The Founder Bottleneck: Scaling Without Losing Control

A founder asks:

"I want to focus on the future, but I don't trust the present to happen."

It's a question that sits at the heart of scaling.

As companies grow, founders are asked to spend less time executing and more time leading. But letting go isn't simply a mindset challenge—it often exposes deeper questions about trust, team capability, clarity, and leadership evolution.

James Johnson and Freddie Birley unpack why founders become bottlenecks, how leadership must change between startup and scale-up, and why the answer is rarely "it's me" or "it's the team."

More often, it's both.

A conversation about vision, delegation, trust, and building a company that can grow beyond the founder.

Send your questions to: hello@peer-effect.com

More from James:

Connect with James on LinkedIn or at peer-effect.com 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Peer Effect Post Bag. I'm James Johnson, joined by Freddie Burley. We ask for your questions, and Freddie and I are going to tackle them together. These aren't theoretical case studies, it's the stuff keeping you up at 2 a.m. Let's get answering. Welcome to the Peer Effect post bag where we'll answer your questions. I'm James Johnson.

SPEAKER_03 0:22

And I'm Freddie Burley.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Freddie, what have you been up to this week?

SPEAKER_03 0:26

What have I been up to this week? So I actually had a really interesting experience. Have you ever seen your heart?

SPEAKER_01 0:33

No.

SPEAKER_03 0:34

No, I hadn't either. So I went to I went to visit Imagine Health, who are building um at the intersection of robotics, AI, and computer vision. And their most recent prototype is a robotic form of ultrasound, but specifically for your heart. And I I've I was a volunteer and it it was so interesting seeing a picture, an ultrasound of my heart. It's just there, like a r a rhythm, a pulse in your body. And there's something quite interesting about actually physically seeing it too, seeing the outline, seeing it moving, seeing the blood flow. It kind of blew my mind. It was a bit like of a like, wow, just there all the time, pumping away. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

So kind of like TFL then, really.

SPEAKER_03 1:37

Exactly. Well, they're not pumping away this week.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

They're not.

SPEAKER_03 1:41

But um yeah, it kind of blew my mind.

SPEAKER_01 1:45

So what's what's the idea? Why is this sort of way of looking at your heart so much better?

SPEAKER_03 1:51

So this the product will eventually be used on people with heart conditions. But at the moment, as they're training, um as they're training the robot, they're looking at, well, they've got healthy volunteers as well to just get the scanning right and the posture right, position right. Um but uh I mean, in I think normal heart scans take like an hour, an hour and a half, and with this they'll be able to do it in like 15 minutes. And so when you think about this use case and you roll it out into other use cases, something like the NHS, or for like just more people being able to get access to healthcare faster, it's it's so inspiring. It's really yeah, it's really incredible.

SPEAKER_01 2:29

My dad's got a pacemaker. It's just like it's just you it's one of the things you take for granted until suddenly it's not working, and then you're like, this is a problem.

SPEAKER_03 2:36

Yeah. Yeah. So that was that was just really interesting. Anyway, should we dive in? Let's do it. So this week we have a question from Anna. I want to focus on the future, but I don't trust the present to happen.

SPEAKER_01 2:57

It feels like a lot of founders have this kind of fear or sort of hesitation when it comes to really committing to the future, particularly when they're sort of s really getting into the scaling phase. Because they're so used to being in the detail that I I suppose there's a few things that come to mind. One of which is they're so used to being in the detail that just personally they're reluctant to give away that dopamine head of just ticking things off. It's like if I'm not taking things off my list, what am I really doing? And you sort of see this in terms of people doing their planning in the evenings, like planning and strategy and stuff you sort of fit around work. It's like, no, no, this is next stage. This is your work, like your work is actually the strategy and the planning and sort of being there. But often I find that this this trust in the present to happen is also connected to team. It's kind of like do I trust myself to be able to step back? One, but secondly, if I do step back, have I built a team that can execute if I'm not involved? And quite often the answer is no, I think. Um because maybe the direction you've set has not been clear enough. Maybe the team is not cohesive enough, or at least all on the same page in terms of behaviours and expectations. And actually, maybe your company hasn't adapted the fact that suddenly you've got this management layer in, you've got three levels, and you as the founder can no longer sort of interact as much as people actually doing a lot of the doing because there's a management layer in between you. Yeah. So it's quite an uncomfortable position to be in where you're going, I kind of I'm about to push harder, I put all this cost in. My goal is kind of more visible to me in terms of I feel closer to achieving it. And at this crucial point, I'm suddenly often making less money because I put cost in. I have less control because there's this layer in between me. I'm no longer doing the stuff that I've been pretty good at because I need to and I think that's that's scary.

