Stepping back from the day-to-day is easier said than done. This week, our experts discuss what founders actually need to change first.
This week’s Let’s Talk edition tackles a question every growing business eventually runs into, at what point does a founder need to stop being the business, and start leading it from a distance.
Stepping back sounds simple in theory, but in practice it means rethinking decision-making, trust and systems, and often your own sense of what your job actually is. Many founders find the hardest part isn’t letting go of tasks, it’s letting go of the instinct to be the one who solves everything. We asked our panel of experts what founders genuinely need to do differently, and where most tend to get it wrong.
Let’s Talk!
Katsu Nishi, General Manager, APAC, Notion
“Most founders eventually encounter the same problem when stepping back from day-to-day operations: the business can only move as fast as you can answer your team’s questions. Relying on institutional knowledge trapped in your head works when you’re small, but as you scale, it creates major operational bottlenecks.
To step back successfully, founders need to shift their focus from doing the work to setting up the infrastructure that powers it. That means building custom agents loaded with your company’s full context and history, giving your team autonomous workmates that surface knowledge, routine tasks, and handle daily administrative workflows.
By eliminating repetitive busywork at the operational level, you provide your team with the context and confidence they need to act quickly and independently, while also freeing up your own time and giving yourself dedicated space to focus on strategic growth.”
Sally Davies, General Manager Solo and Embedded Finance, MYOB
“For many founders, stepping back from the day-to-day can feel uncomfortable. It’s important to remember this is not about doing less. It’s about building a business that doesn’t need you in every decision to succeed.
Resilient businesses are built around strong systems, clear processes and empowered people, and not just one person holding everything together. If you want to build a business that can thrive without depending on you, ask yourself three questions.
What would happen if you were away for two weeks?
If the business slows to a halt, it’s a sign that too much knowledge or too many decisions still sit with you. Start by identifying the decisions only you can make, then give your team the authority, information and confidence to own the rest.
Could someone else step into your role tomorrow?
If key processes only exist in your head, the business becomes harder to scale. Documenting how things are done, creating clear workflows and using technology to automate routine tasks makes it easier for others to take ownership and keeps the business moving when you’re not there.
Are you spending your time on today’s work, or tomorrow’s business?
As a business grows, the founder’s role needs to evolve too. The greatest value often comes from setting direction, strengthening customer relationships and identifying new opportunities, rather than solving every operational problem yourself.
When founders start to step back, strong systems matter more than ever. MYOB’s latest Business Monitor found businesses using AI are saving an average of 2.8 hours a week, while those that have digitised more of their operations are more likely to report higher productivity and better workload control.
Building a business that doesn’t rely on you isn’t about stepping away. It’s about creating the systems, capability and confidence that allow the business to grow beyond its founder. That’s often one of the clearest signs a business is ready for its next stage.”
Scott Burridge, Findex Partner – Accounting and Business Advisory, FINDEX
“One of the hardest jobs for a founder isn’t building the business, it’s resisting the urge to personally keep running it.
Stepping back from the day-to-day doesn’t mean caring less; it means changing how you create value. Instead of solving every problem, your role becomes building a team that can solve problems without you. That can feel uncomfortable at first. You might even discover the business has been waiting for you to get out of its way!
The shift is from doing to enabling. Spend less time approving every decision and more time setting direction, coaching your leaders and asking the right questions. Trust is the new productivity tool.
It’s also worth accepting that your team may not do everything exactly as you would, and that’s okay. If they’re delivering the right outcomes, different doesn’t mean wrong.
A great first step is surprisingly simple: don’t disappear overnight. Start by picking one area where you tend to be the bottleneck and hand over decision-making, not just the task.
A founder who can step back creates something far more valuable than a business that depends on them. They create a business that can grow, adapt and thrive on its own. Ironically, the less indispensable you become to the daily operations, the more valuable your business usually becomes.”
Angus Dorney, Co-CEO, Kablamo
“One of the hardest transitions for any founder is letting go of the work that made the business successful in the first place. When you’ve built something from the ground up, it’s natural to believe no one else will do it as well as you. But if every important decision still comes back to you, you’ve created a bottleneck rather than a scalable business.
