You never grow alone
When we allow room at the bottom, we set the foundation to reach higher ourselves
I read a lot.
I always find something worth sharing but I haven’t been very good lately on spreading the word. This post, is an attempt to take a step in the right direction.
Nick Anderson, OneAccord’s CEO, pointed me to this gem: “The Boutique”, by Greg Alexander.
The book, is a must read for anybody who’s attempting to build a consulting (and frankly, any service oriented) organization.
It delves into productization, staffing, choosing your customers well, and -in general- growing the business. So many things, but if I have to choose one piece of knowledge out of the whole book, would be this:
“The unit of measure of profit for a healthy Boutique is the project. Boutique's financial performance is the sum of their projects. When owners perform work that can be delegated, project profitability goes down. Owners are expensive labor.”
The owner/founder of any organization, is by definition the most expensive resource. They are not only the single person who has the drive to found the initiative, but they also wear multiple hats, including that of the CEO. Alexander continues:
“On a single project it will always be less efficient to deploy junior staff. You will have to supervise their work, they will take longer to complete tasks, however in the long run, well-trained junior staff solve the replication problem.” … ”The Firm becomes independent of the owner, it can grow and scale without them”
This is where most consulting, or services-oriented leaders get it wrong. I have fallen into this trap as well. “But I am here already, and it's not like I am 100% occupied”.
This approach prevents growth. Not only because it is really easy to burn out trying to pull off 60 or even 80-hour weeks to “get to the point that I can hire one more person”, but it also takes the leader away from selling the vision, finding new prospects, and growing the firm.
Some firms are hell-bent on following this model, and they stubbornly try to expand their services offering, or as they call it, their “bench” by subcontracting with guns-for-hire that never build a strong long-term relationship with the firm, nor they build on any standard offerings. According to Alexander, this may come from deeply rooted insecurities masqueradded as a false sense of perfectionism:
“Boutique owners suffer from the hero syndrome they have their personal identity wrapped up in their firms when they are needed it feels good it validates them this insecurity gets in the way of scaling The Firm the best owners work themselves out of a job they make themselves obsolete The Firm can succeed without them this is when hyperscale kicks in”
In this last paragraph is where Alexander makes what's probably the most consequential point:
True leaders, work themselves out of the job, and if that means they have to move on, they do, to bigger things.
How often have you applied this throughout your career? When did it work out? Did it ever fire back?