Today was the first time I've heard the term, "leadership bandwidth." Leadership bandwidth is when your company is growing rapidly and there aren't enough leaders within the organization to keep up with the growth. In order to manage the growth, as a founder of a company with this problem, you have two choices: Hire from the outside Develop leaders from within If you are part of a professional services company with an up or out model, leadership bandwidth is not really a problem. You either become a leader or not. It's because the model forces apprenticeship and mentoring (as best that it can), lays out clearly what the criteria for progression is, and weeds out the perpetual operators from the future Partners in the Firm. I think the root cause of a leadership bandwidth problem is that you can't turn operators and really, really good managers into entrepreneurs - in the context of professional services. After all, the end game ...
Management | Consulting | Leadership | Strategy