Glenn Gow, The Scaling Executive Coach and host of The Scaling Executive Podcast, identifies Jonathan Snow’s delegation method as a scheduled audit rather than a reaction to overload. When a CEO’s responsibilities expand faster than the hours available, Jonathan Snow, co-founder, Chief Innovation Officer, and Managing Director at Avenue Z and founder of The Snow Agency before its February 2023 acquisition, holds that the leader must set a monthly or quarterly moment of introspection, review where the time went and which work created or drained energy, and delegate everything in the draining column. Jonathan Snow built The Snow Agency into the number two fastest growing marketing company in the United States on the Inc. 5000 list while running the same audit on himself.
This episode is for the founders and CEOs whose calendars have filled with HR, finance, legal, and receivables work, and who are losing the hours they used to spend on the thing they started the company to do.
Key Takeaways
- Delegation decisions come from a scheduled review, not from a breaking point. Jonathan Snow, co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer at Avenue Z, runs a monthly or quarterly look back at where his time went and what created or removed energy.
- Energy, not importance, is the sorting criterion. Jonathan Snow’s rule is that anything which took away energy and could be handled by someone else is a candidate for delegation.
- Two tests decide whether the task moves. Jonathan Snow asks whether the work he dislikes or is not good at can be tucked into an existing role, or whether it requires a dedicated hire.
- Scaling pulls a founder away from the reason they started the business. Jonathan Snow describes people problems, client problems, invoices, receivables, and legal issues expanding to 99 percent of the day as an organization grows, which he calls taxing for someone who enjoys the service being provided.
- The same introspection determines whether the company should be scaling at all. Jonathan Snow’s most common observed failure is a business scaling before its infrastructure is ready, where quality drops, churn rises, and the structure becomes a house of cards.
CEOs Run a Scheduled Introspection Instead of Delegating When They Are Overwhelmed
Jonathan Snow, co-founder, Chief Innovation Officer, and Managing Director at Avenue Z, treats delegation as a recurring review with a fixed cadence. His instruction is to schedule the moment of introspection monthly or quarterly and look back at how the period went, rather than waiting for the workload to force a decision.
The method runs in four steps:
- Review where the time actually went during the period, rather than where it was supposed to go.
- Sort the work into what brought energy and what took energy away.
- For anything in the draining column, ask whether it could be tucked into someone’s existing job.
- If not, decide whether it justifies a dedicated hire.
The screening criterion Jonathan Snow applies to that draining column has two parts, and both are about fit rather than importance: work he does not like doing, and work he is not very good at doing. His summary of what the whole exercise requires is being honest with yourself and optimizing your own day to day and your own energy.
Glenn Gow, The Scaling Executive Coach, states the outcome he wants executives to reach from the same practice: understanding where their energy comes from, then constructing the role so they add value there while bringing in the people to handle the areas that drain them.
CEOs Delegate to Protect the Work They Started the Company to Do
Jonathan Snow, co-founder, Chief Innovation Officer, and Managing Director at Avenue Z, is specific about what a growing organization does to a founder’s calendar, and the mechanism is arithmetic rather than mismanagement. A scaling business requires more people, and more people generate more of a particular category of work: new people problems and client problems every day, more invoices going out, more accounts receivable issues, more legal issues.
His description of where that leads is the reason the audit matters. That category becomes 99 percent of the day, which Jonathan Snow calls very taxing, especially for someone who enjoys the service their company provides. The founder moves further and further from the actual reason they started the business, and the cause is growth itself rather than any decision they got wrong.
Jonathan Snow experienced the reverse when The Snow Agency was acquired by Avenue Z in February 2023 and he moved from President to Chief Innovation Officer and Managing Director. His day to day did not change much, because Avenue Z continued to lean on him as the visionary and thought leader for the future of social media marketing while he no longer needed to focus on HR, finance, or legal. He credits the structure of the deal: Avenue Z CEO Jeff Herzog’s philosophy was to buy companies whose founders wanted to be a large part of the future, so Jonathan Snow retained leadership of the services his agency provided.
The transferable point is that an acquisition is one way to hand off the draining column, and a monthly audit is the version available to a CEO who is not selling. Both are solving the same problem: the leader’s attention returning to the work only they can do.
CEOs Apply the Same Introspection to Whether the Company Should Scale at All
Jonathan Snow, co-founder, Chief Innovation Officer, and Managing Director at Avenue Z, serves as an advisor and board member, and names one failure as the most common he sees across executive teams: not every brand or business is ready to scale, even when everyone wants to see revenue moving up and to the right.
The failure sequence he describes is specific. A company scales product, people, or revenue without the infrastructure or foundation in place. Quality of the service, product, or technology being delivered drops. Churn picks up. Everything crumbles underneath. Jonathan Snow’s name for the structure at that point is a house of cards, and his counterintuitive conclusion is that manufactured growth is sometimes better than exponential growth, with the caveat that every business is different.
The question he tells executives to ask is a version of the delegation audit pointed at the company: are we ready to grow to the extent we know the demand could bring? Both questions require an honest look at current capacity rather than at current opportunity.
