Cameron Herold breaks down how companies must rebuild their leadership team as they scale from 1 to 100+ employees. Managers who worked at 10 people often can't lead at 30. Co-founders may need a different role, not removal, and Jim Collins' research shows why some leadership structures fail at larger scales.
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If he was just an employee, it's easier because then it's like, hey, maybe you go work somewhere else for a few years, you gain some more skills, and that's okay. When he's a co founder, you really have to find a different seat. And that's where Jim Collins talks about getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, everybody in the right seats. It might just be finding the right seat for him and finding another senior leader. That might be the restructuring that happens. Every company goes through a transition at the ones and threes. One employee to three, three to 10, 10 to 30, 30 to 100. You're right at that transition point. And then it also goes from 100,000 to 300,000 to a million to 3 million to 10 million to 30 million. When you have kind of the one employee, you hire a couple of people and you start delegating some to them and you're kind of managing by just telling people what to do. When you get to 10 employees, you usually have someone managing some people for you. When you get to 30 employees, you have your first management team. When you get to a hundred employees, you're your first leadership team. The challenge that happens between 30 and 100 is most of the managers that got us here are not necessarily going to be the managers and leaders to get us to the next stage. The complication happens is because he's also your co founder, so there's a feeling like he always needs to be in this position of equal. I was the second in command for 1-800-got junk. I joined as employee number 14. When I left, we had 3100, but I'd already built three other companies, so it was my fourth company that I was scaling quickly. It was very easy for me for the first five years. In year five of growth, the four other members of the leadership team were all replaced. They were all there when I got there. The head of the call center, head of it, head of finance and head of franchise sales were all there. By the time we got to year five, each of them had been replaced because they weren't able to go to the next level. And the company was so massively, substantially different that we needed to sit down with them and have the hard conversations that you either they had to leave or they got to report to the new head of their area. Leadership isn't something like you can continue to grow your leadership skills. And it's something that we've struggled with even within the CEO alliance. We have, you know, a lot of CEOs will sign up their CEO for us to fix them. We can't fix somebody, but we can make them better than they are. But there comes a point where they might just be hitting their ceiling of complexity or their level of not incompetence. But it's kind of like you can be the absolute best in your city at baseball, but you might not make the major leagues. He might just be getting to that level if he was just an employee. It's easier because then it's like, hey, maybe you go work somewhere else for a few years, you gain some more skills, and that's okay. When he's a co founder, you really have to find a different seat. And that's where Jim Collins talks about getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, everybody in the right seats. It might just be finding the right seat for him and finding another senior leader. That might be the restructuring that happens. Well, this is where Gino Wickman's model with traction with EOS breaks down. Is it breaks down around the 50 people mark where he's saying the CEO has to be the tiebreaker. No, actually that's true when you're kind of small. But as soon as you get past 5,000 employees, the CEO needs to be kind of the moderator. They need to get all the leaders to agree and fight and argue and debate and kind of go through the forming, storming, norming, performing model. But the last thing they need is someone to be the tiebreaker as a group. They need to make a decision, fight it all out, and then as a group, make a decision. But that's a leadership style and skill set that we have to develop. Right? So stay ahead of the curve as a coo. This next video is packed with great leadership lessons for you. It'll really help you as you continue in your growth.
