Minimize Your Direct Points of Contact
Why being the "go-to person" isn't that great (if you want to scale a business)
🤔 What is it?
So many leaders I’ve worked with have gained huge value from using this tool—not only to better preserve their time but also to scale their business and develop their employees.
Whether you’re an entrepreneur or managing a growing company, being a leader often means managing a growing number of people.
Imagine your business as a growing spider web: as one part develops, that section of the web gets more and more stretched until you either hire new people or apply new systems to support it.
However, during this period, it’s usually a leader, founder, or ambitious manager holding everything together.
Unless you see it coming and proactively address the issue, things can fall apart. I’ve seen this scenario play out countless times.
Take John, for example. He’s a leader in a growing company. At first, he’s responsible for a manageable number of people, but as the business expands, so do his responsibilities.
He hires more employees to support the growth, and soon, 14 people are reporting directly to him.
Now, his days are filled with meetings and managing his team, leaving him too stretched to focus on new growth opportunities.
The result? Growth stagnates because all his time is spent holding the business together.
Does it sound familiar?
The problem here is that John has too many direct points of contact. Managing 14 people directly takes up about 50% of his time. Then come other meetings, tasks, and the need to keep the business growing.
Without a strategy for managing who reports to him and how many people report to him, John won’t be able to grow the business any further.
Without a strategy for this, you simply cannot scale your business
Even if you're running a lean model with lots of outsourcing, someone still has to manage those people.
Complexity score (and why)
Score: 8/10
This tool is a bit more complex because it requires you—along with your management team or founder group—to agree on how to structure your business for effective leadership. However, addressing this is crucial.
Without a strategy for how your leaders manage their teams, you won’t be able to provide them with a scalable setup suited for growth.
You can try to squeeze as many hours out of your managers as possible to hold things together temporarily, but this will inevitably lead to negative consequences.
Personnel morale will decline, mental health will suffer, business culture will weaken, and ultimately, performance and business growth will stagnate.
How to implement
What I suggest is to build your team or company with no more than 1-3 direct points of contact per leader. Depending on the size of your company and your preferred style of management, this can vary.
For some management roles, a higher number of direct reports can work if it’s part of their responsibilities or a clear KPI, like leading a sales team.
There are multiple structures you can apply when working with companies:
General manager:
A general manager (GM) operates just below the CEO, overseeing a specific line of business, while the CEO manages all areas of the company.
This role can help distribute tasks and work closely with top managers to ensure they can focus on higher-level strategic goals rather than getting bogged down in day-to-day operations.
I’ve seen this role work particularly well for CEOs in large companies with many teams or for those working across multiple companies in a founder or investor role.
Middle-management or team-lead structure:
As an example, in a company of approximately 50 employees, you might have 3-4 C-level leaders, each managing 6-8 team leads who report directly to them.
The team leads, in turn, manage their respective teams, possibly with sub-teams below them.
This way, each C-level leader only has 1-3 direct team leads they work closely with, allowing for focused collaboration and effective leadership development.
By organizing your company this way, you create a scalable system that prevents key leaders from being spread too thin, allowing them to focus on the bigger picture while still maintaining strong internal communication and management.
Be sure to implement this at the right time and communicate it effectively to your personnel to avoid any issues with performance and morale.
Want my input?
I’ve helped 100+ businesses implement my tools and become more effective. Reach out to me on LinkedIn or get your free introduction call via my website www.casperbrix.com.
I would love to help you get the right things done - by doing less.
Talk to you soon 👋
Casper
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