The Founder’s Glass Ceiling Is Not Where You Think It Is

You built your business almost from scratch.
You put in the energy, the time, the attention. You carried sales yourself, shaped the offer, guided the commercial team. And it worked.

Today, the company generates revenue. Profits. You have a solid team in place. Objectively, things are going well.

And yet, you feel that something is blocking.

Sales have not collapsed. They hold. But every new step seems to require more effort than before. Without being able to explain it clearly, you sense that you are pushing harder where things once moved more naturally.

When growing becomes harder than starting, it is rarely accidental.

You want to take the commercial development further. At the same time, you are running the company day to day. You cannot be everywhere. Not because of a lack of commitment, but because of physical limits.

Until now, you were often the one selling. Or the one closely guiding sales. And you were also running the business. That operating mode has real strengths. It creates traction. It allows fast decisions. It brings coherence.

But it also has a limit.

This is what is often referred to as the founder’s glass ceiling. You feel it clearly. But you do not always know where to start addressing it.

In this situation, the reflex is usually to “do something.”

Hire. Train. Change tools. Optimize processes. Each of these actions makes sense. Each addresses a visible symptom.

But before acting, there is a step that is often skipped: making a structural decision.

At this point, there are usually not ten possible decisions. There are three.

The first is to consolidate what already exists.

You consider your current results satisfactory. Not perfect. Sometimes tense. But overall manageable. You do not feel the need to deeply change how sales work. The focus is on efficiency. Better organization. Clearer priorities. Improving overall productivity.

In that case, you are not trying to “break the ceiling” at all costs. You are choosing stability and control. That is a perfectly legitimate decision.

The second is to evolve, or redesign, the sales system.

You feel that the current situation is no longer satisfactory. That it is not sustainable in the medium term. You see the need to change how sales operate. Processes. Market approach. Pricing model. The role of the founder in sales.

In other words, to go further, the current system must be adapted or rethought. This is also a clear decision. Demanding, but coherent.

The third is to change ambition.

This is often the hardest one to articulate. Changing ambition does not mean “aiming lower.” It means aligning ambition with what the company is actually willing to carry.

Every ambition has a hidden cost. Not only financial. A cost in more frequent decisions, more formal governance, loss of control, real delegation, and higher complexity.

This option is difficult because it can feel like weakness. In reality, it requires courage. And paradoxically, once this decision is made clearly, commercial performance often improves. Not because ambition was reduced, but because the company stopped pretending it was willing to pay a price it was not.

Less dispersion. Fewer contradictions. More coherence.

Without a clear decision, you operate under three competing realities at the same time.

Some days, you act as if consolidation is the right answer. Other days, as if transformation is inevitable. And other days, as if ambition itself needs to be revised or reframed.

This is not weakness. It is what happens when no explicit decision has been made. Each option feels valid in turn. None prevails.

When the system does not know which reality it has committed to, effort becomes chaotic. Actions multiply. Tension rises. Fatigue sets in.

A decision does not guarantee performance. It promises nothing. But it does one essential thing: it gives effort meaning.

And without meaning, even the best teams eventually start forcing.