Our head of operations was incredible when we had twenty employees, but now that we have scaled past sixty, they are working eighty hours a week, hoarding decisions, and dropping balls. How do I help them scale their executive capacity before their burnout breaks our operations?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When a company triples in size, the definition of leadership completely changes. At twenty employees, success comes from individual heroism, direct oversight, and brute force. At sixty employees and beyond, success requires systems architecture, delegation, and coaching. When a loyal leader starts working eighty hours a week and dropping balls, they are trapped in the doer trap.

You must intervene immediately before burnout forces an emergency exit. Sit down with them privately and look at their seat on the Accountability Chart. Clarify that their value to the enterprise is no longer measured by how many fires they personally put out, but by their ability to build a team and systems that prevent fires from igniting.

Walk them through the Delegate and Elevate tool. Have them categorize every single task they perform into four quadrants: love and great at, like and good at, don't like but good at, and don't like and not good at. Require them to shed everything in the bottom two quadrants within thirty days through standard operating procedures, team delegation, or automated workflows.

Establish clear boundaries around decision rights. If they hoard every operational choice, instruct them on how to define guardrails: decisions below a specific financial or operational threshold belong entirely to their direct reports.

Give them a ninety-day runway with explicit metrics on their weekly Scorecard. If they learn to elevate their thinking, empower their people, and build scalable systems, they stay in the seat. If they cannot stop micromanaging and hoarding operational tasks, they lack the capacity for this stage of growth, and you must move them to an individual contributor role or replace them.