Skip-Level Feedback Is Hurting Your Business: How CEOs Should Manage Managers as They Scale
If you are a founder, CEO, or business owner leading a growing company, this is likely happening inside your organization right now:
You see a problem. You know exactly who works on it. You go directly to them with feedback.
It feels efficient. It feels helpful. It feels faster.
But as your company scales, skip-level feedback quietly erodes trust, slows execution, and creates performance problems that look like talent issues, but aren’t.
This is one of the most common operational breakdowns we see in growth-stage companies at On Call COO.
And it’s fixable.
The Leadership Shift No One Warns You About
In early-stage businesses, the founder is close to the work. You are:
Setting direction
Executing strategy
Managing individuals
Solving problems in real time
And as your business grows, from 5 employees to 15, from 15 to 50, from 50 to 100 — layers emerge.
You hire:
Managers
Directors
Department heads
Your role shifts from executor to visionary, and a friction point appears:
You’re no longer close enough to the work to understand exactly what it takes to execute, yet you still see opportunities and issues clearly.
That tension creates reactive feedback.
What Is Skip-Level Feedback?
Skip-level feedback happens when a CEO or senior leader bypasses a manager and gives direct performance or execution feedback to the individual contributor.
Example:
CEO → Social Media Manager
Instead of
CEO → Marketing Director → Social Media Manager
It feels efficient, it is not.
Why Skip-Level Management Breaks Scaling Companies
As fractional COOs, we see the same predictable consequences across industries; from professional services firms to e-commerce brands to coaching and consulting businesses.
1. Managers Lose Authority
If feedback doesn’t flow through managers, they cannot manage effectively. They lose:
Context
Visibility
Credibility
Authority
Eventually, they disengage, or underperform.
2. Employees Get Conflicting Priorities
When CEOs and managers give separate direction, employees feel stuck between “mom and dad.” They don’t know:
What’s most urgent
What can wait
Which instruction carries weight
The result is slower execution, missed deadlines, and anxiety.
3. CEOs Misdiagnose the Problem
When output declines, founders often assume:
The employee isn’t capable
The manager isn’t strong enough
The team needs to be replaced
In reality, it’s often an operating model problem, not a people problem.
The Real Issue: Your Operating Model Hasn’t Evolved
Growth-stage companies often upgrade revenue before upgrading leadership systems. As a CEO, your job shifts from:
Doing the work to designing the system that ensures the work gets done
If feedback flows incorrectly, your organizational structure becomes cosmetic, not functional.
How to Cascade Feedback Properly as a CEO
Scaling companies require cascading communication. Here’s the operational framework:
Strategic Direction Flows Down
CEO → Manager → Employee
Execution Feedback Flows Up
Employee → Manager → CEO
This creates:
Clear accountability
Clean decision-making
Visible trade-offs
Faster alignment
What CEOs Should Do Instead of Directing
As your company scales, your role evolves from issuing directives to asking better questions. Instead of:
“Fix this by Friday.”
Ask:
What else is currently on their plate?
What would need to move to make this happen?
What’s your recommendation?
These questions:
Strengthen managers
Improve prioritization
Preserve authority structures
Increase trust
Signs Your Business Needs Operational Leadership
If you are experiencing:
Frustration with execution
Managers who feel ineffective
High-performing employees burning out
Constant priority changes
Culture tension around feedback
You feeling pulled back into daily details
You likely don’t have a motivation problem, you have a communication and operating model gap.
Why This Matters for Growth-Stage Businesses ($3M–$25M+ Revenue)
Once your company moves beyond founder-led execution, leadership complexity increases exponentially. The difference between plateau and scale is rarely marketing.
It’s operational maturity.
At On Call COO, we work with CEOs and leadership teams to:
Clarify reporting structures
Design communication frameworks
Strengthen middle management
Improve decision-making cadence
Align strategy with execution
Reduce founder bottlenecks
Because scaling isn’t about working harder, it’s about upgrading how information flows.
The Bottom Line
If you don’t trust your managers to manage, your structure isn’t real. And if your structure isn’t real, growth will always feel chaotic.
Scaling requires:
Vision at the top
Clarity in the middle
Execution at the bottom
When those layers operate in harmony, companies mature — and leaders finally stop feeling like they’re carrying everything alone.
Ready to Strengthen Your Operating Model?
If your business is growing and leadership friction is increasing, it may be time for fractional COO support.
On Call COO partners with growth-stage founders and CEOs who want:
Stronger managers
Cleaner communication
Faster execution
Sustainable growth