SPEAKER_03 4:58

Yeah, it is really scary, and there's so much uncertainty, and especially when it's that combination of new territory, new role for yourself, new tea. There's so much novelty and finding a sense of anchoring, I find really important. It's interesting because this idea of present and future intenses, I feel like it comes up a lot with founders and venture-backed founders, and they need to live in the future, and they need to be so far in the future that that that kind of drags or brings the team forward with them. And it's interesting because I think in coaching, often what I see in founders that that manage the future and the present really well is just more that they have range. So they know when to be in the future and when to be in the present. And exactly as you said with um, I don't trust the present to happen, that sounds like a team piece. Often, because a lot of the present is is, if it's you executing, it's literally in your control. And I think like the bigger the vision, often like the smaller the steps in the present that need to happen in order for kind of the cause and effect chain to compound and that vision to materialize. And often there are so many things outside of your control in that vision materializing that you also have to be adapting to reality in order to create, create reality too, and that interesting kind of push and pull. Um, but uh it reminds me of one of my sessions recently where a founder was talking about I just I hire people who have a very strong problem-solving muscle. Because I need them, instead of like, what are your expectations of me as a leader? I need them to be like, these are the three biggest problems I see in this team right now, and this is what I'm gonna go away and solve. And so I think also as you're um you figure out what traits work well in your company and in your team as you as you hire and fire people and as you figure it out on the job. Because for a lot of founders, maybe they haven't built and scaled teams before, or they haven't hired, they haven't spent a lot of time doing strategy and aligning people. And so those there are kind of core leadership skills in there as well that can be helpful to learn, but also you you can you you can you can figure it out and grow in the job too.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

Yeah, because I when you were saying that, what I was thinking about is how much is driven by the leader not adapting in terms of it feels taken to an extreme in the sense I hire people problem solving, it's kind of I don't really have to change because people will solve the problems for me. But actually as a leader giving your team that clarity, you say that that cadence, like when when to look long, when to look short. If you don't look long enough, you're not giving your team enough clarity to be able to operate. But also if you start switching between long, short, long, short, long and short, it's very destabilizing for your team when you force them to be responsive. Yeah. And so this fear can drive quite negative behaviours where it's like you might have a very visionary leader, but that can be quite destabilizing if they keep on dipping back into the execution because kind of like the team has yet to adapt to the to your previous set of ideas, yeah, and then suddenly you're coming back to it. I've had another idea, and they're like, Oh and I I did this when I was doing it, like I used to drive one of my teams, she used to flinch. I used to come back in on a Monday and go, I have this idea, and she would literally flinch. Yeah. Because and I do think sort of I really like the cadence of quarterly, quarterly cycles in terms of quarterly check-ins, quarterly step back, think about strategically what you want, and then put your head down and just go for it for a quarter. And I sometimes think that sort of these these the sprint concept of two weeks can work quite well in tech teams. Yeah. But taken to an extreme, particularly if you're putting in these longer term things, it's not long enough to execute.

SPEAKER_03 8:44

And I think it's such a valuable point because I think it really depends on the stage that you're in. And especially if it's like hyper early stage, there's a team of like five to ten of you, still haven't figured out what product you're building. And that hyper creative, hyper uncertain, iterative stage almost requires like a tight-knit team that are really in sync, and you work on shorter cycles and you're iterating in those cycles. But yeah, as the team starts to scale and you've got product market fit and there um there's more certainty, then finding like a meaningful rhythm or a longer-term rhythm, like quarterly, it gives people enough time to actually put into practice what you've all discussed and um yeah, and and have enough data from implementing to actually be able to figure out what's working, what's not working.

