From one man to many men

Nigeria’s entrepreneurial ecosystem is experiencing a remarkable resurgence. Across the country, the informal economy continues to expand, technology is lowering barriers to entry, and venture capitalists, angel investors, and development finance institutions are placing increasingly bold bets on the ingenuity of African entrepreneurs. From fintech and agritech to health-tech, manufacturing, professional services, and the creative industries, a new generation of founders is emerging with the ambition not merely to build businesses but to solve problems at scale.

This momentum is encouraging. Yet history reminds us that starting a business and building an enduring institution are two very different challenges. While many ventures succeed in attracting customers, investment, and early growth, far fewer make the difficult transition from founder-led enterprises to organisations capable of thriving beyond the founder. The greatest threat to entrepreneurial success is often not competition, regulation, or access to capital. It is the founder’s inability to transform the business from one man to many men.

That simple phrase has become central to my teaching on entrepreneurial transformation. Every successful venture begins with one person’s vision, energy, relationships, expertise, and determination. In the early days, the founder sells, recruits, negotiates contracts, resolves customer complaints, approves payments, supervises operations, and often locks the office at the end of the day. For a while, this model worked. In fact, it is often necessary. The problem begins when the business grows, but the founder does not.

Many promising businesses do not stop growing because opportunities disappear. They stop growing because they remain trapped inside the founder – the smartest man in the room. The entrepreneur becomes the organisation’s greatest asset and, paradoxically, its greatest constraint. Jim Collins captures this challenge brilliantly in Good to Great with one of the most enduring observations in management literature: “First who, then what.” Before deciding where the organisation should go, leaders must first “get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats.” Collins’ five-year research project found that companies that made the leap from good to great focused first on building exceptional teams before refining strategy. The quality of the people ultimately determined the quality of the organisation.

This is where many entrepreneurs struggle. They invest enormous energy in products, customers, markets, and fundraising, while postponing the more difficult work of building people, systems, and culture. Growth becomes increasingly dependent on the founder’s personal involvement rather than the organisation’s collective capability. Success is measured by how indispensable the founder has become instead of how capable the organisation has become.

“Building an institution requires more than hiring good people. It requires systems that enable ordinary people to consistently produce extraordinary results.”

Building an institution requires more than hiring good people. It requires systems that enable ordinary people to consistently produce extraordinary results. Peter Senge’s work on systems thinking reminds us that sustainable performance comes from well-designed systems rather than heroic individuals. Strategy, processes, governance, effective people and performance management, technology, and culture provide the discipline that allows organisations to scale without losing consistency. Great organisations do not rely on exceptional people doing exceptional things every day. They rely on capable people working within exceptional systems. Yet systems alone are not enough. The founder must also transform.

One of the greatest barriers to entrepreneurial growth is the leader’s inability to see themselves objectively. Many founders genuinely believe they are empowering others while unknowingly remaining the bottleneck. They overestimate how effectively they communicate, delegate, coach, and develop future leaders. Without honest feedback, these blind spots become organisational constraints.

Research by Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman, published in the Harvard Business Review, found that leaders with accurate self-awareness consistently outperformed those whose self-perceptions differed significantly from how others experienced their leadership. This is why 360-degree feedback has become one of the most valuable leadership development tools available. Unlike traditional performance appraisals that rely largely on a supervisor’s perspective, 360-degree feedback gathers insights from peers, direct reports, supervisors, and sometimes customers. For entrepreneurs, this creates a powerful mirror. It helps answer difficult questions: Am I building leaders or creating followers? Am I empowering my team or controlling them? Is my business becoming more capable or simply more dependent on me? These insights often become the catalyst for the behavioural changes required to build enduring organisations.

Ultimately, the journey from one man to many men is not simply about delegation. It is about multiplication. It is about multiplying leadership, multiplying capability, multiplying decision-making, and multiplying ownership throughout the organisation. As founders become architects of systems rather than heroes of execution, the organisation gradually develops the resilience to succeed beyond any one individual.

Nigeria does not merely need more entrepreneurs. It needs more institution builders.

The next chapter of our entrepreneurial story will not be written by founders who can do everything themselves but by leaders who can build organisations where many capable people work together toward a common purpose. Every enduring institution begins with one person’s dream. It grows when that dream becomes many people’s responsibility. That is the journey from one man to many men, and it is the journey that will determine whether today’s promising ventures become tomorrow’s great African institutions.

Omagbitse Barrow is the chief executive of Efiko Management Consulting, and he supports organisations and leaders to translate their strategy into results.