“Stepping back starts with building a leadership team you genuinely trust. That means hiring people who are better than you in their areas of expertise and giving them the authority to make decisions. It’s uncomfortable at first because you’re trusting someone else to take on the work you once did yourself. That also requires a level of self-awareness. Great founders understand where they add the most value and, just as importantly, where they don’t.
“Your role shifts from being the person with all the answers to creating the environment where others can succeed. If the business can’t operate without you in every meeting or decision, you haven’t really stepped back. You’ve simply delegated tasks instead of leadership.”
Jeremy Liddle, Managing Director, Third Hemisphere
“Early on, founders make every call. Stepping back means building systems and people who can be trusted.
This involves establishing a clear decision ownership mechanism, including a regular reporting rhythm, so the team knows exactly what they can decide without the founder, and what needs sign-off.
That structure gives the team clarity on when and how to act, especially when it comes to day-to-day execution.
With this in place, the founder then has greater bandwidth to focus on strategy, hiring, and the direction of the business, including shaping and protecting the culture and the long-term plan.”
Dejan Pekic, Founder & Senior Financial Planner, Newealth
“Stepping back from your business isn’t just an operational decision. It’s a financial transition, and most founders only realise this when it’s too late.
A succession plan is essential for every business, yet it’s something many business owners aren’t prioritising. PwC’s 12th Family Business Survey had some surprising findings on this, reporting that out of approximately 1.4 million business owners in Australia set to retire by 2023, close to a third have no plan in place.
The danger isn’t just potential damage to the business through operational losses, staff disruptions or a leadership vacuum. A lack of financial and legal strategies may lead to financial losses if you aren’t prepared, both for you and the business.
If there are disputes between a business partner and family members over who will succeed you, it could lead to lengthy court procedures, frozen assets and major legal fees. Operational disruption might cause business value to fall. Or you could face hefty capital gains bills if you don’t have a comprehensive tax plan in place.
So, before stepping away from day-to-day operations, incorporate financial and legal strategies – and do it early. It’s the only way to ensure your business and personal wealth are protected.”
Nitesh Roopa, Managing Partner, ProfitPulse
“Most founders think stepping back means delegating tasks. It does not. It means transferring decisions. You can hand over every task in the business and still be the bottleneck if every judgement call routes back to your phone.
So the real work is writing down the rules you carry in your head. When we discount, when we hire, when we say no to a client, what spend needs sign off. If a rule only lives in your head, you have not stepped back. You have just gone remote.
Then replace your presence with a rhythm. The same small set of numbers, reviewed the same way at the same time each week, is what lets a business run without the founder standing in the room. The rhythm does the supervising. You stop reading the inbox and start reading cash, margin and pipeline instead.
The blunt truth from the buyer’s side is that a business which cannot run without its founder is worth materially less, because the buyer is not buying you. Stepping back is not a lifestyle decision. It is one of the biggest value levers an owner has.”
Rita Cincotta, CEO & Founder, The Deliberate Leader
“Stepping back is one of the hardest transitions a founder makes. It is not about delegating more tasks – it means redefining where your value comes from. Many founders get a dopamine hit from solving problems and crossing off to-do lists.
Busy becomes synonymous with valuable. But as the business grows, that equation must change. The real question is: if achievement no longer comes from completing tasks, where will it come from instead?
The shift isn’t doing less – it’s creating value differently. Your role moves from execution to perspective: setting direction, building capability, asking better questions, and ensuring the business thrives without your constant involvement.
That’s only possible if your team can step up. Founders often stay trapped in operational work not because of a leadership failure, but a capability one. If your leaders can’t make sound decisions, you remain the bottleneck.
Equally important: a systems perspective. Businesses built on individuals depend on the founder. Businesses built to scale depend on systems. Ask: are our critical processes documented, independent of any one person, and reviewed regularly?
The founder’s role eventually shifts from engine to architect. Leadership isn’t measured by your indispensability – it’s measured by whether the business thrives without you.”
Praveen VR, Founder and CEO, Moonhive
“Stepping back from day to day operations starts with one uncomfortable change: the founder must stop being the default decision-maker.
That does not mean becoming distant. It means giving the team enough clarity and authority to move without waiting for approval.
Before stepping back, a founder should make three things clear:
• Who owns each important decision.
• What outcomes each leader is responsible for.
• Which issues genuinely need to be escalated.
