5 MINUTE SUNDAY · Every Sunday. One tip. Under 5 minutes.
You made the hire. Strong Resume. Great references. Everyone was relieved. Six months later, you're still in every decision. The problem didn't move. It just got more expensive.
— 01 — ONE LEADERSHIP TIP
You hired for the role. You forgot to hire for the authority.
Most founders I work with have made at least one version of this hire.
A VP of Product who technically owns the roadmap but runs every prioritisation call past the founder. A Head of Engineering who has the title but checks in before making any call above a certain size. AND it's a small size…. A COO who absorbs a huge amount of operational noise in the first 90 days… and then slowly becomes the new single point of failure. since he can't make anything without the CEO… who is drowning at work.
The hire looked right on paper. The problem is still there.
If you're anything like the founders I work with, the honest reflection is this: you hired someone to take things off your plate, and then kept your hands on the plate.
The deeper issue isn't capability. It's that you transferred the responsibility without transferring the authority.
Are you still hands on the approvals? Are you still checking to see if it was done? be honest… Did you check the Slack before you go to bed …? to see if nothing was decided without you ?
What's really happening is that your new hire is operating in a system that was never redesigned for them. The decision routes, the approval loops, the "just keep me in the loop" habits, all of it still points back to you. So they learn, quickly, that the safe move is to check. Every time. With YOU.
A strong hire in a broken system will behave like a weak hire.
The system has to change, not just the headcount.
The takeaway: The question isn't "did I hire the right person?" It's "did I actually give them the authority the role requires?"
quick check: did you define their roles and responsibilities, but also their ownership scope of decisions? and not the : responsible for all Tech things… that doesn't cut it.
— 02 — ONE COMPANY WORTH KNOWING
Figma — the design collaboration platform acquired by Adobe for $20B.
What's worth studying about Figma isn't the product. It's how Dylan Field structured decision-making as the company scaled. Early on, Figma was ruthless about defining who owned what, product decisions stayed with the people closest to the user, not with leadership. Field has spoken publicly about the deliberate effort to avoid founder-as-bottleneck as they grew. The company scaled from a small team to hundreds without decision-making collapsing back to the top.
The lesson: Scaling a hire successfully isn't about finding the right person. It's about building the operating environment where that person can actually lead.
— 03 — ONE THING TO ACT ON
Do this before next Sunday.
Think of the last senior hire you made who was supposed to "take something off your plate."
Write down three decisions that person should be making independently, that still come to you.
For each one, ask: is this coming to me because they can't decide, or because I haven't made it clear they can?
Then pick one. Write the boundary. Send it to them this week.
Not a performance conversation. Just clarity.
⏱ Time required: 20 minutes
Quick check: Did you define their Roles and responsibilities in writing, in a Doc, and most important, their ownership scope of decisions? and not the: responsible for all Tech things… that doesn't cut it.
I worked through this exact pattern with a Series B founder recently. We mapped every decision that was still touching him six months after two senior hires. More than 60% had no reason to. We rebuilt the authority design in 30 days. And yes, you guessed it : it's tough to let go, but once you do, you can have a date with your wife, nice , no?
If your hires aren't sticking, the system is the problem. Let's talk →
See you next Sunday.
— Alisa
Fractional COO · Executive Adviser · Keynote Speaker
Helping founders and senior leaders scale themselves, not just their business.
Ready to break through your leadership ceiling?
I work 1:1 with founders and senior leaders who are done being the bottleneck. Book a free 20-min call →
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