Paul Graham recently wrote a blogpost that’s been making the rounds on LinkedIn. In it, he argues that founders should get deeply involved in the minutiae of running their businesses (what he calls “Founder Mode”), rather than relying on the conventional wisdom of “hire good people and let them do their jobs.”
I’ve never been a founder (aside from a poorly-conceived T-shirt e-commerce venture that still causes me to cringe), but five years ago, I would have wholeheartedly agreed with Graham. In my roles at Tripadvisor and Skyscanner, I prided myself on getting hands-on with every detail and becoming the expert. Knowing the ins and outs of my product helped me succeed and impress my clients and bosses. Founder Mode? Absolutely! Everyone should do it.
Then I moved to Google. I took on much larger clients and went from focusing on a single product to handling multiple, far more complex products. At first, I tried to bring my “Founder Mode” approach with me—I dove deep into the documentation, asked product specialists detailed questions, and attempted to own every aspect of my accounts.
And of course, I burned out! Not only was I working at an unsustainable pace, but I also became a bottleneck. Graham predicted that people might misuse Founder Mode as an excuse to micromanage, and that’s exactly what happened to me.
Neither Mode Works at the Extremes
So, why did Founder Mode work in my earlier roles but not at Google? It’s about scale. In my previous roles, I was focused on a single product, which made it easier to dive deep into the details. But at scale, it became impossible to be equally involved in every aspect.
Even Graham admits, “Obviously founders can’t keep running a 2,000-person company the way they did when it had 20. There has to be some delegation.” (To be fair, some founders like Steve Jobs were known to stay involved in the small details even at large companies—but you and I aren’t Steve Jobs.)
While Founder Mode doesn’t scale well, the opposite extreme—completely hands-off “Manager Mode”—isn’t effective either. Ed Batista, in a great response to Graham’s article, points out that Graham isn’t criticizing management itself but the absence of it. He writes:
It’s possible for a less-experienced CEO to get in the way of their senior leaders—but more typically I see the opposite problem. The CEO gives their executives too much space, only to find several months later that important objectives have been neglected.
Years ago, I worked with a manager who embodied this version of Manager Mode. She gave her team 100% autonomy, but the result was no direction, poor outcomes, and a lack of understanding of her own business. At meetings, her team had to answer basic questions from leadership on her behalf. She was eventually managed out.
Both extremes—Founder Mode (micromanagement) and Manager Mode (complete hands-off management)—are flawed. So how do you strike a balance? How do you stay on top of your business without burning out or getting lost?
How I Found My Balance
Here’s what worked for me: Get intensely involved in key areas; delegate everything else but care deeply. Let’s break it down:
Get intensely involved in key areas
I believe leaders need to get hands-on in some areas. The best leaders roll up their sleeves—pulling the numbers themselves, building their own decks, troubleshooting, or speaking directly to customers. This keeps them grounded and gives them valuable perspectives they wouldn’t have gotten from a high-level approach.
But as your business scales, you can’t do this for everything. You have to choose which areas to focus on. In my current role as an account lead, I get deep into strategy, onboarding, and measurement because I believe these areas set the tone for my accounts. I maintain my own trackers, train new team members, and build my own dashboards.
Delegate everything else but care deeply
Trying to do everything yourself leads to burnout. So I delegate large responsibilities to team members and cross-functional teams. Delegation is crucial, but—and this is key—it doesn’t mean letting go completely. When I delegate, I allow others to decide how they’ll accomplish the work, but I still care deeply about the outcomes.
As Tony Fadell writes in Build (great book, by the way):
Being exacting and expecting great work is not micromanagement. It becomes micromanagement when you dictate the step-by-step process, rather than focusing on the results.
In Conclusion
Graham’s article presents a false dichotomy between hardcore Founder Mode and hands-off Manager Mode. The real solution lies in the middle: actual management.
I’m still learning what effective management looks like, but so far, the approach of “Get intensely involved in key areas; delegate everything else but care deeply” has worked well for me.
As Batista notes, we need to rehabilitate the concept of management. If we’re fortunate enough to work with skilled teams, it’s our responsibility to lead them well:
They need leaders who are actively involved in determining 1) who will do what by when, 2) to a certain standard of quality, 3) with regular check-ins to assess progress, and 4) the ability to intervene and change course when necessary. That’s not micromanagement—that’s management.
