Preparing Your Business for Life Beyond You

When Spotify’s founder Daniel Ek announced he would step down as chief executive, it made headlines. After nearly 20 years running one of Europe’s most successful tech companies, he’s shifting into a chairman role and leaving day-to-day control to two long-serving deputies.

For most business owners, the sums and scale are very different – but the principle is the same. At some point, you may want (or need) to step back. Maybe that’s for retirement, maybe to focus on new opportunities, or simply to avoid burning out. The question is: how do you prepare your business to thrive without you in the driver’s seat every day?

Here are some practical steps worth thinking about:

Build a capable leadership team

Ek’s handover wasn’t sudden. His deputies have been running much of the business since 2023, which means staff and customers are already used to them leading.
For a smaller business, this might mean gradually giving key managers more responsibility. Let them make decisions, even if you’d sometimes do things differently. Better to iron out issues while you’re still around than to hand over untested.

Separate ownership from management

Many founders assume stepping back means selling up. Not necessarily. Ek is still chairman and still guiding long-term strategy, for the time being at least, but no longer managing the day-to-day.
As a business owner, you could consider keeping your shares and remaining involved at board level, while hiring or promoting someone to run day-to-day operations. That way you benefit from the company’s growth without being tied to the grind.

Get your systems in order

The bigger the reliance on “what’s in your head”, the harder it will be for anyone else to run things. This isn’t always easy to detect, particularly if you enjoy being in the middle of things.

You could ask yourself: how many decisions come my way during a typical day? Do all those decisions need my input, or if some of the business processes were written down could staff get things done without waiting?

Having up-to-date procedures, good accounting systems, and clear contracts with customers and suppliers can all help. The more clarity there is, the less your team has to guess.

Think about your own role differently

Ek is shifting his focus to strategy, capital allocation and regulatory efforts – this long term, strategic work is likely to be work that he is best placed to do. This is a useful way of thinking about your own role.

Ask yourself: what are the tasks that genuinely require you? And what could be delegated?

Freeing yourself from day-to-day firefighting gives you time to work on the bigger picture.

Plan the story you’ll tell staff and customers

Spotify’s share price dipped when Ek’s decision was announced, a reminder that transitions can unsettle people. The same is true in smaller businesses – staff may worry about job security and customers may have concerns about service quality.

Good communication can help. Explain the plan, show confidence in your team, and reassure people.

A final thought

You don’t need to be running a global giant to learn from this. Every founder has a choice to make about how long they stay hands-on. Planning your own “step back” early can help to make your business stronger, give you more options, and protect the value you’ve worked so hard to build.

See: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3rv35xp07lo

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