Delegation isn't something that comes easy for me. But as such things go, running a team of 23 talented individuals means that you either sink or delegate (swim). So delegation has been an evolving skill for me in recent years; one that I believe I've gotten considerably better at through all the practice.

Today I'd like so celebrate a major, personal victory as the result of excellent work by a team. Woo's release of WooDojo represents one of our finest hours; not because our V1 release is the best in history (probably not even ours), but because this was a team - and not a management - effort.

As a management team, we gave the team only two things: 1) the roadmap & direction of our strategic journey; and 2) a very raw concept that barely resembles WooDojo in its V1 state today. The brilliant execution of these these two elements is testament do the fantastic work of the team to distill our concepts & strategic notions into digestible, action items.

For me - as co-founder - this is reward of the faith & trust we've put into our team to take us to greater heights. We have given them the platform & safety net; all they need to do is shine. And how they have just done that.

WooThemes has become a Mothership. A team of almost 20, more than 150 000 users and revenues / profits that most business owners would approve of. This is fantastic of course until the engine breaks, because I'm not necessarily able to fix the engine and neither are my co-founders.

See - as WooThemes has grown in the last 4 years, we've become this specialized unit and well-oiled machine. We've built out what started as a little (cyber)spaceship into an ominious mothership. We shaped & moulded the mothership according to our own strategic notions, market forces and popular demands from our users. The mothership is unrecognizable from the spaceship it was when we first launched it into space in 2007.

How Things Change

When my co-founders & I founded WooThemes, it was representative of our personalities, ambitions, personal cash reserves and of course: our skills.

4 years later, WooThemes only represents our personalities and ambitions (individual & combined). Our personal cash reserves aren't necessary anymore (as the business has its own now), but the important thing is that the WooTeam has grown to such an extent that the collective skills now eclipses our own as co-founders.

I remember and can identify 4 stages in this regard on our journey:

• Founding WooThemes: As co-founders, we were all hands-on-deck and our DIY approach meant that we did everything ourselves.
• Hiring our first team members: When we added the first members to our time, we did so to add capacity. Their skills mirrored our own, which meant that if they weren't around, one of the co-founders could still handle things.
• The second wave of hires: Similarly to our first hires, these were focused on extending our capacity as well. But we were starting to add individuals that could offer us a little bit extra ito their unique skills. Still though, 90% of what was going on in Mothership could be handled by the co-founders.
• Today: We're a specialized unit; internally & externally. Our products are more advanced and the glue that holds it all together takes some skilled maintenance. As co-founders, we can't do everything ourselves anymore and have to rely on individual team members to fix the engine if it's broken.

Managing Chaos When You're Out of Your Depth

Fred Wilson has been publishing a fantastic, series of posts on ["The Management Team"](When You Can't Fix The Mothership's Engine Anymore) in the last couple of weeks. This has caused me to spend more time thinking about what our management team looks like and how we've applied that within the context of not having all the skills to directly address every part of our business anymore.

These are the things that we've focused on:

• Surround yourself with great people. Hire only the best / most promising individuals and never compromise on that mantra.
• Trust in your team's individual & combined skills. Empower them to apply those skills whether you are around or not.
• Create a culture that fosters initiative, failure and learning. Rather have a team member take initiative (based on the trust you put in them), then sit around waiting for you to give the go-ahead to fix the server that's been down for 6 hours already. If they fuck up, move on and make sure that they (and you) learn from the experience.
• Create an environment where team members want to do their best. Whether that means buying them the best tech gadgets or painting the wall another shade of blue, just do it. People do more when they feel they belong.
• Give individuals ownership, meaning they get all the praise & criticism for the project / task that they've taken ownership for. People are bound to work harder for themselves than they would for any boss.

Lastly… As business owner, learn to sit back, relax and realize that even if you wanted to fix the engine yourself, you either don't have the time or the skills. The only way for you to do so, is support the team that you hired to look after the engine in the first place. :)

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post titled "The Challenges of The Business Guy", which basically details my own, non-technical role within WooThemes.

This means that my daily job doesn't include designing or developing anymore, even though I'm still heavily involved in all of those processes. Part of my job is to make sure that the WooTeam hits strategic aims and more importantly (regardless of us hitting specific goals) that everyone is at least working away in the same direction.

This is something that is admittedly quite challenging when you consider that our team is based remotely and scattered across the globe.

Last week Mark randomly noted (in conversation) that "our (as cofounders) jobs has taken on the role of quality assurance". Even though I immediately agreed with him, I didn't fully grasp the implication of what he said, even though my gut knew this to be the truth. 

