The A-to-Z Role Design
Own the vision and delegate the middle to people built for execution.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 96%
Hadad describes entrepreneurial execution as movement from A to Z. He is confident in defining A, the current state, and visualizing Z, the desired result, but says the intervening letters are not his strength. The model begins by making both endpoints explicit. The founder then decomposes the middle into contracts, compliance, operations, finance, hiring, or other capabilities and honestly identifies where personal execution would weaken the journey. Those letters are assigned to people the founder can count on, while the founder retains responsibility for explaining what Z should look like. The difficult leadership move is role acceptance: stop equating authority with doing everything and resist reclaiming work that belongs with a stronger operator. The model turns self-awareness into team design and keeps vision from becoming an execution bottleneck.
Origin
Hadad identified this as his biggest continuing challenge while describing the launch of Next Door Lending: he could see the starting point and the destination but needed others to handle the contracts, compliance, and operating steps between them.
Core principles
- 01Seeing the destination does not imply strength in every step required to reach it.
- 02Founders create drag when they insist on owning work that exposes their weaknesses.
- 03Clear endpoints let stronger operators design and execute the path between them.
- 04Accepting a narrower role is an ongoing leadership discipline rather than a one-time handoff.
How to run it
- 1
Define point A
Describe the company's current capabilities, constraints, people, and operating reality without embellishment.
Pro tip Use evidence such as current volume, licenses, systems, and team capacity.
- 2
Describe point Z
State the result the founder can see clearly enough that another person can make decisions toward it.
Pro tip Define observable outcomes rather than relying on an inspiring but ambiguous vision.
Watch out A team cannot design the middle around a destination that changes without explanation.
- 3
Map the middle letters
Break the route into the functions, decisions, and deliverables that must connect the current state with the destination.
Pro tip Include unglamorous work such as compliance, contracts, payroll, insurance, and margins.
- 4
Match strengths to letters
Assign each intermediate area to a person with the required expertise instead of defaulting ownership to the founder.
Pro tip Use demonstrated ability, not loyalty or title alone, as the assignment test.
Watch out Delegation without a capable owner merely relocates the bottleneck.
- 5
Accept the designed role
Keep communicating the destination and reviewing progress while allowing stronger operators to own their work.
Watch out Reclaiming every decision teaches the team that delegation is temporary.
In the wild
Hadad entered entrepreneurship with a strong picture of what he wanted the mortgage company to become but lacked knowledge of compliance, compensation plans, margins, payroll taxes, health insurance, and other operating details. He concluded that he needed dependable people to connect his starting point with the destination.
→ The leadership challenge shifted from personally doing everything to finding and trusting people who could execute the missing letters.
Common mistakes
Confusing vision with universal skill
Seeing the desired result does not make the founder competent in contracts, compliance, finance, or every other step.
Being the owner of every letter
Insisting on every intermediate task makes the founder the route's main constraint.
Delegating without defining Z
Operators cannot build a coherent path when the intended destination is unclear.
Is it for you?
Best for
Entrepreneurs scaling a company beyond the work they can perform well themselves.
Not ideal for
Very early projects where the founder has not yet defined the destination or validated that the work deserves a larger team.
From the transcript
“I'm great at seeing a I'm great at seeing Z all the letters in between I suck at”
“learning your role and accepting your role I think was the absolutely continues to be by the way the most challenging thing for me ever”
“I need people that I can count on to get all the letters in between figured out for me”
From the episode
Breaking the Mortgage Mold: Jonathon Haddad's Journey