Are you the bottleneck?

There's a rather cruel irony to growing a successful business.

The very person who started it (yes, I’m talking to you here), nurtured it, lost sleep over it and worked ridiculous hours to keep it alive can also be the person who becomes the biggest obstacle to its growth.

The founder.

You. (Just in case you didn’t get my hint above.)

Not a particularly comfortable thought, is it?

Yet the reality is that the skills and behaviours that helped you build a business aren't necessarily the ones needed to help it grow.

And sometimes, the hardest thing isn't simply to work harder. It's to actually get out of your own way. You’ve become indispensable.

In the early days, you did everything: sales, marketing, operations, finance, IT support. You made the tea. You took the bins out. You knew everything because you had to. And when something went wrong, you fixed it.

Which works brilliantly. Until, that is, it's the very thing stopping your business from progressing.

As businesses grow, so does their complexity. More customers, more staff, more decisions. And despite your best intentions, if everything is still ending up on your desk, you've got a problem.

You're constantly busy, but becoming increasingly frustrated. Important projects get postponed. Strategic thinking becomes something you'll get around to when things quieten down.

Which, of course, they never do.

So congratulations. You've successfully built a business that can't function properly without you.

Team development day, Bioasis style.

I learnt this the hard way.

During nearly twenty years building STC Expeditions, I was involved in pretty much everything, particularly in the early years. Including sales.

The problem wasn't that I was bad at sales. It was that I was constantly being dragged into other things. An operational issue here. A decision there. Another fire to put out.

Sales needs consistent attention, good follow-up and a proper process. And it wasn't getting that from me. When I started handing over responsibility, something interesting happened. Our sales process improved. And so did our conversion rates.

Not because I'd suddenly found somebody who could do things exactly as I would, but because a dedicated sales person could concentrate on doing their job without being pulled in ten different directions.

Marketing was another example. We needed consistent, professional marketing, rather than something we squeezed in whenever somebody had a spare afternoon. Yet outsourcing blogs and newsletters felt like relinquishing control of our editorial voice, messaging and identity. Things I'd spent years honing and perfecting.

That felt very uncomfortable.

And there was the financial risk too. Employing people or outsourcing services costs money. Money you don't always have sitting around in a growing business.

Remember though, that not delegating has a cost too. And it's often a cost we don't recognise until much later.

And then there's the thing that no one really wants to admit, so let's whisper it quietly:

Your team might actually be better than you.

I know. Outrageous. Right?

Just because you've always done something, doesn't mean you're the best person to keep doing it.

Give people the confidence and freedom to take responsibility.

For me, particularly at The Bioasis, establishing clear values and purpose was vital. The team needed to understand what we were trying to achieve and why it mattered. But they didn't need me to tell them how to do everything.

In fact, it was often better if I didn't.

Of course, some things demand strict procedures. Running overseas expeditions and remote adventures in the UK taught me that safety isn't something you leave to personal interpretation. Systems matter. So does having the mental capacity and time to do difficult, important work.

But there's a big difference between essential controls and insisting everyone does things your way simply because, well, it's your way.

Good delegation requires trust, clear expectations and the willingness to accept that someone else might approach things differently.

More often than not, they'll surprise you. And probably in a good way.

The real reward isn't working less. It's having time to do something arguably much more important.

When you begin relinquishing responsibility for day-to-day activities, something amazing happens. You actually have time to think. And that is a massively undervalued part of running a business. I’ve always found it’s when I’m at my most innovative.

It also allows you to analyse data, understand trends, identify opportunities and improve systems. You can develop the structures and safeguards that allow a business to grow without becoming increasingly chaotic.

In other words, it’s the classic “work on the business rather than in the business”.

And here's the paradox.

Giving up control of individual activities gives you greater control over the overall direction of the business. Less firefighting. More fire prevention. Less dependence on one person. More organisational capability. And the business is stronger as a result.

So, as uncomfortable as it may be, it's worth asking yourself the question.

Are you the bottleneck?

If you're not sure, here are a few other questions to try to get to the same point:

• What decisions still land on your desk that someone else could make?

• What important work keeps getting postponed because you're too busy?

• Would your business operate effectively if you disappeared for a fortnight?

• Are you insisting on doing things your way because it's genuinely better, or simply because it's familiar?

If the answers make you slightly uncomfortable, you're not alone.

I won't pretend letting go is easy. I get it - you've spent years building something from nothing, but the goal of growing a business shouldn't be to make yourself indispensable. It should be to build something capable of thriving without your constant intervention.

And you’ll probably discover that your team is rather more capable than you realised.

Certainly, for me, seeing individuals and a team grow in character and confidence has been one of the most rewarding aspects of building businesses.

Just be prepared for them to do some things better than you.

Try not to take it personally.