Delegate Roles Not Tasks

As a founder, you initially wear all the hats in your company. To grow, you must systematically fire yourself from these jobs by hiring others. A common mistake is to try to hire someone to do a collection of miscellaneous tasks you want to offload. The correct approach is to hire someone to own a specific role.

The Problem with Hiring for Tasks:

Founders often perform tasks across multiple disciplines (e.g., a bit of support, some marketing, a little design).
They then try to hire a "unicorn" who is good at all these disparate things.
Such people rarely exist. This leads to hiring generalists for roles that require specialist skills, resulting in mediocre performance.

The Solution: Hire for Roles

Identify the Core Roles: A SaaS company has distinct departments, even when it's just one person. These include Product, Design, Engineering, Marketing, Sales, Customer Support, and Customer Success.
Group Your Tasks: List all the tasks you currently perform and group them into these standard roles.
Hire for a Role: When you hire, give the new person ownership of a whole role (e.g., "You are now in charge of Customer Support"). This provides clarity, empowers the new hire to take initiative, and allows you to truly remove a hat.

Use Standard Job Titles

Don't invent creative job titles like "Code Wizard" or "Customer Happiness Ninja."
Use standard, industry-recognized titles (e.g., "Senior Software Engineer," "Customer Support Representative").
Why?
- It makes it easier for qualified candidates to find your job postings.
- It provides clarity on salary benchmarks.
- It helps your employees with their future career progression.

By delegating entire roles, you move from being a doer of all things to a builder of a team.

Tags: #SaaS #hiring #team-building #delegation #organizational-structure #roles