Why does my business still depend on me so much?

There comes a point in many growing businesses when the founder looks around and wonders why, after all the hiring, promoting and handing over, so much still seems to come back to them.

You may have experienced managers, good people and a much bigger wage bill than you once had, yet the difficult customer still ends up on your phone, the important decision waits for you and the problem nobody quite knows how to solve finds its way to your desk.

It is understandable to get fed up and wonder why people are not stepping up. You have probably spent years carrying the responsibility yourself and, quite reasonably, expected that as the business grew other people would begin to carry more of it with you.

Sometimes the answer is simply that somebody is not good enough for the job they have. We should not be frightened of saying that. A person who was excellent when the business had ten people may not be the right person to lead fifty.

But it is rarely the whole answer.

Founder led businesses develop habits, and one of the strongest is bringing important things back to the founder. In the early years that probably made perfect sense. You knew more than everyone else, you had the closest customer relationships and you were often the best person to make the judgement call when something went wrong.

The difficulty is that a habit which helped the business survive when it was small can become a problem when it grows.

People get used to asking you because you usually know the answer. Managers become careful about making decisions because they know how much you care about the outcome. You step in because something matters, but over time that can teach everyone that the really difficult things still belong to you.

I do not think the answer is simply to tell the founder to let go. That is easy advice to give when it is somebody else's business, reputation and money at risk.

The better question is where your involvement still adds real value and where the business has simply become used to having you involved.

There will be things where your experience, judgement and relationships make an important difference. Equally, if you are still approving routine decisions, solving problems that should sit elsewhere and carrying information other people need in order to do their jobs, the way the business works needs to change.

That may mean better people, clearer roles, better information or giving managers real authority. It may also require something from you, because handing over responsibility only works if the other person believes they are genuinely allowed to take it.

Founders are often told they need to work on the business rather than in it, as though there is a clear point when one stops and the other begins. I have never found it quite that simple.

If you regularly find yourself thinking, “Why am I still dealing with this?”, it is worth paying attention.

The business may have grown, but the way responsibility moves around it may not have grown with it.

That is probably where I would start looking.