When the Founder Stops Being the Operating System
What Humankind’s transition from founder-led to CEO-led taught me about growth, structure and leadership.
Looking back at when Humankind transitioned from being founder-led to appointing KP as CEO, it feels like a clear and obvious next step. At the time, it was something we had been moving towards for a while.
We had grown 40% in twelve months and were forecasting another 25% for the following year. With that growth came more complexity. For a long time, I was the one holding a lot of the context. I knew the clients, the team dynamics, and the history behind so many decisions. If there was a difficult conversation to be had or a commercial call to make, I got pulled in.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with that in the early days, it’s how founders operate. You run on instinct, care, and a deep sense of what you’re trying to build. But there comes a point where being involved in everything starts to get in the way of leading the business well.
I knew Humankind was ready for its next stage, and that meant changing how we operated. The business needed more structure, more leadership, and more room for other people to make good decisions without everything having to pass across my desk.
That’s a hard shift to make personally. When you start something, your personal identity gets tangled with your business brand. It feels good to be needed, and there is a lot of comfort in knowing every detail. But if a business is going to grow beyond its founder, you have to let it.
The reality was that KP had already stepped up to lead so much of the business. She understood our people, our commercial model, our clients, and the culture we wanted. Over time, we had naturally settled into different lanes. She was leading the business, and I was spending more time in the market, with clients, on our brand and the work that gave me energy. Making her CEO was really just formalising what was already happening.
For us, that shift meant appointing KP as CEO. In other businesses, it can look quite different. Sometimes it is clearer roles, stronger leadership rhythms, better decision-making structures, or simply giving the founder more space to focus where they add the most value (their fast lane!).
It gave the business what it needed for the next phase, and it gave me the space to focus on the work I love most. Right now, that means I am the Director of Humankind but not involved in any of the day-to-day operations. This shift has also meant I have the time and space to be the Chief People Officer at Tracksuit – a role I’m absolutely loving!
I see this same stage in other growing businesses all the time. A founder or CEO builds a capable team and a strong business, but the day-to-day still relies too heavily on one or two people holding all the context, making the calls and keeping things moving.
When that happens, it usually looks like a capacity problem. Everyone is overwhelmed, the leadership team is stretched, and the obvious fix seems to be hiring more people. Sometimes that helps. But more often, the business needs a different operating rhythm, so it can keep growing without depending on the founder to function.
Getting there requires being honest about the stage you’re in. That is usually where our Humankind team starts working with founders and CEOs. Not with a neat answer, and certainly not with the assumption that every founder needs to step out of the CEO role, but with a conversation about what has changed, what no longer fits, and what the business now needs in order to grow well.
This shift also created the clarity for me to step fully into my current role as Chief People Officer at Tracksuit, which is a full-time executive role and my main focus day to day – always grateful for KP and our Humankind team.
