A Leader as a Bottleneck

are you impeding your company’s growth?

AuthorAuthor

Abraham Iyiola & Oluwaseun Aladetoyinbo
February 23, 2023

February 23, 2023.

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Hi! 👋

This is Abraham, Founder, CEO of CareerBuddy. I’ll be taking over Workshift for the next few weeks and this week I wanted to talk about how leaders can be a bottleneck to their company’s growth.. Since this newsletter goes to founder and leaders at startups in Africa, I thought, it’s time we speak about some topics leaders don’t like talking about.

In Today’s Edition

  • How Leaders can be a Bottleneck

  • What About Remote Workforces?

  • Learn from the Best in the Game

  • Is Your Company Psychologically Safe?

  • Netflix, Good culture > Bottlenecks

How Leaders Can Be A Bottleneck

Here’s my thesis, most times when your company is not growing or achieving results as fast as you want, some reasons may be due to external factors - lack of product market fit, market size, etc. In many other cases, it could be due to internal factors. And as leaders, you could be a bottleneck to growth.

Most people think they are good leaders. Of course, you had this brilliant idea and investors trust you with their money to bring this idea to market. In reality, very few brilliant people, managers, operators who perform exceptionally well as individuals are good leaders. And in some cases, it’s difficult to know if you are a bad leader and a bottleneck to your team.

How do you know if you are a bottleneck to your team, department, or startup?

Let’s start with a familiar story. Lara was a Manager who always stepped in at crisis points and led her team out of trouble. She felt that this was her duty as a leader and that she had more experience than anyone else on her team. However, this also meant that she was constantly busy putting out fires and had no time for strategic planning or developing her team members.

She realized that she was being a bottleneck when she received feedback from her boss that her team was not meeting its goals and that her staff turnover rate was high. She also noticed that her team members were becoming less engaged and more dependent on her for every decision.

She decided to change her leadership style by delegating more tasks and opportunities to her team members, trusting them to handle crises on their own, and giving them constructive feedback along the way.

She also started spending more time on creating a clear vision for her department, communicating it regularly, and involving her team members in setting goals and measuring progress.

In a startup, a leader, or founder can be a bottleneck if they limit the productivity, communication, or innovation of their team. A bottleneck leader can cause frustration, demotivation, and inefficiency among their followers and stakeholders.

How do you know if you are a bottleneck as a leader? If you are doing the following, you probably are a bottleneck:

  • You want to review and approve everything your team produces before it is released or shared with others.

  • You are reluctant to delegate authority or responsibility to your team members, even when they are capable and qualified.

  • You discourage new ideas or opinions from your team members and prefer to stick with the status quo.

  • You dont have a clear vision or fail to communicate it effectively to your team members.

  • You do not recruit or develop potential leaders, but rather control them or micromanage them.

  • You are the only person who can initiate or launch new projects or initiatives.

  • You are not growing faster than your organisation is. You are not learning new things, trying new things, experimenting and challenging everything you think you know.

If you are running a team or building a startup, the worst thing you want to be is a bottleneck to your team. Working on a startup most times is like trying to send a rocket to space. You cannot control every aspect of the process. Your startup succeeds or fails on the strength of the team you recruit and how you empower them.

Did you find this insightful? I'd love you to know.

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CORPORATE CULTURE AND TEAMS

What About Remote Workforces?

If leading a physical team is tough, remote teams are tougher. Even in the best of circumstances, leading a high-performing team can be a challenge, not to mention team members working from home, scattered geographically, and separated culturally. But, we suggested nine surefire tips you can implement in managing your teams effectively here.

WORKSHIFT WITH CAREERBUDDY

Learn from the Best in the Game

Get yourself seated in a virtual masterclass with top company leaders with astounding results. Over 70 seats have been taken and we have less than 30 slots left. If you will like stand a chance to be a part of this exclusive Masterclass for Talent Managers, Team Leads and New Founders.

AS SEEN ON TWITTER

Is Your Company Psychologically Safe?

Twitter has become a school with endless resources, every week I will be sharing useful tweets that will be beneficial to you as you continue to build amazing products. Click on the images to view the thread.

FROM THE LEADER’S LIBRARY

Netflix, Good culture > Bottlenecks

From Netflix’s famous 120-slide “Culture Deck” presentation from 2009, we learn that the key to getting the best out of top employees in a high-performance creative environment is more freedom and not more control.

Netflix's ongoing challenge is to scale its business and deal with complexity without introducing more processes (which could limit creative adaptation). To do this, Netflix needed to hire a lot of A+ creative talent.

It did this by offering high-performers:

  • Tons of freedom

  • Top-of-market compensation

Netflix also tried to create a high-performing culture by encouraging leaders to create context and not control. Good context allows employees own outcomes for every goal they are responsible for.

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If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the people to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

Antoine De Saint Exupery, Author of The Little Prince

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