The Self-Delegating Company Workshop with Georg Tarne

I Was the Bottleneck in My Own Company

Hi, I'm Georg. :)

I know what it's like to be the decision-making bottleneck. I lived it.

I co-founded soulbottles, a social business in Berlin.

When we grew to 12 people, we'd already had to fire a few bad first hires.

And we had to face a hard question.

How do we create structure without losing our entrepreneurial spirit?

The "experienced leaders" had advice.

"Just be more assertive. You have to accept that it's lonely at the top."

Okay, thanks for nothing.

We read Reinventing Organizations. It sounded great. But it was all so vague that there was nothing to actually implement.

So we experimented. A lot.

Out of it came one structure. I call it the Self-Delegating Structure.

It let me grow soulbottles to 80 people and mid-seven-figure revenue, with no VC money.

We raised almost €2 million for clean water projects. We got the highest B-Corp score ever in Germany.

And I never worked more than 40 hours a week (apart from the occasional crunch week). I took enough holidays.

6 years in, I felt the company didn't need me anymore. I handed over my roles, bit by bit, and left as a friend.

Since then I've worked with more than 50 organizations directly, and set up this structure at dozens of them. Car makers. Foundations. Marketing agencies. Democratic schools. Even a dentist's office.

13 years of experience. Over a thousand people.

Now I'll show you the same structure, live, for your team.

Georg Tarne speaking on stage at Corporate Culture Jam — Georg on stage at Corporate Culture Jam

Why Everything Still Lands on You

It goes like this.

A new problem comes up. Nobody's clear who's responsible.

You're used to solving problems fast. So you step in, faster than your own shadow.

Your team steps back.

Voilà. You've finished another round of the Overwhelm Spiral.

Every round, your pile grows. And your team learns, again, to wait for you.

You don't have a workload problem. You have a who-decides problem.

Why the Usual Fix Doesn't Stop It

Read The E-Myth, or any business book like it. You get the same fix.

Write SOPs for everything.

Document every process. Hand over the binder.

Here's the catch. An SOP tells people how to do a task.

It never tells them who decides.

So the unclear calls still land on you. Nobody updates the documents.

And you end up with a process paper graveyard that nobody reads and that's quickly out of date.

The rest fails the same way:

"Suck it up and be a classic top-down leader." Now every decision waits for you.
OKRs, because Google does them. Way too much discussion and meetings for too little output.
More check-in rounds. More talk, the same questions.
Decide everything together. Everyone could veto your decision. So everyone is your boss.
An org chart with job titles. Too vague. Nobody knows what they're allowed to decide.
Bring in a consultant. Installing a structure as a consulting process costs around €3-6K.

None of them answers the one question that matters.

Who decides?

The Self-Delegating Structure

How It Works

No theory. Here's what it does.

You list the decisions that keep landing on you.

The ones you answer every week because nobody else knows they can.

Each decision gets one role that owns it.

With the authority to decide. If you have an accountability to make a decision, you also have the authority to make it. Not you. Not a vote. The individual role decides.

Once a month, for 1 hour, your team updates the roles itself.

So it stays current. And it never becomes another binder nobody reads.

That's it. Lean roles. Clear decision mandates. Just enough detail to be useful, short enough that people still read it.

Your team moves from founder-delegating to self-delegating.

In the workshop I'll show you the role format, the decision mandates, and how to launch it with your team's buy-in.

What My Clients Say

These are consulting and structure clients of mine. They worked with me directly, not in this workshop.

"It's become so second nature that I even started using it at home with my partner, it helps us share care work and mental load in a way that's transparent and suits both of us."

Marie-Luise Matern, Marketing Agency Founder, formerly at Spotify as Head of Artist & Label Marketing GSA

"We had already been working in a self-delegating structure, but Georg's support helped us get it to the next level. I was finally able to hand over the finance roles I had never wanted and focus on my core strengths. One key team member had already been on the way out, but instead he became the new Managing Director."

Aline Menden, Founder Endeva GmbH

"After several years of not feeling like we were set up for success in our team lead role, Georg's support helped us clarify expectations and mandates with our exec board. This gave us clearer expectations and more autonomy, so that we could fully step in to the team lead role. We also use the self-delegating role structure day to day in the team we lead and can't imagine going back."

Julia Röhrich, Team Lead Grants at Schöpflin Foundation

"Georg brings a rare combination to the table: Founder experience AND broad organizational development expertise. We bring him in for the thorny, complex issues and when we just want more clarity, smoother collaboration and new perspectives on leadership for positive impact."

Benji Adrion, Founder Viva con Agua, former professional soccer player

In 90 Minutes, We'll Do This Together

1
Spot your spiral. Where the Overwhelm Spiral runs in your team, and what it costs you each week.
2
List the decisions that keep landing on you. On your own team, live.
3
Give each one an owner. With the authority that comes with it.
4
Start your first lean roles. You leave with them started, not with notes about them.
5
Book the monthly update. 1 hour a month, run by your team.

Plus live Q&A, and the recording to keep.

This is for you if

You're a founder with more than 3 team members, and everything still runs through you.
You want structure, but not a normal hierarchical corporate structure.

This isn't for you if

You want a classic chain of command where you decide everything.
You want every decision voted on by the whole team.
Your culture runs on always protecting the founder's ego and never having the uncomfortable conversations. This will mess with that.

Save My Seat →

30 Days From Now

One of two things will be true.

You're still the person everyone waits for. Another month of "quick question?" and evenings catching up.

Or you've started. Your first roles are written. Your team is launching the rest. The next unclear question lands, and it already has an owner.

When your team brings you finished work instead of questions, the €47 won't matter.

Questions

Can my people and culture lead run this instead of me?

They can run the rollout: the dates, the reminders, the tasks. But you still need to be in it. Otherwise you'll create yet another experience of blocking your team without meaning to.

Will this change our culture?

If your culture is built on empathy, self-responsibility, transparency and the mission above egos, it helps you put those values into daily practice.

We're only 4 people. Is it too early?

No. It's easier when you're small. And it saves you bigger changes later.

Isn't this just top-down in disguise?

No. The role decides, not the boss. And the roles are spread across the whole team, so there's no bottleneck at the top.

Why not just ask AI to write our roles?

Because what makes a structure work is the social process behind it. Do people read it, understand it, accept it and use it? AI skips that part. You save a bit of time now and lose a lot of it later.

We already have SOPs. Do we throw them out?

No. Keep what works. SOPs say how a task gets done. The structure says who decides. You need both, and most teams only have the first.

Your Team Can Step Up. Give Them Something to Step Into.

Without another binder of SOPs.

Even if you've tried OKRs, check-ins and flat hierarchy already.

So you can lead like a human, and still get things done.

The Self-Delegating Company Workshop90 minutes live · Recording included

€47

Save My Seat →

100% Money Back GuaranteeIf you're not 100% convinced this is the most efficient way to un-bottleneck you and your team, email me and I'll promptly refund the full price.

See you there,
Georg

Build a Self-Delegating Company Where People Wake Up Knowing Exactly What to Do, and Bring You Finished Work Instead of Questions

I Was the Bottleneck in My Own Company