Diagnose which growth-stage crisis, using Greiner's model, an organisation is currently facing.
Leadership & Management
Moving from Founder-Led to Professional Management in Scale-Ups
Guide a scale-up through the transition from founder-led decision-making to professional management, covering governance, delegation and leadership team design.
🗓️Duration5 training days
📚Content4 modules · 8 sessions
🎓On completionAccredited attendance certificate
About the programme
Course Overview
Personally approving every hire, every price exception and every customer contract is often exactly what let a founder grow the company quickly, yet the same habit becomes the reason growth stalls once the organisation is too large for one person's attention to cover. This course uses Greiner's model of growth and crisis to explain why founder-led management works at one stage and fails at the next, then works through the practical transition: hiring a leadership team the founder can genuinely delegate to, building governance structures, such as a board and management committee, that a growing company needs, and redesigning decision rights so approvals do not still funnel through one person. Participants map their own organisation against Greiner's stages, diagnose which decisions the founder is still holding unnecessarily, and design a phased delegation plan that the founder and new leaders can commit to together.
Expected Learning Outcomes
Identify decisions a founder is holding that should already sit with a leadership team.
Design a leadership team structure with clear mandates that reduce founder bottlenecks.
Build governance structures, including a board or advisory board, appropriate to company stage.
Redesign decision rights and approval thresholds as the organisation grows past founder capacity.
Coach a founder through the loss of control that professionalisation inevitably involves.
Sequence a phased delegation plan that avoids destabilising the business during transition.
Who Should Attend
Founders and co-founders leading a business through rapid headcount or revenue growth.
Newly hired executives joining a scale-up to professionalise its management.
Board members and investors supporting a founder through a leadership transition.
HR leaders designing organisation structure and governance for a growing company.
COOs tasked with building processes and systems a founder never had time to create.
Family business leaders managing a similar transition from founder to professional management.
Course Modules
Select any module to see its sessions and points.
01Recognising the Limits of Founder-Led Management
2 sessions · 8 points
Session 1Growth Stages and Recurring Crises
- Apply Greiner's model to identify the growth stage and crisis an organisation faces.
- Distinguish a temporary growing pain from a structural crisis requiring new management practice.
- Identify the specific decisions still bottlenecked through the founder's personal attention.
- Assess the cost of founder bottlenecks in delayed hiring, contracts and product decisions.
Session 2Founder Syndrome and Its Warning Signs
- Recognise founder syndrome behaviours, including bypassing managers to direct their teams.
- Assess how founder identity and company identity have become difficult to separate.
- Identify employees who have learned to route decisions around the management structure.
- Discuss the emotional difficulty founders face when asked to delegate control.
02Building a Professional Leadership Team
2 sessions · 8 points
Session 1Hiring and Onboarding Senior Leaders
- Define leadership roles with mandates specific enough to reduce founder involvement.
- Assess whether a candidate can operate without daily founder direction.
- Onboard senior hires so their authority is visible to existing long-tenured staff.
- Address resentment from early employees when external leaders are hired above them.
Session 2Establishing Boards and Governance Bodies
- Design a board or advisory board appropriate to the company's size and investor base.
- Define the matters reserved for board approval versus management decision.
- Prepare board papers and reporting rhythms that support real governance oversight.
- Manage the founder's transition from sole decision-maker to board-accountable executive.
03Institutionalising Systems and Decision Rights
2 sessions · 8 points
Session 1Redesigning Decision Rights
- Map current decisions against who actually makes them versus who should make them.
- Set approval thresholds for spending, hiring and contracts appropriate to each role.
- Communicate new decision rights so staff stop defaulting to founder approval.
- Identify decisions that must remain with the founder even after professionalisation.
Session 2Building Repeatable Systems and Processes
- Document processes that previously existed only as founder knowledge or habit.
- Introduce planning, budgeting and review cycles that do not depend on founder memory.
- Balance process discipline against the speed and flexibility that enabled early growth.
- Identify which informal practices are worth preserving through the transition.
04Redefining the Founder's Role
2 sessions · 8 points
Session 1The Founder's New Role
- Define a founder's new focus areas, such as product vision or key relationships, post-transition.
- Coach a founder to ask questions rather than give answers in leadership team meetings.
- Help a founder resist reversing delegated decisions when short-term results dip.
- Assess whether the founder should remain chief executive or move to a chair or product role.
Session 2Sustaining the Transition
- Sequence a phased delegation plan with checkpoints for review and adjustment.
- Monitor for reversion to founder-led decision-making under pressure or crisis.
- Communicate the transition to staff and customers without signalling instability.
- Evaluate leadership team performance against the mandates set during the transition.
What the participant receives
4 course modules
A structured syllabus
8 training sessions
across 5 days
32 detailed points
Applied, detailed content
Accredited attendance certificate
On completing the programme
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