Founder burnout, unlike some other organizational crises, such as labor and workforce challenges or PR fallouts, doesn’t make a dramatic entrance. It happens more quietly. Frayed tempers, longer days, and a persistent inability to cope with the workload can all be signs that you’re straining yourself. The fact is, founder burnout is often a silent killer for startups. And more often than not, it strikes within the first year.
The Harvard Business Review estimates that nearly 25% of founders experience some sort of burnout within the first 12 months of business. And this can prove detrimental to your business.
Here’s why you should pay special attention to your physical and mental well-being and avoid overextending yourself as a founder.
The Business Cost of Unaddressed Burnout
It’s no surprise that company founders are among those most susceptible to burnout. In the early days, the founder is everything to the business, including the visionary, the product designer, the marketer, the HR manager, and the customer support contact. Juggling multiple hats is bound to take a toll over time. And this toll has a serious business cost.
- Organizational Inertia and Listlessness
When the founder is overwhelmed, their decision-making is compromised. It’s a natural consequence of a narrowed focus and limited cognitive bandwidth. Instead of prioritizing long-term goals and success, founders can become obsessed with short-term results. As the strategic direction starts to drift, this affects the organization as a whole, leading to a sort of inertia instead of proactive measures to achieve growth.
- Leadership Capital Is Chipped Away
Perhaps the most obvious sign of burnout, at least to the founder themselves, can be an erosion of their leadership ability. It manifests itself in a number of ways. You may notice reduced patience for your team members, reduced ability to handle complexity, and a tendency for unilateral decision-making.
As your employees begin to take in this shift, you may also see a corresponding reduction in employee deference and outreach towards you, possibly a result of the decreased trust that comes from one-sided functioning.
- Bottom Line Impact
Ultimately, poor workplace motivation will affect organizational productivity in a number of ways. This can include incomplete feedback loops, slower and/or faulty execution, increased errors, inefficient collaboration, missed targets, and higher employee turnover, among others.
These are direct downstream results of poor leadership and can cost your business, and not just in reduced sales. It can also affect investor confidence and lead to funding shortfalls that will impact future growth.
- Founder’s Self-Image Is Affected
Finally, burnout can affect you personally as a founder. So many founders have a significant emotional investment in their company, often to the point that it’s a part of their identity. When your company isn’t doing well, it can have a corresponding effect on how you view yourself.
Failing to keep professional success and personal worth separate can lead to convoluted decision-making both in your professional and personal life, creating a cycle of negativity.
How to Combat Burnout (Hint: Delegation Is Key)
When you’re the person with the vision, the instinct is to do everything yourself.
However, delegation isn’t a sign of weakness in yourself; it’s a crucial step in scaling your business. Once you’ve built a product and it’s out there making money, your new job is to build your team and let them drive your success.
Here are some handy tips to delegate your workload:
- Hire a Quality Assistant
At a startup, an executive assistant is often one of the most discounted requirements. Dispensing with one seems an easy way to save money. However, investing in a quality, qualified executive assistant can help you cut down on busywork and save you a huge amount of time and money.
If budget is a concern — as it is with most startups — consider hiring a virtual administrative assistant from a reputable staffing agency. This can potentially save you up to 80% in overhead costs.
- Delegate Outcomes, Not Tasks
Trust is an important part of building a viable growth team. Hire employees you can trust to make a consistent contribution to your business. Evaluate innate skills rather than learned knowledge to see how well they can adapt to the pressures of a startup or scale-up. Then give them the freedom to do their job.
Instead of asking for progress reports on tasks, set out realistic goals for them, allow them the latitude to innovate, and evaluate their success in achieving them.
- Build a Healthy Workplace Culture
Startups are all about hustle and innovation. So, encourage it when your employees show initiative. Even if it doesn’t always work out. Employees are allowed to fail, just like you.
As a founder, you’re expected to set out the parameters for each job and support your employees to be creative. Positive reinforcement and the latitude to fail occasionally can help build a culture where people enjoy their job and are motivated to do better.
Startups don’t have to be about hard work. You’ll find you’re far better served by smart work. Invest a decent amount of time in hiring quality talent. Create scalable systems that support you as a founder. This will help prevent burnout and create decentralized success drivers within your company.