Growth Gets Hard When the Founder Is the System

One thing I have noticed from talking with managing partners over the years is that growth can hide dependency for a really long time.

The firm keeps growing.
Revenue increases.
The team expands.
Cases keep coming in.

But underneath all of it, the business still depends heavily on the managing partner to keep everything moving.

That was a big part of my conversation this week with Alex Gertsburg from ExitPath Partners.

We spent a lot of time talking about how founder dependency starts showing up inside growing firms. Not just in leadership, but operationally too.

The approvals still run through the founder.
Key client relationships stay tied to them.
The team relies on them to solve problems.
Major decisions still funnel back to one person.

And honestly, that usually happens for a good reason.

Many successful firms were built because the founder was willing and capable of carrying all of those responsibilities early on. That level of involvement is often what creates growth in the first place.

But eventually, it creates strain too.

As Alex and I talked through, growth gets harder when too much of the firm still depends on one person to keep things moving. Decisions slow down. Leadership teams wait for approvals. Client communication becomes difficult to transition. The business keeps growing, but the structure around it does not evolve at the same pace.

At some point, the firm is no longer scaling through systems and leadership. It is scaling based on how much the managing partner can personally absorb.

That becomes a serious issue when firms start thinking about succession planning, acquisitions, mergers, or exit strategy.

It is very difficult to transition a business when too much operational knowledge, client trust, and decision-making still lives with one person.

One part of Alex’s own story that I thought was interesting was how he started recognizing this inside his own firm. He talked about realizing that while he still enjoyed ownership and business development, he no longer wanted to stay heavily involved in the operational side of running the practice or billing hours as an attorney.

So instead of continuing to operate inside every part of the business, he started restructuring his role around the areas where he created the most value and gradually removing himself from responsibilities that could be delegated or systemized.

He shared a framework during the conversation that I think applies to a lot of growing firms:

The point was not productivity advice. It was identifying where the firm still depends too heavily on the founder to function effectively.

A lot of firms continue operating around founder dependency longer than they should. And over time, that affects growth, leadership development, scalability, and eventually exit options too.

If your firm still depends heavily on the managing partner being involved in operations, approvals, and major client relationships, I think this conversation with Alex is worth listening to.

(If you’d rather listen on the go, listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts.)

A few other places where we share ideas, conversations, and resources: