What a coach should build with a founder-led company's new or growing leadership team in the first 90 days: owners, decision rights, guardrails and the hand-off.
The best coach for a founder-led company with a new or growing leadership team builds four things with that team in the first 90 days: an honest read on each leader, one owner for each part of the business, written decision rights, and guardrails you can measure. Without them, a new team keeps sending the real decisions back to the founder.
I’m Herb Cogliano, founder and executive coach at Aspire Growth Advisors. This guide shows what each of the four looks like on paper, how to hand a function over, and what to do when a hand-off wobbles. If you’re still deciding what kind of help to hire, start with my guides for companies under $10 million and mid-market companies from $10 million to $50 million.
Why a new leadership team needs a different kind of coach
When a founder hires or promotes a leadership team, the org chart changes overnight. The way decisions travel usually doesn’t. Leaders hired to own sales, operations or finance keep bringing their calls back to the founder, because that is how the company has always worked.
I call this the difference between busy and central. Busy is a calendar problem: you have too much to do, and you can delegate your way out. Central is a structural problem: the business is built to route through you, so you can clear your calendar and the real decisions still land on your desk.
I lived it. As CEO of Sullivan & Cogliano, my family’s staffing and education firm, we ran weekly execution meetings, monthly financial reviews and quarterly priorities. We made the Inc. 5000 three times. I was still central. Systems can scale a company and still leave it dependent on its founder. A coach for a new leadership team has to change who decides, not only how often the team meets.
1. An honest read on each leader
Start with one question about every member of the team: knowing everything you know today, would you enthusiastically rehire this person into this exact role? A “yes, but” is a no.
A hesitation is a signal, not a verdict. Two more questions sort it out: does this person live your core values, and do they deliver what the role requires, measured against a written job scorecard rather than effort or tenure?
| What you find | What it usually means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Strong values, strong results | The role was never clearly defined, or the authority never came with it | Write the job scorecard before you change anyone |
| Strong values, results not there yet | The right person, still growing into the role | Coach them, with a 90-day timeline |
| Strong results, weak values | A high producer who wears down the team around them | Start succession now, three to six months at most |
| Weak values, weak results | The conversation is overdue | Have it |
One 30-person services firm I worked with ran this across its leadership team. Two leaders who lived the company’s values got clearer targets, training and a deadline. A few high producers who didn’t live the values were replaced. The firm ended up with 4.5 times the profit with fewer people.
2. One owner for each engine
Every company runs on three engines, and each needs one accountable leader. Verne Harnish’s Function Accountability Chart puts that on one page, with the numbers each leader watches every week and the results they answer for.
| Engine | Accountable leader | Numbers they watch weekly | Results they own |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | Head of sales | Pipeline value, new appointments, proposals out, close rate | Revenue, new client revenue, retention |
| Delivery | Head of operations | Delivery quality, utilization, client satisfaction | Gross margin, client retention |
| Stability | Head of finance | Cash on hand, receivable days, forecast accuracy | Net profit, working capital |
Then check every name. Two names on one engine means no one is accountable. One name on two engines is a bottleneck forming. An empty seat isn’t empty: it routes to you.
3. One page of decision rights per leader
Once each engine has an owner, write down what that owner may decide. Sort every recurring decision into three groups: the leader decides alone, the leader checks with you first but keeps the call, or the leader needs your sign-off. Here is a sample page for a head of sales.
| Decides alone | Checks with you first | Needs your sign-off |
|---|---|---|
| Sets the team’s weekly priorities | Changes a key channel partner | Discounts beyond the set limit |
| Approves deals within the standard discount | Adjusts pricing on existing products | Hires or replaces a sales leader |
| Coaches and manages direct reports | Revises the sales process | Enters a new market or segment |
Three rules keep the page honest. Set the limits up front, before anything goes wrong. If a decision isn’t on the page, the leader owns it. And no surprises: anything that could hit cash, customers, people, legal or reputation gets raised early.
4. Guardrails you can measure
A guardrail is a number, agreed in advance, that brings the founder back in. Below it, the leader runs the function. Because it’s a number, nobody argues about whether someone failed.
In my own companies we reviewed cash weekly. One trigger was receivables: when they passed 45 days, it escalated. Sales activity had its own: if new leads, appointments, proposals or closed deals fell below their threshold for two straight weeks, it went to the head of sales, and after a month it came to me. Anything with legal or reputational exposure escalated the same day.
The hard part is honoring them. When a number is inside its guardrail, stay out completely. As leaders prove themselves quarter by quarter, the guardrails can widen.
Hand over one function at a time
With those four on paper, start with your most stable function and hand it over in three steps, the way a trade passes on skill:
- Recommend. The leader brings a recommendation and you approve it. When you override, explain why.
- Decide. The leader decides and you review afterward. Your reviews shift from checking to coaching.
- Run. The leader runs the function inside the guardrails, and you’re informed.
Each step usually takes about a month, but move on evidence, not the calendar. Give the function a full quarter of steady results before you start the next one.
When a hand-off wobbles
Somewhere along the way a metric will slip or a decision will come back to you that shouldn’t. Before you take the authority back, check three things in this order.
- You. Did you really hand it over, or are you still second-guessing from the side? A leader who senses the founder deciding in the shadows stops deciding.
- Clarity. Was the outcome or the guardrail written down, or did it live in your head? If the miss traces to a number nobody agreed, the fix is a document.
- Capability. Only then question the leader, and only on a pattern: the same miss repeated after you fixed clarity and got out of the way. Judge on a quarter, not a bad week.
Whatever the cause, step back one phase rather than starting over. A setback should cost you a month, not the hand-off.
Where Aspire Growth Advisors fits
I’m an executive coach who helps $3M–$50M founders build the leadership team to reach $100M and end founder dependency. I do this work with the founder and the leadership team together in the Leadership Team Program. As a Certified Scaling Up Coach and Certified Exit Planning Advisor (CEPA), I make sure it builds value whichever door you choose later: Architect and Scale, Hand Off, Recapitalize or Sell.
If your new leadership team still brings the real decisions back to you, let’s see if we’re a fit. Not ready to talk? Take the Founder Independence Diagnostic to see how much of your business still runs through you.