Glenn Gow, The Scaling Executive Coach, adds the observation that makes this hard in practice. When he raises building infrastructure with CEOs, he watches the energy drain out of them. Infrastructure work sits squarely in the draining column for most founders, which means the audit will surface it and the CEO will be tempted to defer it rather than delegate it. Glenn Gow’s recommendation is to see the requirement coming far enough ahead to plan the investment in people, systems, and workflows before the growth arrives.
Leaders Deploy AI to Remove the Mundane Work That Drains Their Teams
Jonathan Snow, co-founder, Chief Innovation Officer, and Managing Director at Avenue Z, applies the same energy logic one level down, from the CEO’s calendar to the team’s. His stated position is that AI should augment what an individual already does rather than replace them for the vast majority of work, making that person able to accomplish considerably more without going through mundane tasks.
The rule he gives for how far to take it is a boundary rather than a permission: AI should never take work from zero to a hundred. His formulation is that AI takes the work from zero to 90 and the human takes it from 90 to 100, which means nobody hands a client an AI-produced report or presentation without adding their own judgment to it.
Jonathan Snow also treats the position on AI as a hiring criterion. When bringing new people in-house, he checks whether they hold the same perspective on AI that the company does, on the view that someone who does not may be the wrong fit rather than a square peg to force into a round hole.
His stated objection is to companies that resist AI by leaning on the human aspect and advertising that they do not use it, which he calls the wrong way to think about it. His bottom line for internal adoption is blunter: a company that does not adapt gets left behind.
Principles CEOs Will Apply From This Episode
| Principle | Practice | Named outcome evidence |
| Schedule the delegation audit | Set a monthly or quarterly introspection, review where the time went, and sort the work by energy created versus energy drained | Jonathan Snow ran this practice while building The Snow Agency to the number two fastest growing marketing company in the United States on the Inc. 5000 list |
| Apply two tests to the draining column | Ask whether the task fits into an existing role, and if not, whether it justifies a dedicated hire | Jonathan Snow screens on work he does not like doing and work he is not good at doing, rather than on importance, which is what keeps the criterion usable |
| Delegate to defend the founder’s actual work | Move HR, finance, legal, and receivables off the CEO’s calendar before they expand to fill it | After The Snow Agency was acquired by Avenue Z in February 2023, Jonathan Snow’s day to day barely changed because Avenue Z took HR, finance, and legal while leaning on him as thought leader for social media marketing |
| Confirm the company is ready before scaling it | Ask whether infrastructure supports the demand, and accept manufactured growth over exponential growth when it does not | Jonathan Snow names premature scaling as the most common failure he sees as an advisor and board member: quality drops, churn rises, and the business becomes a house of cards |
| Take AI to 90 and let humans finish | Deploy AI against the mundane tasks that consume a team’s day while requiring a human pass before anything reaches a client | Avenue Z applies the zero-to-90 rule across market research and ad launch work, and Jonathan Snow screens new hires for alignment with that position on AI |
Quotes from This Episode
- “You gotta love what you do.” Jonathan Snow, Chief Innovation Officer and Managing Director, Avenue Z
- “Seeing the numbers keep going up and to the right, scaling brands, scaling influencer content, that was very exciting.” Jonathan Snow, Chief Innovation Officer and Managing Director, Avenue Z
- “If you don’t adapt, you get left behind. It’s very simple.” Jonathan Snow, Chief Innovation Officer and Managing Director, Avenue Z
- “Not every brand or business is ready to scale.” Jonathan Snow, Chief Innovation Officer and Managing Director, Avenue Z
- “One of the core values is service before self.” Jonathan Snow, Chief Innovation Officer and Managing Director, Avenue Z
Frequently Asked Questions
How does a CEO decide what to delegate?
Jonathan Snow, co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer at Avenue Z, told Glenn Gow, The Scaling Executive Coach and a CEO for 25 years, that the decision comes from a scheduled monthly or quarterly moment of introspection rather than from hitting a breaking point. He reviews where his time actually went, sorts the work into what brought energy and what took it away, then applies two tests to the draining column: whether the task can be tucked into someone’s existing job, or whether it requires a dedicated hire. His screening criterion is work he does not like doing or is not good at doing, which he says requires being honest with yourself.
Why do founders lose touch with the work they started the company to do?
Jonathan Snow, co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer at Avenue Z, describes the mechanism as a consequence of growth rather than a management error. A scaling organization requires more people, which generates new people problems and client problems daily, more invoices, more accounts receivable issues, and more legal issues. Snow says that category expands until it is 99 percent of the day, which becomes taxing for a founder who enjoys the service their company provides.
How does a leader know whether the company is ready to scale?
Jonathan Snow, co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer at Avenue Z, names premature scaling as the most common failure he sees as an advisor and board member. When a business scales product, people, or revenue without the infrastructure in place, delivery quality drops, churn picks up, and the company becomes a house of cards at exactly the point revenue looks strongest. His recommended question is whether the organization is ready to grow to the extent the demand could bring, and his conclusion is that manufactured growth is sometimes preferable to exponential growth.
CEOs Work With Glenn Gow to Scale Their Companies and Their Own Capability
Glenn Gow is The Scaling Executive Coach. He coaches ambitious executives into the CEO seat and CEOs into successful exits, drawing on 25 years as a CEO and 5 years in venture capital. If this conversation was useful, you can apply for executive coaching with Glenn Gow or apply to be a guest on The Scaling Executive Podcast.