The hardest part is resisting the urge to step back in whenever someone takes a different approach. If every decision is corrected or overruled, the team will keep looking to the founder instead of building confidence.
The founder’s role should also change. Spend less time checking tasks and more time setting priorities, developing leaders and reviewing the health of the business.
A founder has stepped back successfully when the company can keep making sound decisions without them being involved in every conversation. They are still responsible for direction, but no longer responsible for every answer.”
Catie Paterson, Director, Blue Kite HR Consulting
“Most founders think stepping back from day-to-day operations is an operational problem. It isn’t. It’s a people problem, and it starts with you.
The biggest mistake I see? Founders delegate tasks but hold onto authority. The team can run the meeting, but every decision still lands on your desk. That’s not stepping back. That’s adding a layer of bureaucracy with the same bottleneck.
Here’s what actually needs to change:
• Transfer culture, not just process. Your values, your non-negotiables, your decision-making lens, these live in your head. Until they’re documented, modelled, and genuinely embedded in your team, your business runs on your presence, not your systems.
• Give your people permission to be wrong. High-dependency teams don’t lack capability, they lack psychological safety. If every mistake triggers a founder intervention, you’ve trained your team to wait for you rather than act without you.
Redefine your role before the gap creates one. The most disruptive transitions happen when founders step back reactively — burnt out, growing too fast, or simply overwhelmed. Get deliberate about what you’re moving toward, not just what you’re moving away from.
Stepping back isn’t about trust. It’s about building the conditions where trust is possible.”
Morgan Wilson, Founder and Director, creditte accountants and advisors
“Stepping back from day-to-day operations is not a mindset shift. It is a documentation project, and most founders skip it.
Dan Martell’s Buy Back Your Time hit me as a revelation at the right time. First step was working out what my hour was actually worth. That number changed what I was willing to keep doing myself.
Then I ran tasks through the delegation ladder, one stage at a time, instead of trying to hand everything off at once. Before I gave anything away, I recorded myself doing it. Loom and ScribeHow became my main tools. I was not writing a manual from memory. I was capturing exactly how I did the task, warts and all.
The mistake I see founders make is trying to delegate intention instead of process. You cannot hand someone your judgement. You can hand them a documented way of working and coach the judgement in over time.
Stepping back starts with slowing down long enough to write it down.”
Nikita Gossain, Founder and Managing Director, PPR Capital
“Stepping back is not really about doing less, it is about doing a completely different job. I built PPR Capital by acquiring established businesses from retiring owners and installing an appointed chief executive to run each one day to day. That forces a discipline most founders never practice: letting go of operational detail entirely and focusing purely on capital allocation, strategy, and choosing the right person to run things.
The hardest shift is emotional, not practical. A founder who built something from nothing tends to measure their worth by how close they stay to the work. Real stepping back means measuring yourself instead by the quality of your decisions and your people, not your hours in the business.
The businesses I acquire are often family run, and the owners who transition well trust the next operator early, rather than hovering. That trust, given properly, is what actually lets a business outlast its founder.”
Michael Mastrodimos, Creative Director & Founder, Peanut Productions
“For many years, building Peanut Productions meant being deeply involved in almost every decision. Like most founders, I wore many hats because that’s what the business needed at the time.
As we’ve grown, so has our team. Today, I have the privilege of working alongside talented people in the right roles, giving me the confidence to step back from the day-to-day and focus on where I can create the greatest value.
That doesn’t mean becoming less involved. It means investing more time mentoring and supporting our people, helping them develop into leaders and experts in their own fields. At the same time, it gives me the space to think more strategically – identifying opportunities, addressing gaps and exploring how we can continue to evolve as a business.
For me, stepping back has never been about doing less. It’s about creating an environment where others can flourish while ensuring the business is always looking ahead.”
Jonny Warren, Founder, Jonny Warren Properties
“After years building Jonny Warren Properties, I’m beginning to step back from day-to-day operations. Not because I’m walking away, but because our people need the opportunity and authority to lead.
A founder has to do several things differently. You need to stop being the answer to every question, trust capable people to make decisions and accept that they may sometimes do things differently. You also need to protect the culture, set the direction and remain available without constantly stepping back in.
