You see market changes, you develop a vision and you explain it to the team. The team executes that vision.

Now. Here is the tricky bit in a medium-sized company. Your leadership team can’t execute that vision singlehandedly. They have to grow another layer of leadership under them. If they say to you they have to do things themselves because it is all in their head and only they know how to do it, you have to get them to understand they are exhibiting poor leadership skills. Part of their role is to develop their successor. All people in leadership teams should have people who can step up into their position. Developing these people should be part of their KPIs and they should be rewarded for it.

So at the end of some training, ask each of them to come to you with a plan for developing their team and their people. Make sure that they are not protecting dead wood. Sometimes people don’t have the guts to move employees on and carry them, slowing down the organisation and exhausting themselves.

The IP should also reside in the company and not in people’s heads so make sure the processes are documented.

Be smart,
Your Aunty B