I'd be lying if I said that I don't spend most of week handling e-mail and being in & around Basecamp, which we use for project management. Following up on stuff that needs to be done, setting up to-do lists & milestones for known projects and sending off exploratory e-mails to future, potential collaborative partners. That's my job. I also know that compared to when we started out, Magnus & Mark too have taken on more & more of these responsibilities as our company has grown.

So questioning why we actually do this and why this has become such a significant part of our jobs, probably gets you closer to what Mark said about quality assurance. I believe that - as cofounders and the initial heart of the business - we via the project management and thus keeping our fingers on the pulse, quality assurance is a beneficial byproduct. In this way, I see ourselves as being the custodians of WooThemes and the quality that we create.

Project management is thus not necessarily about efficiency, productivity or even just remembering to do certain things; it is about not betraying the heart of our business. And therein lies the quality.

If we can ensure that we stick true to the very core of what we do every day, then quality is a natural consequence of that hard work. E-mail & project management to a large extend is tedious and considered to be unproductive (we're not creating anything), but when quality is on the line, we'd better not miss a trick.

 

I'm the "business" guy / co-founder over at WooThemes. Our business has 3 co-founders and over the years all 3 of us have evolved our roles to focus on the specific parts of the business of which we're most passionate about.

When we started the company, we were bootstrapping and as a result all 3 of us were hands-on-deck & in DIY-mode in terms of being involved in the actual production of our products, as well all the business & admin stuff. But as we grew the team and hired designers, developers & a support team, our roles changed quite drastically.

So at the moment, my role within the company would be generally regarded as being the "business guy". Most of the writing on this topic tends to agree that a triumvirate of co-founders (a designer, a developer & someone taking care of the business-side of things) is the ideal mix of skills in an online startup. Even though neither of us are exclusively responsible for one part of the business, there are obviously things that I do more and take more responsibility for as a result.

My Responsibilities

This is generally what I spend my days doing:

• I do all of the marketing & tracking of the campaigns.
• I do most of the blogging.
• Exploring potential business development opportunities.
• Networking with whoever.
• Managing collaborations.
• I try coordinate all of our daily / weekly / monthly efforts to assure that we're hitting our strategic aims. I tend to take a step back from individual tasks / projects and take a more holistic look at the stuff we're doing.
• Interacting with the WooThemes community across all channels.

Not a bad job, right? :) Well, whilst this is 100% what I'd like to do every day, it doesn't come without its own set of challenges.

The Challenges

Nothing in life is ever perfect. Remember that! :) Heck, if anything was perfect, life would be pretty boring in that we'd have nothing we could improve on.

These are the challenges of my job as the "business guy" at the moment:

• I haven't been designing or coding for ages, so if I have an idea or the team decides to put a little campaign together, I need to wait for one of the guys on the team to handle the design / code of the project before I can continue with my tasks on that project. This inevitably means that there is gaps between the conceptualization of a project and the execution thereof, which sometimes means it is tough to keep the motivation and momentum going for that project.
• There's a seemingly obvious list of priorities: bugs, products and then everything else. So guess what falls off the radar? Everything else. Guess what a big part of my job is? Everything else... :)
• As a result of the above two points, I generally have items on my to do list that takes ages to tick off. Either they're not top-most priority or I need to wait for someone on the team to "help me out". Neither is wrong, but I don't get the satisfaction of feeling that I've accomplished certain things by ticking them off.
• I obviously understand our products and wouldn't be able to market them without that intimate knowledge. But I don't understand the complexity and detail anymore, as I'm out of the development game. I don't understand why certain bugs are harder to fix and why it seems (to me) that all we do is fix bugs or upgrade existing functionality (instead of developing new, groundbreaking products). I need to take the queue from the rest of the team on this and I think we'd all agree that where communication is involved, it's always a bit of a challenge. :)
• I spend a lot of time trying to tie up loose ends & making sure everyone is on the same page. This doesn't deliver an actual "result" in itself, but does help in getting the work done indirectly.
• Some days I spend the whole day answering e-mail, yet it doesn't feel like I've been working. Self-doubt is a massive issue.

If you've read my blog you'll know that I don't mind being personal and sharing emotions - yes, emotions - in explaining my mindset and experiences as a business owner & entrepreneur. So I don't pretend to think that these challenges are the worst in the world, but I do think they're pretty significant and most co-founders in my position should share similar experiences.

What are your experiences in this regard?

I found this article so incredibly valuable, purely because this has been something that I've always struggled with. Running & co-owning 2 companies for 3+ years now, you'd think that I'd be able to delegate with my eyes closed, yet that's not close to the truth...