Just as importantly, you need to find strong projects for your experience and energy. Otherwise, it’s easy to drift back into the daily detail simply because that’s where you’ve always felt useful.
For me, that means continuing as an auctioneer, strengthening the JWP brand and exploring new growth opportunities for the business. It also means building my public-speaking journey and working towards the Jonny Warren “Find a Home” Foundation, with the ambition of helping end homelessness in the ACT.
Stepping back changes where you make your greatest contribution, from solving every daily problem to creating the next opportunity for your people, your business and your community.”
Michael Russell, Managing Director, Finwave Finance
“Most founders who try to step back fail at it the first time. Not because they lack capable people, but because they never changed what they measured or how they spent the first hour of their day.
Stepping back is not a mindset shift. It is a structural one. If every significant decision still routes through you, if your team asks permission rather than reports outcomes, and if your diary looks the same as two years ago, you have not stepped back. You have added a layer of guilt to your existing workload.
The first real change is decision rights. Write down which decisions you are keeping, which you are delegating fully, and which require your input but not your sign-off. Without that clarity, your team defaults to bringing everything to you because the cost of getting it wrong feels higher than the cost of interrupting you.
The second change is your information diet. Move from knowing everything to knowing the right things. A weekly dashboard of four or five metrics tells you whether the business is on track without pulling you back into execution.
The third is the hardest. Your identity as a founder is probably tied to being needed. Stepping back means building a business that runs well without you, which can feel like making yourself redundant.
That discomfort is the work, not a sign something is wrong.”
Lauren Clemett, CEO, The Audacious Agency
“Stepping back from the daily grind isn’t about doing less – it’s about leading differently. When you’ve been the heart of the business, stepping out of operations can feel daunting, but scaling requires a shift from a doer to a director.
First, define your structure. Diving into Rocket Fuel by Gino Wickman was a game-changer for me – it showed how vital clear operational roles are. Partnering with a mentor who had already walked the path also gave me the clarity I needed. Once your structure is locked in and the right people are in the right seats, delegation becomes seamless because everyone owns their accountability.
Most importantly, keep your team engaged. Culture doesn’t disappear when you step back – it thrives when you champion it. We share every single success with our team, providing party packs for our contractors to celebrate together when a client wins. When your people feel valued and engaged, they don’t just hold the fort – they help build the legacy with you.”
Fleur Allen, Business Educator, Mentor and Coach, Ask Fleur
“Stepping back doesn’t mean simply delegating tasks. It means changing how you use your time and your mind.
This is where developmental coaching may have a role. Most founders have never practised strategic thinking, because the demands of the business are louder. Handing over the operational reins means making space for what doesn’t appear to produce immediate results: reflection, pattern-spotting, long-range planning, building capacity as a leader.
What actually needs to change:
• Protect unstructured time. Block it in your diary like a client meeting, not an afterthought.
• Get comfortable with discomfort. Strategic thinking feels unproductive at first, accept this.
• Stop defaulting to solving. Start asking. Your job shifts from answering questions to asking better ones.
• Find a thinking partner. Founders rarely have anyone to think out loud with; a coach, mentor or trusted peer can fill that gap.
Stepping back isn’t only a scheduling change. It’s a developmental one: building the capacity to lead from a different vantage point, not just delegating what’s already there.”
Cole Cornford, Director, Galah Cyber
“The biggest things in my experience are:
• Build space to think strategically about the company without getting stuck in the weeds. Most founders I speak with struggle to let go of delivery and often that’s because being busy and efficient feels good. But introspection and reflection is what’ll be effective.
• Maximise delegation. While you can often perform tasks better than the people you hire, your capacity is fixed. Leveraging systems or people is the only way to step back.
• Change your focus to hiring well, establishing partnerships, and learning. Your role is now to guide, mentor, and otherwise help steer. You’re not rowing the boat anymore.
• Lastly, take care of yourself. When stepping back, you’ll have time to be with your kids, your wife, and to do hobbies and exercise again. Your team has your back, and if things go pear-shaped you can step in. But your hard work with founding a company has paid off and you should try to accept that.”
Kyle Steel, Founder & Director, ORVX AI
“I spent 20 years running national operations for chains like Gloria Jean’s and Muffin Break, businesses turning over $60 million-plus a year. The difference between a founder who can step back and one who can’t always comes down to the same thing: whether the business runs on systems or on the founder’s memory.
