Why Promoting Leaders in Your Company Usually Beats Hiring Them
Avoid the danger of filling all your early leadership roles with C-level and VP-level titles
A long time ago, I was consulting for a company that raised its first big round of VC funding and then immediately hired a dozen VPs away from companies whose names you would be familiar with.
I’ve never seen 12 people do more damage to a business in a shorter amount of time. You couldn’t have more than two of them in the same meeting without it devolving into an ugly, awkward argument over who knew better based on their experience at the dying brand-name corporation they were so eager to leave.
I’ve come to believe there is one universal truth when it comes to company leadership: A startup’s leadership team, whether we’re talking about executive management or individual team leaders, needs to balance both the steady hand of experience with an unbiased approach to new ideas. You need that unbiased approach to take you to new places, but you need the steady hand to keep you away from costly rookie mistakes.
Just because an employee — or even a co-founder — was there at the beginning doesn’t necessarily make them a good leader.