SPEAKER_01 9:37

I was actually thinking like this when I was driving home for Easter. Like there's there was a guy driving ahead of me in like this sort of souped up hatchback and kind of like going between lanes and doing all this stuff, and I was sitting there with sort of sort of Marcella, Artie, and Dexie all in the car, and I was going, that is kind of like being a startup. I kind of drank my time, like it's just him in the car, maybe someone else, and he's kind of weaving in and out, and maybe that's what he needs to do right now, and actually that works fine. Suddenly when you're in a scale-up, I mean we both primarily work like scale-up founders, actually, is a bit more like having a sort of other people in the car, and if you're sort of changing lanes at the last minute, acceleration, deceleration. No one else is enjoying that journey. So actually, you need to be you're a bit more like sort of an estate driver than you are the sports hatchback.

SPEAKER_02 10:27

I think I work with quite a lot of sports hatchback people.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

I think I work with a lot of those. You're gonna you're gonna your next coaching session going, am I a sports hatchback driver, Freddie? Am I an estate or a sports hatchback?

SPEAKER_03 10:43

Oh, it's interesting, isn't it? Because I also think on that theme of like yeah, wanting to focus, not trusting the present to happen. Uh, there's something in the um you being a bottleneck. And that's what we're often bottlenecks when we don't trust other people or we haven't given them the conditions and the decision-making power and the authority to be able to actually like run and create things autonomously. And I think that bottlenecking point as leaders is such a huge inhibitor to scaling. Because if you're trying to hold on to all of the decisions or um micromanaging and dialing in, you just can't scale at the rate in which you're you're you want to.

SPEAKER_01 11:30

But I I think I was coming back, that bottleneck thing. I totally agree with you. If we're holding on too tight, it's like, why are we holding on too tight? Are we holding on too tight because we haven't updated our role and taken a step back? Okay, we're no longer playing this game, we're playing that game. Yes. Or are we holding on too tight because we're in our gut we know that our team are not the right team to execute in this next phase? Because there is often a kind of like you said, the team that you have, that tight-knit team, often a bit more generalist, maybe no experiment experience, but like very much doing. Yes. Often there's a temptation you get to phase two of scaling, okay. Well, we just put those five people, that's in the new management team, and then we hire underneath. That is not always the right thing to do. Because it may be you need a very different skill set with different like different people. And if you if you're if you're bottlenecking because you think it's not going to work, then I don't think all the solution is to go, okay, well, I'm just gonna take a step back because then it might all fall apart. Totally. I think it's to go, okay, well, can I take a step back and do I have the team to do it? So I think it's there's definitely like a founder bit sort of around behaviours, expectations, that short, long-term thinking. But being quite honest with yourself about team team capability.

SPEAKER_03 12:41

Yeah. Yeah, a hundred percent. Interesting. So what are we taking away? What are we taking what are you taking away?

SPEAKER_01 12:58

I think the project will I end on that sort of foun is it me or the team? It's probably both. But there are there are components to it. I think it both starts to going, actually, who I am, particularly that shift from start-up to scale up in that scale-up phase. You can only get so far playing the game the way you played it, and therefore, one as a founder acknowledging that you don't want to be bottleneck and it is different, and no little things that were valuable in stage one, you might need to adjust for stage two, but also being quite honest to yourself about the team, because I think we have a lot of loyalty attached to people in that first stage, but they may not be the right people either separate management or for the sort of the org structure that we need for that next stage.

SPEAKER_03 13:41

Yeah. Um a hundred percent. And on that of what you shared, is it me or the team? I often think we like it to be one or the other, and it's generally what's me and what's the team, like what's mine to own and what's the teams to own. And I I've I've never seen it like it's only the team. It's only me. It's it's generally a combination of the two, and so discerning like what's what's my responsibility and what's their responsibility can also be.

SPEAKER_01 14:17

Is it you or your team? If they answer it's me, it's probably the tip more the team. And if they answer it's the team, it's almost certainly probably more them.

SPEAKER_02 14:27

So funny, that's so interesting. Yeah, that chimes. That chimes.

SPEAKER_01 14:33

Well, that's it for today. We will see you guys next week for another episode. If any questions, reach out at hello at peer hyphen effect.com. Hit subscribe before you go, and we'll see you next week.