The Three Levels of Thinkers Task Project and Owner

Team members can be broadly categorized into three levels of thinking based on their scope of work and strategic outlook. Understanding these levels is crucial for building a team that can scale.

1. Task-Level Thinkers

• Focus: The current or next immediate task.
• Characteristics: Often early in their career, they excel at execution but can get overwhelmed when juggling multiple complex priorities. Most employees start at this level.
• Role: Individual contributors who are given well-defined tasks to complete.

2. Project-Level Thinkers

• Focus: Weeks or months ahead.
• Characteristics: They can manage multiple priorities, coordinate the work of others, and are responsible for delivering a complete project. They have systems in place to track all the moving parts.
• Role: Leads and project managers.

3. Owner-Level Thinkers

• Focus: Months or years ahead.
• Characteristics: They don't just manage projects; they think strategically about how to improve the business itself. They bring ideas for experiments, question existing processes, and consider strategic shifts that could change the company's trajectory.
• Role: Founders, executives, and senior leaders.

Scaling the Team:

A founder starts by doing everything. As the company grows (typically in the $20k-$40k Monthly Recurring Revenue range), it becomes critical to hire or promote project-level and eventually owner-level thinkers. If everyone on the team is a task-level thinker, the founder becomes a bottleneck, as every decision and new initiative must originate from them.

Delegating ownership, not just tasks, is the key to freeing up the founder's time and enabling the business to scale beyond them.

Tags: #SaaS #team-building #hiring #management #leadership #scaling #delegation