Why hiring a GM doesn’t automatically solve founder dependency

I hired a general manager to help take pressure off me. If I’m honest, it didn’t work out.

The role was needed. But appointing someone hadn’t settled how we would share authority, what they needed to understand about the business or how I would assess their decisions.

We could agree on goals and outcomes while carrying different expectations about how the company should operate.

That experience changed what I ask when a founder tells me they want a GM. I want to understand what the person will actually be able to decide once they arrive.

What does “the right decision” mean?

“How do you feel about other people making the decisions you would normally make?”

That is one of the questions I ask.

An answer such as “I’m comfortable, as long as they make the right decisions” opens up the real conversation.

What does “right” mean? How would the incoming GM know?

A founder may have a detailed sense of what good looks like without having expressed it. It might include how clients are treated, how difficult conversations are handled or which commitments matter when there is pressure to compromise.

Those expectations don’t necessarily appear in the targets.

“I’ll know when it’s right” leaves the GM trying to discover a standard through the founder’s reactions. The person needs a fair way to understand success before being judged against it.

These questions help surface the underlying expectations. Where the conversation goes next depends on what we discover.

Where my own appointment struggled

Increasingly, the GM and I were at loggerheads over how the business was being run.

People were being managed differently. Client relationships were being handled differently. I felt the culture changing in ways I hadn’t anticipated.

Looking back, I hadn’t spent enough time explaining where I wanted the business to go, its history and the things I was trying to preserve.

I also hadn’t fully understood what it would mean for me to share authority.

Then I began asking other people whether he was doing a good job.

I wanted reassurance. But by going around him, I was undermining him. That wasn’t fair to someone I had employed to carry responsibility.

My reaction became part of the problem I wanted the appointment to solve.

Understanding the founder is only part of the work

A founder can carry years of relationships, difficult decisions and personal commitments. The business may also be deeply tied to identity.

Someone joining from outside doesn’t arrive with that history. Making it available helps them understand the business they are being asked to lead.

But understanding the founder cannot mean learning to reproduce every decision the founder would make.

I saw that distinction with a manager I had worked with for years. When she handled a client issue differently from how I would have, I let her take the lead. Afterwards, the client began calling her.

A GM also needs room to exercise judgement. The founder has to distinguish an outcome or commitment that genuinely matters from a preference for their own way of doing things.

Disagreement can reveal a performance issue, an expectation that was never expressed or a legitimate difference in approach. The work is to understand which it is before reacting.

The role needs usable authority

Trusting the person is a start. They also need to know where they can act.

What can the GM decide? What remains with the founder or board? What client and commercial context do they need? How will progress be reviewed? When should they raise an issue, and how will disagreements be handled?

These are practical questions about how the appointment will work.

If a sales promise remains in the founder’s head, the GM may be held responsible for delivery without knowing the commitment behind it. If staff continue to seek a different answer from the founder, the GM’s authority can remain uncertain even when their role description looks clear.

A clear job description can still leave these questions unanswered. They need to be worked through with the people who will work alongside the GM.

In a family business, that includes other family members who hold authority. I have seen an appointment struggle when the founder trusted the GM but family members around the board table did not share that trust.

The founder’s support alone couldn’t resolve competing expectations about the role.

Oversight gives the founder a way to lead differently

In my own transition towards operating as CEO, I needed a reliable way to understand performance while other people carried decisions.

Clear authority, agreed information and regular reviews helped me develop that capability. Weekly coaching and management meetings gave us a place to work through expectations and judge progress.

The GM relationship needs the same attention to how oversight will work. Otherwise, a founder seeking reassurance can fall back into checking, intervening or going around the person they appointed.

Oversight in this everyday leadership sense means staying informed, reviewing performance and knowing when intervention is needed. It also supports the GM by making expectations and feedback more visible.

I would now give as much attention to how we would work together as to the person’s experience.

What I would do differently

If I were making my own appointment again, I would invest much more deliberately in building shared understanding.

I would spend time on why clients returned, why people worked for us, which experiences had shaped our decisions and what needed to change as the business grew.

Alongside that, I would make the scope of authority and the way we reviewed progress explicit. The learning period would need a clear purpose, rather than leaving someone indefinitely responsible for results without room to act.

I would also examine my own willingness to accept a different approach.

That is my lesson from hindsight. It isn’t a fixed induction period or a formula that guarantees an appointment will work.

Diagnose the dependency before choosing the intervention

A founder may be right that the business needs a GM. It is still worth understanding what keeps coming back to the founder and why.

Is responsibility unclear? Is important context inaccessible? Are connections between teams missing? Does the founder routinely revisit decisions others were authorised to make?

Growth Architecture explains why those conditions matter as a business grows. The Oversight diagnostic framework helps locate where and why reliance on the founder persists, so the intervention addresses the actual problem.

A senior appointment may be part of that intervention. Its success also depends on what the business and founder make possible around the role.

The question I wish I had explored more deeply remains simple: how do I feel about someone else making the decisions I would normally make?

Then comes the practical work of giving that person a fair basis on which to make them.

Where to go next

• My Business Can’t Run Without Me. Where Do I Start? — identify a practical starting point before choosing an intervention.

• Oversight — explore the diagnostic approach behind understanding founder dependency.