Our VP of Marketing is a rockstar who successfully built our initial lead generation systems, but now that we have scaled, they are stuck in the weeds doing the graphic design and copywriting. They are failing to provide the strategic leadership their seat demands. How do we get them to delegate their tactical duties and step into true executive leadership?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

This is a common bottleneck that occurs as an entrepreneurial company scales. Your VP of Marketing is suffering from a lack of delegation, which is choking their capacity to lead. When a leader spends their day doing tactical work like graphic design or copywriting, they are operating as a player-coach instead of an executive. This leaves their seat completely vacant of strategic leadership.

To solve this, use the Delegate and Elevate tool. Sit down with the VP and map out all of their daily, weekly, and monthly tasks. Divide these activities into four quadrants: what they love and do great, what they like and do good, what they do not like but do good, and what they do not like and do not do well.

Almost all tactical design and writing tasks must be moved to the bottom quadrants. Explain that for the company to scale, they must let go of these duties to make room for strategic planning, marketing automation, and team leadership.

If they claim they cannot delegate because there is no budget to hire, look at the opportunity cost. Keeping an expensive executive focused on low-level tactical work is an incredibly inefficient use of payroll. If they resist because they simply enjoy the tactical creative work more than leadership, you must run them through the GWC tool. They may get the tactical work, but if they do not want or have the capacity for strategic leadership, they are in the wrong seat. Elevate them to a pure creative specialist role and hire a true VP who GWC's the strategic seat.