PoL's picture Submitted by PoL on
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General Questions and Comments

Hi All

Can anyone pass on any advice on the following situation;

Having run my business from kitchen table start up to £1m turnover with 7 staff, I'm now ready to hand over day-to-day running and bring in a senior manager/director.

I know this is fraught with danger and potential problems, so can anyone out there in MT land who have been through this process pass on any advice/things to watch out for/guidance.

naraa's picture
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Submitted by naraa on Wednesday May 9th, 2012 9:57 pm

 You need to establish a trust relationship with whoever you put in that position.  You cannot do that over night.  The experience I have had has been to develop the person to replace from within, only after establishing the trust relationship and knowing the persons strength and weaknesses well, let her run the day to day operations with more freedom but still controlling the critical bits, or remaining involved on the issues the person cannot really replace the founder.  My experience has been that one cannot really find a person that can replace you in everything, but you can actually find someone that will complement you and replace you on most but a few.  

I am assuming you will still be involved?  If you are looking into detaching youself completely from the operation that will be harder.  It is doable but even more so you must make sure you know exactly what the person can and cannot do and what indicators you will monitor to make sure you will intervine before it costs you your business.  You must identify which indicators and actions are critical to the sustenability of operation and make sure you get input on the status of those.

Nara