Make Everyone a CEO
Give people a real hill to take with operating control so they do the right thing when you're not in the room
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 85%
A delegation model built from a founder's dislike of managing. All of management is really the problem of getting people to do the right thing when you're not in the room. The solution is to give the right people a genuine mandate — a hill to take, operating control, and degrees of freedom within a plan and budget — which removes the need to manage them and taps their pent-up drive to prove they're right.
Origin
Mark Pincus says he arrived at all his management principles 'through desperation' because he dislikes managing people, and connects it to the Silicon Valley move (Brian Armstrong) toward eliminating middle management.
Core principles
- 01All of management is just getting people to do the right thing when you're not in the room
- 02A founder can't fully abdicate the CEO role, or priorities scramble and the team stops taking direction
- 03Give a real CEO real operating control and degrees of freedom, not a fake title
- 04The best delegates are the ones with pent-up demand to prove they were right — a bit of a know-it-all
- 05A real CEO should be the best player at the position, not a full-time manager
How to run it
- 1
Frame the true management problem
Accept that management's whole purpose is getting people to act correctly when you're absent. Every technique is just a strategy toward that single goal.
Pro tip When designing any process, ask 'does this help people do the right thing without me in the room?'
- 2
Give a hill to take with real control
Hand a person a clear objective plus genuine operating control and freedom to take it however they choose. Make them an actual CEO of that area, not a figurehead.
Pro tip Require a plan and a budget up front, then let them do whatever they want within it.
Watch out Don't fully abdicate the top CEO role — if you do, priorities get messed up and teams stop listening to you.
- 3
Pick the frustrated experts
Choose people who are a little bit know-it-alls, convinced they have the right answers and full of pent-up demand to prove it. Give them the mandate and let them find out if they're right.
Pro tip These 'frustrated expert witnesses' are the most motivated to run with real ownership.
- 4
Keep CEOs playing their position
Ensure your best people spend their time doing the thing they're great at, not managing. The best CEO is the best player at the position who isn't wasting time on management overhead.
Pro tip Move toward fewer middle managers and more individual contributors who each own a lot.
In the wild
Disliking management, Pincus gave people a hill to take with real operating control and a plan-plus-budget mandate. He found they stopped coming back to him with questions and were intensely motivated.
→ He no longer had to manage them, and the model tapped their pent-up drive to prove they were right.
Common mistakes
Abdicating the CEO role entirely
Handing off leadership completely, rather than distributing CEO-like ownership, scrambles priorities and means teams no longer have to listen to the founder — reducing them to feedback rather than direction. The founder must stay the top CEO while making others real CEOs of their areas.
Giving the title without real control
Calling someone a CEO but withholding operating control and degrees of freedom defeats the mechanism. The motivation and the self-managing behavior come specifically from genuine ownership within a plan and budget, not from a hollow label.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders who dislike managing and want motivated owners who execute correctly without constant oversight
Not ideal for
Teams of junior people lacking the judgment or drive to run an area autonomously, where a hands-off mandate would cause chaos
From the transcript
“oh I'm like all of management is just how do we get people to do the right thing”
“if I give them a hill to take, and if I make them a CEO, make them a real CEO.”
“they they have operating control, degrees of freedom to take that hill however they want, and they can give me a plan, a budget, and…”
From the episode
The hidden pattern behind successful products
Mark Pincus (founder of Zynga)