Design the Role Before You Hand Out the Title
Why early C-level appointments can create unexpected challenges as a business scales.
One of the most common mistakes we see in scaling businesses isn't hiring the wrong people. It's giving the right people executive titles before understanding what those roles will eventually require.
A founder raises capital, gains momentum, and starts building a team around them. They bring in people they know, trust, or have been introduced to, and because the business is still small and flexible, there is an opportunity to create roles however they see fit. Before long, a business with 10 to 20 people has a CEO, CTO, COO, CMO, Chief Commercial Officer, and perhaps a few others.
Sometimes this works well. People grow with the company, develop the skills required, and become exactly the leaders the business needs. But often, the title gets ahead of the role. The problem isn't giving someone a C-level title too early. The problem is doing so without understanding what success in that role will eventually require. One of the most important questions founders can ask is:
What does this role need to look like when the business is three, five, or ten times the size?
Because a C-level position should not be defined solely by what the business needs today. It should be designed around what the business will need at its next stage of growth.
Depending on whether the plan is to expand internationally, establish strategic partnerships, onboard enterprise customers, build a manufacturing facility, or significantly increase revenue, the leadership requirements change dramatically. The person who is highly effective in a small business is not always the same person who can lead a function through increasing complexity, scale, and stakeholder expectations.
The Future Role Test
Before assigning a senior title, founders should ask four questions:
What will this role need to deliver when the business is significantly larger?
What capabilities will be required to achieve that?
What attributes will become critical for success?
Can this person realistically grow into that role?
Importantly, this isn't simply a discussion about industry experience or technical expertise. People can learn new industries. Skills can be developed. Experience gaps can often be closed with the right support, coaching, and exposure.
In fact, seeing people grow into bigger roles is one of the most rewarding parts of working with scaling businesses. What is often harder to develop are the underlying attributes that become increasingly important as a role grows in complexity: strategic thinking, resilience, commercial judgement, influence, adaptability, decision-making under uncertainty, and the ability to lead through ambiguity.
These are often stronger indicators of future success than whether someone has spent ten years in a particular industry.
For that reason, we encourage founders to design the role first, rather than the title.
Leave Room for Different Outcomes
Too often, we see businesses assume that the current role holder will naturally become the future executive.
Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't.
We regularly see CTOs who are exceptional technologists but have little interest in leading larger teams, managing performance, building organisational capability, or driving cross-functional execution. Their passion lies in solving technical problems, developing products, and advancing the technology itself.
Similarly, a Commercial Lead may eventually become an outstanding Chief Commercial Officer. Equally, they may be most effective focusing on customer acquisition while a more experienced executive builds international sales channels, forecasting capability, pricing strategy, and a larger commercial function.
Neither outcome is a problem.
In fact, this is often exactly how successful businesses evolve. The mistake is assuming progression is inevitable and building a structure that leaves no room for alternative outcomes.
Give Yourself Options
Titles matter.
They influence expectations, reporting structures, future hiring decisions, and sometimes how people see themselves within the company.
Giving someone a senior title may feel like a small decision today, but it can create significant challenges when the business reaches its next stage of growth and needs additional capability around the leadership table. If you're already at the highest level there is no room to hire what you need.
The strongest organisations are not those that assume who their future leaders will be.
They are the ones that clearly define what future leadership roles require, assess people against those requirements, invest in development where appropriate, and deliberately leave themselves options.
A useful exercise is to look at your three most senior roles and ask:
What will this role need to look like when we're five times larger?
What capabilities and attributes will be required?
Does the current role description reflect that future state?
What assumptions are we making about the person currently in the role?
If those answers feel unclear, it may be time to revisit the structure.
Give people the opportunity to grow. Just don't design your future around the assumption that they will.
