Why Founders Need to be Clockmakers, And How to Tell If You Are One or Not

Jim Collins, one of the great business authors of our time, always says that CEOs should be clockmakers rather than time tellers. After all, anyone can tell time. But it’s the clockmakers who optimize the clocks so that they function properly on their own for as long as possible. Isn’t that what all startup founders and CEOs should strive to do?

Naturally, the first task for any founder is determining whether they are actually a clockmaker or just a time teller. As a coach, I accomplish this by asking a CEO how long they can let the company run before trying to interfere. Typically, the answer isn’t very long, sometimes mere minutes or perhaps a few hours at most. Needless to say, this is not the answer of an efficient clockmaker, nor is it a formula for scaling.

One way I challenge founders is to have them sit back and do nothing for 24 hours. During that time, if a problem, concern, or something that would normally require the attention of the founder arises, what happens? This is the best way for founders to test how good of a clockmaker they are or if they are just a time teller.

If a problem arises during that 24 hours, will somebody jump in to solve it whose job it is to solve such problems? If so, that’s a good sign for the founder. If the person responsible doesn’t jump in, it’s up to the founder to scold that person. Of course, if it’s not obvious who should have been the one to jump in and address the issue, the fault lies squarely with the founder.

No matter the result of this exercise, it’s a good learning experience for founders to try. Have they put the right mechanisms in place to resolve issues without their involvement? Do they have the right people in place to address issues and keep the company running? These important questions need to be answered to test a founder’s clockmaking ability and readiness to scale to bigger and better things.

The worst-case scenario is that something slips through the cracks. In this case, the founder knows that they need to assign someone to address similar issues in the future. If someone had been assigned to that area, it could indicate that the wrong person is responsible and may need to be replaced. The silver lining is that even if a founder fails the clockmaker test, there will be something to learn to get them closer to passing the next one.

With his hands-on experience as part of three successful startup ventures and further experience coaching over 50 startups, including a few unicorns, Roland Siebelink has seen it and done it before, making him the perfect coach to take any startup to the next level.

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