Lost (I will not promote)
I am the co-founder of a 6 years old company that is just having the first year with positive EBITDA. My salary is good and the enployees I am repsonsible for are competent. I have developed different power converter devices prior to the founding of the company that got refined during these 6 years. Overall, development took about 12 years, which is what it takes for a complex embedded safety-critical product.
This year though, I am feeling completely lost. I have tried to develop an Agile type of planning. Although not perfect, it is a starting point. I try to impose proceses and formalities as well as documentation.
My partners though, they keep bypassing me, asking technical questions directly to my employees, they keep asking new tasks to the R&D department, depending on what is hot coming from clients or whatever they get motivated with, putting long term deliveries at stake. They keep questioning me about the decisions and priorities I take for the technical products and services.
I wake up sone days thinking that maybe its me who is wrong and of course, you just have one side of the story here. I think, as companies grow, they have less and less R&D. I think the pace and detail needed for R&D makes it incompatible to be in the same structure as the rest of departments. Personally, I do not think I can last much longer this way, it takes too much energy to keep everything at bay and be the buffer between development and the rest of the company. What are your thoughts/experiences? Thanks in advance!