A key foundation stone for scaling effectively is clarity. Clarity of purpose first, then of values, of means and of responsibilities.
But every CEO who wants to scale will have to grapple with how much detail is needed in terms of that clarity. Your team probably wants more detail (while also wanting more autonomy). And if you’re like most founder CEOs, you’ll be wanting to err on the side of less detail.
No detail, and everyone on your team will just be guessing at every decision. No clarity will give you an organisation that runs like pinball machine with 50 balls in play at once, and a drunk playing the flippers.
But too much detail, and your team’s actions will be driven more by policy and process rather than by sense. You’ll asphyxiate your team and the organisation will die of rigidity.
Resist getting sucked into defining the minutiae. It will feel to your team as if doing this will give them more clarity. In reality, it will just give them more rigidity and less autonomy.
It’s your role to be as clear as you can be on direction and on values. But the level of detail that you then give on means and responsibilities will be different for every company, every team.
Drawing the line in the right place is an act of wisdom that you’ll need to constantly tune as the leader. Where you draw it will set the degree to which ownership is a part of your culture.