How to build a department

To build groups, you must be able to perform roles, hire, and then give those roles away.

My unusual transition from VP of Engineering to COO

I had been hired back, now as the VP of Engineering. Some familiar faces, some new ones.

Some parts of the Engineering department were OK, while others needed work. There were unresolved interpersonal conflicts, collaboration issues in some teams, and a lack of clarity on organizational structure as we grew.

Within a year, Engineering was performing at a high level. Most importantly, I had a deep bench. I had built a leadership team under me with two strong Directors and a Head of Technology, and the 3 of them were making all the day-to-day Engineering decisions.

At this point in the company, it was clear to me that Engineering was no longer the company bottleneck. In the meantime, the CEO had 2 or 3 leadership team roles to fill, and those departments were also taking much of his time and attention.

So, during one of my visits to the office, the CEO and I went out to this Italian ristorante. I sat down with him and offered the following pitch:

"As CEO, there are some things that only you can do, like set a product vision and hire executives, but your plate is full with other work. In Engineering, things are fine and I can take on more work. Why don't you make me COO, clear your plate, add to it the things that only you can do, and then we'll split the rest?"

After much deliberation (and a conversation with a justifiably skeptic board), the CEO went for it, and I became COO.

Now, there are probably other interesting articles, tips, and lessons on the above story, as well as the lessons I learned from my fumbles as COO.

But today, we'll focus on the core sentence that made my move to COO possible in the first place and the one that will help you build a department.

The part where I say, "I can take on more work."

The 3 jobs of an executive

The startup executive is the person responsible for building the company (CEO) or each of the departments (CTO, COO, CPO, CFO, etc).

Every executive, former executive, and investor, has a different opinion about what an executive's job really is.

Here's what I believe the 3 jobs of an executive are:

1. To be a member of the executive team
2. To hire leaders
3. To ensure #1 and #2 are the only 2 things you need to do to succeed

The rationale is that, being a member of the executive team and hiring leaders are jobs only the department executive can do. These can't be delegated, and will never get off your plate.

The rest of the work, though, can be done by the right somebody else, if only we had the time, budget, attention, organizational structure, processes, tools, ...

Looking at it this way, an executive really only having these 2 jobs, you must think I believe being an executive is a walk in the park. Boring even.

But the trick is that #3, ensuring that being a member of the executive team and hiring leaders are the only two things an executive is working on, is often way more than 100% of an executive's workload!

Want to see an example?

As an executive builder of a department, I've written code, reviewed code, participated in bug monitoring and fix rotation for 4 weeks in a row, did recruiting coordination for interviews, managed 2 Directors and several junior employees at the same time, etc, etc.

Startups are dynamic, and growing (or shrinking) ones are even more so. Everything is always changing, and there are always gaps to be filled for a company to succeed.

As the executive, your job is to fill the gaps directly, hire, and hand over the role. Then you're off to fill the next most crucial gap in the new dynamic situation, to hire and hand over that one too.

Filling gaps, hiring, and handing over roles is challenging. But you know what makes it even more challenging?

Not hiring and handing over roles.

When you resist giving away your legos

"If you personally want to grow as fast as your company, you have to give away your job every couple months."

Molly Graham, ‘Give Away Your Legos’ and Other Commandments for Scaling Startups

Molly Graham wrote an incredibly insightful and popular article on First Round about working in scaling companies, and integrated the phrase "give away your legos" into startup lexicon.

But it's hard to give away your legos. We want to feel useful, to do stuff. And because of our self-serving bias, many of us believe we can do the job better than others (spoiler: we can't).

But startups are dynamic. Growing, shrinking, or even relatively stable, the work is changing, the market demands are changing, and the startup itself is changing.

Or if the startup isn't changing, it should be.

And hiring, bless its heart for being as fun to do as it is, is both slow and effortful.

The lag between "I'm filling this role directly" and "I have somebody that can fill this role, and I can step out" can be anywhere between 6 months to a year. In the meantime, you have all the hiring and onboarding work to do on top of directly filling the gap work, plus all your other normal executive work.

Giving away your legos isn't just demotivating sometimes – it's also hard, and a lot of work.

But it's essential.

Like the small restaurant or grocery store owner who can't step out of the business for a minute without things falling apart, some leaders play critical roles in their team's day-to-day, which means they become a critical bottleneck to the team's success.

A team that can only succeed with your critical contribution is not what you should strive for as an executive.

Instead, you fill gaps and hire roles to build departments that can succeed without your contribution.

And building departments is already plenty of work.

The DRIP Matrix

In Buy Back Your Time, Dan Martell talks about delegation to startup and small business owners and CEOs. I like the way he thinks about roles where he breaks it down into 4 quadrants:

• Production: Makes you money, lights you up
• Investments: Makes you little money, lights you up
• Replacement: Makes you money, drains your energy
• Delegation: Makes you little money, drains your energy

I use the DRIP Matrix to show people how they’re spending their time. If you’re spending all your time in the bottom left, the Delegation Quadrant, you’re doing tasks that should be removed from your plate as soon as possible. Contrast that with the opposite corner, the Production Quadrant. Here, you’re spending your time on what matters most, which is what brings you insane energy, lots of money, and drives your business forward.

Martell, Dan . Buy Back Your Time (p. 29). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

That's a similar way to think about then what I'm describing for executives: you see your time in the company not as the job you do but as roles that need to be played, and systematically find the ones that you must delegate or replace yourself from, and hire for them.

What title would my replacement have?

Here's one thought experiment to reflect on the roles you play that you must delegate and the legos you must give away.

1. Suppose you were not leaving your company but had to reduce your hours by at least 60%.
2. Suppose you were given a new free headcount, to do that job, the 60% of time you're spending that you'll no longer spend
3. What title would that person have?

Think hard about it. Our first instinct can sometimes be, "But I do so many things!" but really, none of us are that special.

For many executives, the answer is some Sr. Manager or some Director. But some may have other answers like an some Analyst, Business or Sales Operations, Chief of Staff, etc.

If that's still hard, or you just want to dig further, here's another thought experiment exercise:

1. Suppose you were not leaving your company but had to reduce your hours by at least 80%, ideally 95%+.
2. Suppose you were given several free headcounts, 2-4, but they can only do work you're currently doing – no more.
3. What title would these people have?

For many executives, if they don't have an Executive Assistant yet, that's the first thing they think about. Delegate all that tedious admin work! Emails! Calendars! Phew!

But then they get stuck.

They wonder what else they'd hire somebody else to do besides hiring someone with their actual title.

In my experience, many executives would replace parts of their jobs by hiring people in HR – HRBPs, L&D Specialists, People Ops, etc.

Of course that, in reality, you don't have a free headcount (or several), and you also aren't about to reduce your hours by any significant amount.

But this exercise will help you separate the work you do in the department from the work only you can do to build the department.

So, to recap, here's what I believe the 3 jobs of an executive are:

1. To be a member of the executive team
2. To hire leaders
3. To ensure #1 and #2 are the only 2 things you need to do to succeed

If you want to build a self-sufficient group where your contributions are not critical to the group's success, then you must focus on accomplishing job #3 – often a permanent quest.

Building your department by hiring yourself out of other jobs is your only ticket to really focusing on being a member of the executive team and hiring leaders — the 2 things that are critical to the company's success and that only you can do.