Letting go

BillGuard investor Roger Ehrenberg wrote a great post this weekend about Founder CEOs needing to learn how to let go of control and in particular our “power zones”. Friends, go read it. 

I’m a classic Product CEO. I’ve got a Steve Jobs poster on my wall and etched in my subconscious. My power zone; UX, stems from 15 years as a design-centric product manager at startups, including my own. I still obsess over UI minutia, click-flow, info architecture, wording, typography etc. These things are make-or-break critical for a large scale consumer web service. And I can’t help it. Since leaving our product development office in Israel to open BillGuard’s business and market development office in NYC a few months ago, a day hasn’t gone by that I haven’t wrestled with this Founder CEO “letting go” dilemma. We have the best people I have ever worked with at BillGuard, but I really need to find my personal balance to make things sing. Balance is the key word here because I will never take my eye off the product. That would be a mistake for the company. This year we’re maturing and scaling the business, and its time to find my balance.

In Roger’s words:

While there is certainly a connection between power and control, I believe that power is having attitudes and displaying behaviors that are focused on doing what is best for the company. And this is simply a definition of leadership. Therefore in my world power does not equal control - power is reflective of leadership. So do not optimize for control. Be a leader.

Thanks Rog for the thoughtful perspective and reminder. It’s a post I will check in on regularly.