Most small business owners hold the whole operation in their head. Quotes, follow-ups, scheduling, who owes what. Stepping back isn’t about hiring a manager and hoping. It’s about mapping every process the founder currently does on instinct, then building something else, a system, a checklist, an automation, that does it the same way every time without them.
Before you can step back, you need to know exactly what you’re stepping back from. Most founders have never actually written it down. Do that first. Then automate the repeatable parts. What’s left is the part only you can do, and that’s a business you can actually leave the room for.”
Tracy Ford, People Capability Consultant, Concept HR Services
“I hear business owners say that they want to step back from the day-to-day running of the business. They bring in a general manager and then get frustrated when it doesn’t work.
What I’ve noticed is that the biggest challenge is often the owner.
Many owners aren’t ready to let go. They’ve spent years being the go-to person. They like being needed. They know why things are done a certain way and they care about getting things right.
Before you do anything, ask yourself if you really want to step away from the day-to-day operations.
If the answer is yes, you need to give your managers clear authority and be comfortable with them making decisions.
You need to change your own behaviour. When employees come directly to you, send them back to their manager. When you bypass a manager and go straight to an employee, you’re telling everyone who’s really in charge.
Bringing in a manager doesn’t automatically change how the business operates. The owner has to change too. That means trusting other people to make decisions, solve problems and lead the team.
The question is whether you’re ready to let go of control. That’s the part many owners underestimate.”
Dr Mark Keough, Executive Director & Co-founder, SkillsAware
“When a founder steps back from the business, the priority is making the transition survivable for the people and systems left behind, not just for themselves.
Start with decision rights: identify every decision that currently routes through you, and explicitly reassign each one to a named person. Ambiguity here is the key factor that pulls founders back in. Documenting the tribal knowledge that lives nowhere else is critical — key relationships, unwritten rules, why past decisions were made the way they were.
Build a real leadership layer, not just a delegate. Whoever takes over needs authority as well as responsibility, including the ability to make mistakes. Communicate the changes clearly and early to employees, customers, investors, and board members, framing it as planned rather than a crisis, with a clear point of contact going forward.
Depending on how available you’ll actually be — a clean break, an advisory role, or a phased exit — keep it clear and consistent, since half-measures confuse successors and undermine their authority.
Finally, give yourself permission to actually let go.”
John Nguyen, Founder, AML Partners
“Stepping back from day-to-day operations no longer just means delegating. In the age of AI, it means redesigning how the business works. Founders should use AI to document knowledge, automate repetitive workflows, analyse performance, turn ideas into execution faster and focus on enabling their team to use AI – more and better.
Working “on the business” has taken on a new meaning. With AI, a founder can research a market, map a process, draft a campaign, analyse customer feedback and build an implementation plan in hours. Work that once took weeks of coordination across multiple people can now be done by one person. That gives founders more time to focus on the decisions, opportunities and relationships that will move the business forward.
But AI does not replace leadership. Founders still need to set direction and make judgment calls. The goal is not to remove people – it is to remove low-value work, give the team better systems and enable them to harness AI to increase their productivity.
A founder needs to constantly improve processes using AI, focus on strategy, capital, culture, major partnerships and take the risks that could change the company’s future.”
Kinjal Patel, Co-Founder & CMO, Vrinsoft Pty Ltd
“I don’t believe founders should aim to step back as quickly as possible. I think they should step back only when the business is ready for it. Early on, I wanted to be involved in everything because I genuinely enjoyed solving problems and staying close to the work. That made sense at the time. But as the business grew, I realised I was answering questions that other people were more than capable of answering themselves. Without meaning to, I had become part of almost every decision.
The biggest shift for me was accepting that my role at Vrinsoft had changed. I stopped measuring my contribution by how many decisions I made and started paying attention to how many decisions the team could make confidently without me. That’s a much harder transition because it requires trust, patience, and a willingness to let people do things differently than you would.
I still stay close to the business because I enjoy it, but I no longer feel the need to be involved in every detail. For me, stepping back isn’t about creating distance. It’s about creating the space for other people to lead, make decisions, and help the business grow in ways that wouldn’t be possible if everything still depended on the founders.”
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